Hanon piano exercises

Holding back some notes is not only good for your hands but also for the sound of the piano, which immediately starts to sound more orchestral as we add a few extra voices.

But if you want to play the exercise at the fastest possible tempo, you should not hold back extra notes.

While playing the piano, I make subtle movements with my wrist They kind of draw geometric shapes similar eyes 

But let's go over everything in order

I’ll now detail all the secret movements of my hands while playing the piano. Since they are the secret to a pianist's good technique.

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Consider holding the bass and the top note, as this is the most productive method for your technique.

Having mastered this method you will easily be able to play without holding notes. 

Now we’ll look at all the movements of the pianist's hands as if under a microscope using the method of stopping at the first sixteenth notes.

Note that I didn't just press the first note, but made an additional swing stroke movement that connects me very well to the piano keyboard.

This is one of the main movements while playing the piano. 

In the same way, we always take our hands off the piano whether it is any pause or moving our hands to another position on the piano keyboard.

Note that you should do this movement not for beauty but by feeling the weight of your arms pass over the bottom of the key.

Also note that I do a swing stroke at the exact moment I hear the second wave of sound. Like a good surfer I kind of catch the wave of sound with this movement.

While performing all these movements, it is very important to make sure that the arms have time to relax at all times.

The swing stroke is the beginning of the micro swing I do before the second sixteenth.  The hand feels like it's taking a small breath at this point.

Then I'm not afraid to emphasize the second sixteenth a little bit. The motif always begins with the second musical duration.

We’ll discuss this in detail in the next exercise.

I'd say I try to play actively all sixteenths after the first. But special attention should be paid to the fourth sixteenth and as I said not to be afraid to emphasize the second one a little bit

At the same time we must try never to be late for the strong beat, that is, the first sixteenth, and, now I am going to surprise you, not to accentuate it! I have the fourth one more active than the first one right now.

We should always focus more on the weak beats.

And I'm not talking about jazz, I'm talking about classical music.

Strong beats are in any case strong metrically. And we don't have to specifically emphasize them physically.

There are exceptions, of course. I’ll list them in a separate lesson. But often we should play the strong beats quieter. Then the performance will be musical and refined.

In this case, when we hold the strong beats and create additional voices on the first sixteenths and play them longer we can emphasize the strong beats a bit. 

But when we play without those extra voices we won't be highlighting the strong beats at all.

Volodymyr Slakva, online piano teacher
You can also reach me on WhatsApp
Phone number: (+46) 0737820497
Email: slakva1983@gmail.com

 

 

 

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