Comments on: Piano Drill Books

Question: Piano Drill Books

Ogre Lawless — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:21:51 -0800

Piano Drill Books. Not very sexy, though always a highly practical tool for learning an instrument. This time its piano -- what do you have laying around? (similar: here, here, here)

Previous queries along this vein were related but generally of "I wish to pretend I can play a major instrument quickly". Well into faking it now, I want to get some plain old drill books to bulk out what my hands actually know.

In summation of the other threads, the books pointed to there were: Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book, Fake Books (but who needs that when you can read tab-format which is f-r-e-e on the Internet these days?) , and Play Piano In A Flash.

Thanks for your help. Gramma's piano thanks you also.

By: alex3005

alex3005 — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:45:34 -0800

Czerny's technique book is classic and good

By: caddis

caddis — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:58:07 -0800

Hanon

By: alex3005

alex3005 — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 23:58:54 -0800

what I was referring to is also offered online for free

By: stray

stray — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:06:44 -0800

The Celebration Series from Fredrick Harris is what the Royal Conservatory of Music uses, and is what I grew up with.

By: gyc

gyc — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:50:21 -0800

Dohnanyi: Essential Finger Exercises

By: Jongo

Jongo — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 02:49:26 -0800

Geoffrey Tankard's Pianoforte Technique on an Hour a Day is indispensible for building technique. It's a compendium of great technical exercises culled from the past few centuries. They're also designed to help you learn a little bit of harmony on the side.

By: ruelle

ruelle — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 04:13:04 -0800

Burgmuller: "25 easy and progressive pieces" opus 100

By: paperpete

paperpete — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 04:33:37 -0800

The Hanon, Czerny and Burgmuller books are excellent. I've also found the repetitious (and easy) preparatory exercises for piano by Aloys Schmitt invaluable - you can speed them up and climb up and down the entire keyboard and cause yourself pain, should you wish, but played at a walking pace they will build lots of strength very quickly.

And once you're past the drill stages and tackling repertoire, Bach's 2- and 3-part Inventions, each taken slowly until you're technically perfect, will ensure you have a basic technique which anyone would envy!

By: mothershock

mothershock — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 07:05:04 -0800

Josef Pischna: Technical Studies (60 Progressive Exercises) -- my teacher at the Boston Conservatory had all her students do the Pischna drills for technique work.