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Hey James! I was wondering what your opinion on Jankó keyboards. It's like an alternative piano layout. I heard you can download some keycap schematics for a 3d printer and put them on your keyboard.
Charles if you've never heard Honeyhive Galaxy from Mario Galaxy, go listen to it (it's only 2 minutes long). It literally has no business being this good; especially the part around the 1:00 mark
And all I see/hear when I read this, is B & E -(TwoSetViolin) start cringing so hard that you would've thought that were dying from the horrid words! ((Especially because those words came from a ''FRAUDULENT-ELECTRIC-VIOLINIST'', who claims to be the 'WORLDS FASTEST VIOLINIST IN THE WORLD'!...)) Even though he's using an Electric Violin to do this! Which, in the 'Ling Ling Gang', is considered CHEATING BY ALL MEANS NECESSARY!
I remember seeing an interview with Jordan Rudess where he said his teacher pushed his arms back and forth across the keyboard as he did scales, and it actually helped teach him to move his arms and play fluidly. And clearly it worked, because the man is an absolute wizard.
My teacher has me apply different rhythms and articulations to the exercises. Try alternating staccato and legato every measure, and then alternating hand to hand, as well. (Left hand staccato, right hand legato and vice versa) Same thing with dynamics.
6:41 for anyone wondering: these are similar to the hanon exercises, which have been incredibly helpful. it's also incredibly difficult/frustrating, but once you get it, it really helps.
Fun fact: The extensor muscle of your ring finger (the muscle that lifts your finger up before you strike a key) is SHARED with your pinky finger. That's why it's so much harder to raise JUST your ring finger with your palm on a table. Thats why dynamics and timing is generally more difficult with your ring finger than the others.
The ring finger shares tendon with the pinky finger AND the middle finger. That's why you can move your middle finger mor freely than your ring one. Same for the pinky. The index finger has its own tendon, same with the thumb. And there is a connection between the index and the middle fingers' tendons, but it's not as strong as the one between the ring finger and the middle one.
As I started through these, the second one threw me back in jazz ensemble from years ago. The instructor/ bandleader/ conductor wanted us to work on our groove or timing or something so he just passed out a bunch of basic lines copied from different practice books. We went through the page at a moderate speed and would redo it straight, swing, and reverse swing. It kinda locks in the brain and the fingers as far as how movement happens on the instrument.
I was moved to tears as Charles played the Hanon. His fingers danced across the keys, and yet reached deep down into the bowels of the piano and it was raw emotional energy and yet with a heavenly sound like angels singing. Maestro. Merci.
I gotta say, the content you make has really helped me understand this incredible button box I have been casually poking at my whole life. I think about the music I've been listening to in a completely different way now and I've only gotten better at playing since I've found your channel. Thank you and keep up the good work.
Just thought I'd add my 2cents. Years ago (another lifetime), I studies at the RAoM in London. Some of the exercises were insane. I have one: chromatic in third apart for one hand. Then both hands playing thirds but in opposite directions, eventually keeping time to 160bpm. Exercises we had to do were of utmost importance including scales and arpeggios. These were the foundation of muscle memory for different keys. Timing though, don't forget. Thanks you for this upload
There are some great etudes by Czerny, for the 5 notes wich strenghten the individuality with 4-5 the first etude goes 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-4-5-4-3-4-5-4-3-2- etc. These exercises sound and feel so much like the first 6 etudes in the virtuoso book. Hanon is great too still, but the Czerny etudes in my opinion is more "music", not just finger exercises, even though they are just etudes.
I was confused what you meant The Hanon exercises until you flashed the cover. Came back to me like a brain blast! Good memories of spending some time with my old piano instructor working on these! These are great dexterity exercises to do as warm ups and just to focus on the physical and technical skill needed to play!
