DON'T Practice Hanon Piano Exercises: Do This Instead 

But who ever said Hanon and Czerny exercises are meant to be played mindlessly? They are repeating patterns that provide you a structure to your practice if you lack the self discipline. It's not about being able to finish playing the notes, it's about refining your coordination and promoting efficiency. For many people the awkwardness of doing something improperly is not apparent when they only do it once. But the tension adds up through repetition and makes itself noticeable. The problem is the mindless approach to react to this issue by not changing the way you use the body.

Hanon and Czerny are perfect for exactly that. You are not supposed to practice them mindlessly. Focus on keeping good form good posture and increase ur speed and accuracy while remaining good form. It’s like going to the gym. If you form is shit, doesn’t matter how hard u train, it’s gonna hold u back. Never practice mindlessly

I regret to inform you that you threw away the books that are specifically designed for this literal purpose

I use Hanon exercises and I can honestly say they have helped improve my timing and coordination with left and right hands. Especially helping me to strengthen my left hand.

It seems that the problem was "mindless" 🙃

I always feel like I play MUCH better on a given day if I do Hanon for 20 minutes or so before my other playing.

Definitely catchy video. You peaked my interest with the burning Hanon. Yes practicing Hanon or Czerny with tension and in the wrong way will bring more harm than good.

I’ve been practicing Hanon and Czerny for a while now, and it actually helped me sight read, and helped me with strength.

As you said in one of your comments, it does no good to practice anything mindlessly. However, if you practice mindfully, I suggest they offer great benefit.

Czerny and Hanon are wonderful for building technique if played with good physicality. Mindlessly doing anything will hold you back in that thing.

_Mindlesslessly_ watching this video won’t help *either* … *HAHA!* 😂

You are one of those people who can step into a room and light it up with positivity - the world needs more people like you

Hannon has been very beneficial to me😊

Your videos are so helpful and encouraging for me. I’ve been dealing with so much stiffness and pain in my arms unrelated to piano but it makes it harder to play piano. I’m starting to pay closer attention to how my arms feel when I’m playing and make adjustments and be able to enjoy it for longer. Hopefully this will help me preserve the function in my arms for years to come 😊 it’s amazing what a little bit of mindfulness of one’s body will do. I appreciate you dgoingin depth on this topic

Hannon is there to build your strength and dexterity.

I'm now at the second year of the second year my academic course at the conservatory, so I can't teach you anything, but I can tell what I know, what you said is perfectly right but I think you also have to do "Variants, or variations" (I don't know how you call them in English), for each musical phrase. Each school has is way to teach but I can tell you this helped really really a lot both for the studies and for such virtuosistics like Listz, that need a lot of practice. My variants are based on repetions of the phrase with different rythms, for example one note long and the second short, the opposite than one note long, 3 shorts, and the same starting from one of each of the four notes (this obviously for a 4/4). But, like I said, each school has his method

hanon played in every key is a great way to explore hand positions and tension. i find this a weird take (not a bad take as much as poorly worded?) as i found hanon really opened my eyes to so many technical issues because i finally didn’t have to learn so many notes for an exercise, i could just focus on my body. it was great when i was in my teens and i’m considering revisiting them

Sir, regarding your last survey, please make a video on the most efficient practice routine considering 1h day being spent practising, working towards abrsm exams. Is there a place for Hanon, do you plan your sessions a week ahead, how many pieces one can practice in one session, etc.

Thank you for sharing this wonderful lessons with me...

Tu canal me está cambiando la vida! Muchas gracias 💕

Can you make a video focusing on the alignment of the arm and hand in scale playing? Great channel btw only besides the golandsky institute's channel I've seen that focuses on these ideas!

I agree with your take entirely. Posture and hand position is the most important thing, i almost injured my wrist

Isnt that kinda what youre suppoused to do with hanon tho? Yeah, the repeated patterns suck, but youre suppoused to figure out those hand positions with doing it (if that makes sense, idk if i explained that too well)

Anything that is boring will be mindless and anyone who's sat at the piano for any amount of time who's learned it will recognize that its better to learn what you want to learn and structure learning around that or just making learning more engaging will do better. Hanon doesn't sound good, it's not fun, therefore for a lot of people its not effective. It doesn't mean the techniques aren't useful you just don't learn then when you're playing something that sounds and feel like a scale. So it doesn't matter what it is, it's about how much you like it or want to. The less you want to the harder it will be to engage or even care.

You could take a composition, let's say a Mozart Sonata, Chopin Nocturne, whatever you want to play and focus on the technical parts in the piece. So you're practicing the technical part as well as learning a new piece at the same time. Occasionally you could incorporate technical excersises,I would avoid the longer ones since those take too much time to practice and don't offer much compositional and musically speaken.

