The How To's on Learning the Piano As an Adult

[Misty Davis]

Learn the Piano: How to's. The absolute basics. 
                                                                                                     
To give you my credentials, I have been playing the piano since I can
remember, since I was three years old. I got up to Grade 6 Associated
Board as it was called in the UK. I must have been about 12 years old
at that time. Subsequently I had lessons intensively until I was
sixteen, taught by really first rate teachers at my school, which was
very well-known for its music and had its own music school. Since that
time (I left school when I was sixteen or a couple of days into
seventeen) I have taught myself, with a little aid here and there from
others. Over the years I have played in public concerts and given solo
recitals as the occasion arose. I have been paid for playing sometimes
though I have never seen it as a profession for myself.
I play almost entirely classical music but I have done a bit of
coaching of singers for musicals. Just at the moment I play with a
friend of mine who is a professional viola player. We are struggling
with the Cesar Franck sonata, which has a fiendish piano part! I also
accompany professional singers. The piano is now second nature to me
and I feel qualified therefore to give advice about how an adult might
start to learn the instrument.
If you came across a book called 'How to learn to play the piano' then
it would remind me of a book that I saw once entitled 'What Women
Want'. You opened it and it contained just one word: 'chocolate'.
 So a book about how to learn to play the piano should contain
the one word 'practise!' But that's not much use: it's far too vague.
Practise what? What sort of chocolate, plain or milk or strawberry
creams?
I have noticed that there are a considerable number of on-line piano
lessons offered on the web. I am far from sure that high tech is
actually going to help you very much to learn the piano. Would web-
based learning really help you to be a ballet dancer? The problem is
the same. Both ballet and piano playing are highly technical and rest
on generations of acquired knowledge and skill. This can only be
passed on by word of mouth, example and, yes, practice, masses of it!
Playing the piano is such a human thing that the cold hard computer
screen is just not the right interface.
Organised music is, with language, the most human of attributes and
requires the human touch to impart it. After all, what epitomizes the
heights to which our civilisation has reached more than a symphony
orchestra or a big band or indeed any kind of musical event? And why
single out the piano? The same applies to any instrument. The violin
cannot be learnt from a book or a video, nor can the trombone, nor the
oboe, the clarinet, the flute. The list is very long. You can make
your way right through the orchestra, the big band, pop groups and out
the other side.
Right, you want to learn the piano. Question: why is it that Hungarian
women experience such difficult births? Answer: because the babies
come out with little violins under their chins! But do you have to be
born to it, as this great truth seems to imply? No, you do not!
Perhaps you have to be born with a great wish to play music. A great
many people are born this wish, so very few of the population are
ruled out. The music that you wish to play may be pop, classical,
musicals, whatever. Very often it may be a mixture of these. A lady
that I know, who is one of the best sopranos in Denmark (where I
live), started out in musicals and only came to classical opera later.
I remember having singing down my ear, as I accompanied her, another
wonderful performer with an enormous voice who took the star role in
'Sweet Charity' in the West End (the London equivalent of Broadway)
but who often sang opera too. I myself have trained up the singers in
South Pacific from the piano, though I play mostly classical music as
I mentioned earlier. But there is one thing in common to all kinds of
music making: you need technique. Playing the piano is a very
technical thing. You've got to get those fingers moving and moving
fast! It is no good sticking at the Moonlight Sonata, first line of
first movement, or the first few bars of Fur Elise, however beautiful
they may be. You need to get some velocity in there. Very well, how do
you do it?
To be frank I do not know the answer to the question of how you get
really good; nobody does except maybe some of the world's top
performers. You need talent: who was it who said, 'if only I had the
talent, I could have been a great pianist?' However there is a wealth
of experience on how to get pretty good without an immense talent.
Remember as well, it may be just the 1000 best tunes that you think
you want to play, but you are communing with the great. You are
shimmying up to great musicians and composers. It may be 'just' a
simple melody, but you are rubbing shoulders more often than not with
great artists, the composers of these 'simple little melodies' (that
are so hard to write!). So you must show respect and not murder their
work.