Yes great exercise another one is I would say you can take this same exercise and put it to the black keys as well the reason I would do this is you realize a lot people don’t teach practicing on the black keys where you hit black keys is different form the white keys also your third finger coming down the scale has to jump, gone up your second finger has to jump. Whole octave scales help teach crossovers and as well good time to also practice slide/grace notes techniques from black to white keys. Working on scale techniques becomes one of the biggest challenges especially when your writing and composing your own music this is where you intervals, melodies and solos all come from getting ideas form other pieces of music is great but you also need to know why they add keys that are not in the scale which comes from understanding natural and harmonic notation or it’s based on theory. One of the greatest advice given was from Allen Toussaint which he said it’s not the notes you play that matter but the notes you don’t play that matter the most. He said just because a piece of music has note doesn’t mean you have to play that note. This is advanced understanding of music theory
This is wonderful. Very thorough and well explained. I hope you can do more of this type of video. My students respond well to video content and I love that they can rewatch a video to check for understanding. Thanks!
I know people who are similar to my experience but haven’t played through Hanon and it is really obvious when it comes to the smoothness of quicker and more complex songs. It’s just really hard to overstate the importance of Hanon exercises
I think five finger exercises are a daily must. For beginners Hanon (selected and in all keys) and some Czerny are great and Schmanns Album for the young and Bach Two and three part inventions are great for every day playing.
This cover of jumper from geometry dash by ace player pretty much taught me how maintain separate rhythms in left hand and right hand, it's a very tricky piece and I doubt the transcription was actually intended to be played, but after a lot cramps and having to hold my left hand down I finally was able to play it properly without wearing myself out and then fluidity
I have a suggestion for a game soundtrack to look at: the Dyson Sphere Program soundtrack. It's amazing, and I think should be interesting to look at. My personal favorite track is Auroral, but every track is amazing, and there's people with every track as their favorite. Anyway, I'll definitely be rewatching this video in a while - I'm planning to get a keyboard set up sometime soonish, once I have a spot to put it, and I'll need to learn how to use it.
Man! Your videos are stellar! Excellent advice for technique. Also, your theory videos are eloquently explained and tremendously useful! Keep em coming!
If you want the Hanon exercises to sound more musical, I would play the same exercises with the right hand playing a third above the left hand. So if the left-hand starts on C, the right hand starts on E
Start slow and make sure that your movements are efficient and without tension. There is a really useful video by Dennis Zhdanov on RU-vid. If you play Hanon fast with tension, you might end up having a very, very short piano playing career.
@garethharrison5797 Agreed! Hanon is treacherous. Great in *small* doses, and can become counterproductive pretty easily. I think the idea is not to have to think about the pattern of notes, but to be freed to concentrate on everything else. My teacher always used it as a warm-up for even scales.
I use a book I had as student-Technical Variants of Hanon-it has rhythmic variations for several of these exercises-which makes for a more interesting exercise for my students.
It's true. Even for the voice -- I used to warm my voice up to Hanon as a kid for fun because I learned it first on the piano. By the time I auditioned for college, I had a huge vocal technical advantage for my age. (From a former opera singer w/ a Bachelor's in Voice Performance)
4:21 I'd like to point out that something else is at play besides the fingers to make this all work seamlessly. The forearm is adjusting ever so slightly to support balance behind each finger, hence the unified rise and fall of the entire, unbroken playing apparatus as he goes up and down the scale. Balance is the key to technical mastery. 🙂
I would find it interesting to see how you analyze and react to beatboxing. Beatboxing has improved so much over the past few years and I think you would find like beatboxers like Den and Stitch who are more musical with their routines.