Mindlessly is correct. I learned many songs in a hurry after having already practiced basic piano for a while it wasn't mindless but I forced myself to practice them over and over even when I'd experience elbow and neck pain. Knowing that slow playing on piano and guitar can at times and most of the time in learning a knew song be more beneficial. As a personal trainer I was very surprised at the end and how great of a tip it is. Its not always about being able to play it but certain details especially for playing pain free. The angle of the wrist but also the angle of the hand and elbow and shoulder people will have different angles sometimes on both on either side depending on which side is tighter. I have big hands as well which is great for stretches some people with smaller hands say they just can't do or is very uncomfortable on guitar and piano, but can be very annoying to play in between black keys. I used to play mostly at the edge I feel much less elbow pain changing the angle of my hand and playing in between black keys and feeling the angle of my hand that allows me to fit in there and not irritate my body. Playing at edges can be fine as I did a lot but it's important to note the angles and muscles of the body as a part of playing aside from the soreness you might feel from playing and take not of the soreness you feel and make it symmetrical and see how you can use the soreness to notice what's more comfortable for you muscles and joints when playing. And mindlessly doing anything is almost always not as good as having a plan. But action can be better than overthinking if you are the type to over plan. It's a balance and having purpose to help others is the only way to realize the best way but the road is full of potholes and overthinking but again action without plan isn't always good as well and often motivated by negative interest. Anyways the end may go overs people head or sound cooky or not likely very understandable. Regardless also if you play guitar wrist angles as well. You may be able to play it and play it fast but is your wrist angle causing irritation to your body. You may want to slow it down and adjust it slightly likely to more external rotation.

I loved Hanon, it wasn’t mindless, it helped develop finger strength and was more motivational than simply study pieces. I actually wanted to keep at piano because it just sounded good when you practiced it right. I need to see your credentials buddy!

So... Just do hanon being mindfull will do the job even faster, right?

Try telling this to my teacher

I ruined my playing by working at a hard job where I had to pick up tons of weight all day. I changed jobs a while back, and now that the feeling is returning to my hands, I've been using Hanon to have something super simple while focusing on tension.

Czerny is great, its not just etudes, theres a lot of nice sounding pieces which are nice

I learned a very long time ago that technique is not universal - our bodies are all a little different and we have to discover what works best for us. Great advice!

And what is preventing ypu from doing that with Hannon and Czerny?

In addtion Czerny and hanon can deaden your ear to phrasing.

Use the knuckle weight to play the note

The best way to master the techniques you mention in this video is by using exercises such as Hanon as they have been designed with the same goal to teach proper technique and relaxed playing free of tension, when you were practising Hanon you probably weren’t relaxed and was just banging it out which is why you developed bad technique. I know for sure that Hanon helped a lot with my technique, same goes for my dad and thousands of other pianists around the world.

Yes practice that how you explained, but… I need piece to practice that on. What pieces should I play?

you should try 51 exercises of Brahms 🥴 after those you can play anything lol

Hello, where did you get the graphics of the 2 hands (one with an "x" for breaking the alignment? I'd love to have it for my students. Thanks!

Hmmm, I’m practicing Hanon right now. I actually like it. It forces me to read and interpret as my teacher is not the type who delivers me all the answers on a silver platter.

Correct!

Yes, personally, I do not practice Hanon or Czerny. However, what many technical specialists don't really like to acknowledge is that learning good technique through repertoire is quite tough for children. It's asking a lot for a kid who's still building security with notation to also incorporate circular and rotary arm movements directly into new pieces. But if you use Hanon #1 to teach circular arm motions, and then transpose it to teach in/out adjustments for short fingers on black keys, it becomes far easier for the student to apply to their repertoire. Scales and arpeggios just don't teach the gesture in the same way.

So I dont know how to mindless know where to go next as I do with typing on an actual keyboard, does anyone have any techniques for that?

Do you have a video about problems with little fingers / pinky fingers and irritation of them (tendinitis) - and how to remedy it and at best avoid it? Or are you going to make a video about that problem which I think many suffer from.

You not serious........ Hannon is very good stop trolling ....

Can you make a video or video series on Godowsky’s ideas about using weight instead of muscle effort (or something similar)? It’s just a topic of interest that I would very much like to research.

For me, I’m already advanced enough to ignore any exercises below 50 with some exceptions. I literally started doing a few two days ago and there is a MASSIVE difference. It literally managed to make the last push I needed to learn the Revolutionary etude well.