Returning for a moment to web material, it is difficult for me to
comment on the web-based learning techniques or whatever is available
on the web. The reason is that like most people, I learnt the basics
of playing long before such material was around. I've seen a website
which tells you that there is a really good course called 'Learn and
Master Piano'. It contains videos and all sorts of material and gets a
tremendous write-up. It's the Rolls Royce of piano courses etc. etc.
with great enthusiasm displayed by reviewers for the array of aids
offered. One thing however troubled me about the reviews of this and
other courses. By far the best way to see if these courses work is to
contact as many people as possible who have used them and listen to
these people play the piano. As a working scientist (I'm an
astronomer), I judge by results. It's a bit obvious I think. Has it
been done for these piano courses? I can see no mention of it. I
remain sceptical of this impersonal web-based learning for fundamental
reasons, because of the human nature of the venture, which I mentioned
earlier. But of course I would like to hear the proof before passing
judgement. And surely the best proof is to listen to people who have
done these courses. I have never met anyone myself.
What would I do if, as an adult, I wanted to start learn to play an
instrument, say, the piano, knowing what I do of the problems that are
really involved. To play you need ten independent fingers of steel, as
Liszt described the attributes of his pupil Tausig. How do you get
these ten independent fingers of steel, attached to a wrist that is
flexible and strong and never, never jams up? The first thing that I
would do is get to know someone who plays the piano and is reasonably
good at it. If the music sounds evenly played with control, and
sometimes at least goes at more than a walking pace, and it sounds
like music and not thumping, then the person is good enough for this
stage. Get them to play to you. That's usually not too tricky. Listen,
but most of all, watch. Watch the fingers, the wrist, the arms. Does
she (say) play with all of her body, from the soles of the feet?
Because you must! Look how the fingers strike the keys, the fingers
bent for control. Look how the thumb passes under as she plays a scale
up and how the fingers pass over each other as she zooms down a scale.
The thumb, there's the rub, as Hamlet might have said. In Bach's day,
250-300 years ago, they didn't use the thumb at all on the keyboard.
It is an unnatural movement after all, to push it down. It's made for
the power grip. Scarlatti played scales (at colossal speed) with the
just the index finger and the third finger, one after the other. We
will come back to the thumb later.
So now you have come, you have seen, but have you conquered? Obviously
not yet. But you have seen the hand position, the importance of being
relaxed and in control, of never clamping up. Of course you can tense
your wrists a little for power and speed but only for a moment.
Let us say that you have done a bit of book learning. The great
majority of people do need to know which note is which and to be able
to read music to get far. Doubtless this is where some web-based stuff
could be really good - though the dusty old piano tutor books that you
see lying around at the bottom of piano stools are perfectly adequate.
I know that your Uncle Albert could play hundreds of songs that he'd
picked up without reading a note and that Irving Berlin (of White
Christmas fame) reputedly could not read music, but these are the
exceptions. If you are one of them, well and good. You don't need to
learn the piano. You are one of the lucky people who can, to some
extent, just do it anyway. But for the rest of us mortals, you need to
learn your notes, boring as it is. Okay, you've done it. Now you sit
down at the piano. You make sure that your seat is the right height,
it is stable, horizontal and allows free movement of the arms. You let
your fingers rest on the top of the keys. Try and strike the notes
with just your index and fourth fingers together. It is mean of me to
ask because you jam solid, fingers like a vulture's claws. Why?
Because you are unable to move your fingers independently. You want to
put two fingers down and they all go blooming well down, making a
noise like the renowned composer of clusters, Charles Ives - except
that he did it on purpose (as well as inventing insurance companies).