I first started learning to play organ & piano when I was small... and have recently returned to lessons after an almost 50 year break. Whether I spoke with teachers on-line or locally, whether they were young or old... I was disappointed to find they mostly seem to approach the task of helping their students to 'play an instrument' in much the same way as I experienced all those decades ago. I had to make some serious effort to find any teachers who were knowledgeable about brain neuroscience, body mechanics and otherwise have 'contemporary knowledge' about what helps people learn most effectively. People like Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who wrote about ‘flow’) and K. Anders Ericsson (who wrote about 'deliberate practice' techniques), amongst others, are mostly unknown to many of the teachers I spoke to. It seems unfortunate that many teachers appear to be more interested in teaching their students what they know instead of helping them discover what goals they want to achieve in learning to play an instrument... and to help them develop an approach to learning what they need to know to achieve those goals in the best way for them.

And to test it, hanon is good it's your problem, not honon

How do I get the hanon piano exercises please

Pischna and Dohnanyi!

so repeat the exercises mindly?

Is Hanon really bad？my piano teacher told me to master hanon and other techniques before getting into other stuff

Very interesting, thanks!

I'm 6'3 and its hard to find a good comfortable position with some songs

I don't like the sensationalist anti Hanon/Czerny statements, but yes they've been over applied at times. Regarding posture, there are correlations with all instruments. If something makes you stiff or hurts, you should ask yourself why, and then you should look for an adjustment that makes it better, even if it does not suit the prevailing methodology. How to hold a trumpet needs a bit more creativity sometimes. A slight tilt takes some of the strain off my left wrist, but that might not suit everyone. Sometimes I have to use two or thee different grips to get through a long gig without much RSI. PS I play a few Hanon exercises every few days. They keep my little fingers strong and help with general finger coordination.

Discover using your "mind" first!!

Yeah it depends on your approach. There’s nothing wrong with Hanon and Czerny exercises except that overly doing them with wrong technique can hurt you in the long run but they by no means hinder or make you worse off before you started them. For musicality just don’t practice them because they aren’t really musical exercises to begin with. They will help with finger strength provided you start with good technique to begin with though. That’s the key. Anything mindlessly done won’t provide results or bring you to your full potential too so a bit of a misleading video on the subject of that.

Going through all C's vids again. The issue here seems to focus on the descriptor "mindless." Of course, we shouldn't repeat anything mindlessly. The question is "mindful" applied to the same context. A matter of personal preference about how to use one's time to best advantage in practice regimens; why am I doing what I'm doing?; because, hopefully no one prepares, unlike Chopin, Liszt perhaps Bartok and other's "Etudes," Hanon, Czerny and all for public recital or at Smokey Joe's Bar on Jazz Nite. I choose to spend more time on the music itself, using scale and arpeggio work as warmup and generic musical elements I will see in every bar of music, various keys....Maybe I just get bored easier than most, and seek musical expression by rendering a piece according my own vision, while honoring the composer's intentions. Finger (all) technique is only important as it relates to eliminating challenging impediments to self expression, not an end in itself. It's about the music, not the show off perfection of technique, who would even know what that meant unless your referencing Martha Argerich, clearly a case where technique gets her to optimum expressive possibilities. I do enjoy the way C parodies mindless mode and bad posture as what to avoid. It makes it fun. I don't lack self discipline; I practice as carefully and as focused as I can for 3-5 hours/day, planning what I want to cover and what progress would look like on each session. C is a little unkind here to the Hanon loyalty crowd, but I mostly agree with him, in principle. I make every session fun for myself, not hard, and that seems to work for my personality; progress is rapid without the exercise guys.

Alexander technique condensed version

Perhaps we should practice Sorabji’s etudes instead. Haha.

That doesn’t help at all

So did I

It’s good to learn a bit of Hannon (haven’t tried czerny) at some point at least, since it’ll seriously benefit your freedom in moving through all different scales, plus it genuinely does do something for you, if you aren’t mindless but try play the exercises with pure evenness. But Hannon id a bit overrated. I think students sort of misunderstand how Hannon is to be played how much. Thanks for sharing this useful info. Just figured I’d clarify a little bit of stuff from my experience (which is humbly less than yours)

Do these biomechamical studies ON TOP of excersises like the hanon books. It's a popular method/exercise book because it works!! If the book is doing bad for you, you are surely using it wrong. This guy should've explained this in the short.

learned this from Abby Whiteside....Thanks

even practice chopin etudes mindlessly will bring no benefit

Bruh your right

Pretend like you're playing for an audience. Surprise them. You will surprise yourself.

I think that the hours and hours of practice is the problem. When i go to the gym and train for an hour. The next day I’m not as flexible. Same with piano. Rests are so important aswel.

Underscore "mindlessly" - that's not how to practice Hanon and Czerny. Both are very good in developing technique but you need to use them intelligently and musically. By the way, this holds true for everything in piano practice like scales, chords, arpeggios, etc.

So what I’m hearing is if I want to learn proper technique just learn it?!??🎉

"The Visible and Invisible in Pianoforte Technique" by Tobias Matthay is an excellent read for studying the mechanics of touch and relaxation when applied to the piano. Fortunately, one of my teachers studied with a student of his and helped elaborate on a few things but it was a milestone in developing my abilities at the instrument nonetheless. There's also the methods of Dorothy Taubmann.

His face 😂

Chopin taught on this extensively

Here's some strange news about Hannon's canonical opus: Andre Hamelin is now performing it in it's entirety in the concert hall as though it was an actual piece. What a time to be alive. . .

What does Hanon get wrong?

Let me guess, you have an online course for sale that we need to buy instead 😂

Don’t forget about throwing out scales and arpeggios…

“Don’t do Hanon, give me money instead.” Uh huh…

Disagree. Many years ago I had a teacher (a student of Hoffman) who taught me how to use Hanon to improve my technique. and it worked.

Agree.. biomechanics is more important imho

Hannon certainly did not help me learn Chopin's first etude

l play hanon

and this is just your opinion 🤷‍♂️. i’ve been playing hanon exercises for about a year now and there is a huge difference with how i’ve played then compared to now. maybe hanon isn’t for you, but don’t say that’s it’s useless.

That was a really vague way of telling us that you SHOULD practice Hanon and Czerny. Also isn't it pronounced "zer-knee" (Czerny)?

It's different for everyone...the piano is not an exact science...neither is life...

Well yes and no. The technique of czerny should be limited to a few select ones not the whole book same with Hannon. I like the school of velocity the first few and like two later exercises and only the back end of the hannon. The technique enables you to have control and finger technique which is the foundation for other techniques like arm and wrist and thrown finger etc. But in pieces you don’t use exclusively finger as that would die off pretty fast it’s hard to maintain up, usually you break it up with mixing in other techniques and while the taubman methods has some little good tips the entire thing is not very good. This natural playing goes against the composers writing often and causes all sorts of compromises and conflict with the pieces. Each hand movement piano touch technique has its own application under certain conditions because each has a different sound, the circular technique creates stronger notes towards the inner fingers and lighter ones outwards and hav timing implications depending which direction you rotate, the finger technique is for articulate clear crystal passages, the arm technique is for strong chordal or broken arpeggios sections found often in classical period works. And thrown finger often is used for detached playing for certain articulations in Mozart and such. So they shouldn’t be done randomly but according to what the music calls for it’s rare that a piece has strictly finger technique, like the b minor Liszt sonata middle pages that are pure finger technique

You didn’t really explain how hanon is harmful

Dude. I really think you are off your rocker. Hanon excercises under supervison of a music teacher ALONG with music theory, and performances are essential to becomeing a well rounded pisno player. If you dont believe me, Look at all of Muzio Clementi’s sonatinas. That is basically the same Hanon techniques are the same as Clemeni: arpeggios, legatos, scales, and Alberti Bass pattens. I get it thst Hanon excecises are insane. Some dont make sense. Clementi was NOT a composer. He built pianos and he needed to test the range, tone, and pitch of his finished product. What better to use Sonatinas, which are very similar to Hanon excercises , to test how good he built pianos. But if Clementi along with Mozart played together in their era of classical and both complemented each other on their own techniques, then Hanon knew his $h!t for the rest of the ages to learn [piano].

By disregarding Czerny or Hanon, is completely irrelevant.

One more thing " Roll your butt on the Bench（ITS not a chair）"secret" as told by Liberace's friend and puiple in February 2023... YEAH

0:15 is that Moszkowski's etude in F major ending? Hehe

No no no. Hanon is to learn what you said. You just didn’t listen your teacher

Bruh. This is obvious. Hanon book is most efficient when you play using the correct technique to avoid later hand cramps and bad technique habits down the road.

Chopin enters chat

Hey, hey, buddy. Try this, okay? Practice Hanon and Czerny... but... But! Not mindless. Bet ya didn't think of that one, huh?

yeah ok but czerny 299 does exactly that tho soooooo

Just play and play what you like u til you can’t play no more. What’s the point in playing if you not enjoying it. And in a show setting who the hell is using perfect posture. You’re too busy feeling the vibe. At least in the music I play.

Well, i blame your teacher. A good teacher would teach you how to actually learn Hanon correctly.