Lesson one: sit at the piano and relax. Do not try and play a note
until you can relax your wrist. This does not mean that you let your
hands flop over the keyboard with your fingers splayed out like
sausages.  Put your fingers just above the keys with your wrist
level. Get someone to put an apple on your wrist. It must not roll
off. One hand at once, by the way. Now let your hand pay all five
notes together between middle C and the G above - just the white
notes, without moving your arm. I know that you paid for the whole
keyboard but for a bit we will only use these five white notes. You
have made a horridish noise of course but you should not be playing
loud. Just do it softly, feeling relaxed about it. Now, holding all
the other fingers pressed down, but not boring into the keys, lift
your index finger up and down, without taking any of the other fingers
off the keyboard. They should in fact not move at all. Do this slowly
and calmly 5 times. Now put your index finger back on, and do the same
thing with your next finger and so on. Do this with both hands. If you
feel your wrist hurting, take your hand off, give it a bit of a shake
and go back on. After about 15 minutes of this, get your husband to
call for a psychiatric ambulance, or, better, have a whisky. Just for
fun, before you stop, try to lift your index finger and your fourth
finger up and down while holding all the others down as before. This
is surprisingly difficult. Do not get hooked on it and drive yourself
crazy with frustration when your fingers will simply not do what your
brain is telling them. When you are doing any of these exercises, you
may be tempted to use your other hand to hold the fingers still that
you do not want to move. You may yield to this temptation. It will
probably help you to achieve a good result. But then try to do it
without holding them down with the other hand.
Lesson two: repeat lesson one, but doing it 10 times instead of five
times. What about those tunes you are meant to be learning? My method
is delayed gratification. Of course you can mess about as much as you
want in between practising. But don't do so much that you get into bad
habits (splayed fingers, rigid wrist!).
Lessons one and two are intended to train you to move your fingers
independently of one another. They will also strengthen your fingers
and give you control over their movements. When you are working at
other things later on, it would a good idea to do a few of these
exercises each time you come to practice. Also keep watching other
pianists when they play - for example your friend that you watched at
first and anyone else that you can inveigle. You can learn a lot by
watching: I still do. You may in time also begin to see something
which they may be doing wrong! On that point though, remember that
everyone is different. Some things may be right for some and wrong for
others. Some great pianists play with splayed out fingers. It looks
awful - but who cares? It sounds wonderful.
Lesson three: now that you have begun to get your fingers going a
little bit, we need to deal with the wrist. It's been almost
completely still in lessons one and two. You know that, because the
apple balanced on the back of your hand did not fall off. Now, let
your arms hang down at your sides so that they and your wrists are
completely relaxed. Now bring your arms up swiftly and let your hands
rest on the white keys in a playing position - wrist absolutely level,
fingers bent - but without striking any notes, Practice doing this
until it feels entirely natural. When you've achieved this, perform
the same action, pause a moment and then begin gently to flex your
wrists up and down, up and down, not too much, just an inch or so up
and down, still without striking any notes or only very quietly. Keep
your arms still as far as possible. Repeat this a few times.
Lesson four: now we need to deal with the arms. Do all the exercises
of lessons one and two and three. Now do exactly as in lesson three
but when you flex your wrists let your arms begin to move and
progressively take over the motion. Still do not strike the notes, or
as quietly as possible. Also do not dig your fingers into the notes
without sounding them! Your fingers should just rest on them. The next
stage in this lesson is to lift your hand off the keys using your arms
keeping your wrist horizontal (with an apple on it) and then use the
weight of your lower arms to actually play all five notes C to G
together. To do this you partly let your arms fall but under control
of your arm muscles. You will begin to appreciate that there are two
rather different extremes of playing. One is to use only the fingers,
the other only the arms. For power, you need the arms. For speed you
need the fingers (and wrists!).
Okay, you have some of the absolute basics. You do not need a teacher
yet. There is still more to do. The awful thumb and wrist. That is for
next time.

Rocket Piano - The Ultimate Piano Learning Kit: http://www.pianomihv.tk/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Piano Tuning Service" group.
To post to this group, send email to piano-tuni...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to piano-tuning-ser...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/piano-tuning-service?hl=en.