thank you for these tips, i am currently learning the toccota in d minor my procoviof, im trying to get it up to yuju wang's tempo, hope fully i will be able to finish this before i graduate high school (am a fresh man currently)
There are many objections to Hanon: C major is not so important. Yes you need to be able to go from the 5-finger position to the spreading, stretches (in order of importance) thumb, pinkie, 4th (or ring), then crossover of 4-5, 5-4, 5-3, etc. I was just beginning to systematize when it dawned that JSBach in Notenbuchleins for his children actually had lots of progression: 5 finger theme in the famous G major menuet (which was discovered to be written by another composer! Bach studied all kinds of music and took the best.) But for stretches notably D-major prelude from Well-Tempered 1 was clearly an example of musical-finger-thinking. The problem here is that one piece is not enough. I guess JSB could point to dozens of passages in other books which his sons should practice. They fastly became acknowledged pianists, especially CPE, who nevertheless did seldomly write in JSB style. JSB thought of the preludes as self-contained pieces in spite of prelude meaning "introductory play with the keyboard". I don't know enough of WT1 and 2 it dawns on me now. And I doubt modern kids would love to go that way to learn the stretches. My suggestion is to play 2-3 Hanon variants (Charles say it all: like tongue twisters❤) in C major then STOP and make sure you can play 12345 fingers as if they were the most beautiful melodi ever heard (Bach Menuet G major or your own idea, a rock ballad!?). Then play your OWN variant of a Hanon pattern in G-minor, and make sure it is tonal when it passes from 5th to scale step 6, 7 - use appropriate # and b (accidentals) and skips where necessary. One hand, both hands. Beethoven has lots of finger-exercise material in his sonatas, as does of course any other composer and songwriter. But it may be hidden deep in the structure of the music.
It's a shame I had to stop piano lessons when I moved away to University and couldn't bring the keyboard with me. Had 3 years of training, been 5 years in Uni (hopefully next one will be the last), was halfway through Hanon when I stopped, was just about to start the third part, the repeated notes (was on exercise 42 and I think the third part starts at 44). Can't wait to finish the forsaken degree (ADHD and Uni ain't compatible xD) so I can come back home and practice every evening after work.
Oh, good luck!! If you should get discouraged, pick up one of the current books on neuroplasticity, like Peak (Ericsson), or something by Doidge. The brain is vastly more adaptable and overall remarkable than anyone can imagine.
for the first exercise, we can show turkish march as an example. There is also a part that you play 4 notes together going down one by one. It is kind of hard when you do that in max speed
I do think the Hanon exercises are great. BTW,It's OK to overlap notes with some romantic pieces. But it's true that it requires technical competence and understanding of the piece. There's also a Baroque legato which is somewhere between detached and connected. Hanon exercises can be assigned to address both, along with classical legato.
I had been playing piano for at least 10 years before I was introduced to the Hanon exercises. Another 10 years later I still have never gone through the whole 60.
"technique is one of the more boring things that we have to talk about when we talk about learning the piano" I see what you mean, but! For me what makes this stuff difficult to approach is uncertainty. I don't exactly know which exercises are the ones worth doing and will give the results I want, so this video actually made me really excited to watch through! I know with my own improv, it's physical technique that's really holding me back, and not so much intuition or harmony (at least until technique doesn't feel like it's bottlenecking me anymore) I never exactly had lessons before, and never heard of the hanon exercises so thank you so much for the input and the recommendation!! I really want to try to see if any exercises can be done in the dominant diminished scales, because they have been giving me a lot of trouble and their shapes aren't second nature yet. This is my favorite piano channel on RU-vid, which is difficult to say because there are so many good ones. But I have much appreciation for them all, and for yours! thank you for the video Charles!
Anyone who can play the piano at all, is a beast! Also, while I enjoy these videos, does anyone else agrees with me that it's a shame sideways seemingly has left this joint for good? Answer.
wait charles leclerc does music? I know Lewis Hamilton rapped on a song, Jaime Algesuari does DJing and Jacques Villeneuve had an awful song in the charts…
I remember the one and only thing I learned from taking karate as a kid was that if you learn how to practice a skill incredibly slowly that it actually improved your ability to speed that skill up down the road. We would practice these kicks and break the kick down into like 5 positions over the course of the full movement then hold each position for 30 seconds each. I'm trying to teach myself piano now and don't really know where to start but this video is actually incredibly helpful, thank you.
Hey Charles, I was thinking maybe you (or anyone here) could give me some advice. I already play piano to an intermediate kind of level, and I'm into learning jazz piano and improvisation type of things. I'm not really interested in learning classical pieces. So is it okay to learn jazz and improvisation without learning classical piano first? I'm into learning improvisation to improve my creativity, because I'm an aspiring film composer and I want to add new colors to my music :)
As a film composer you need to have an understanding of four part harmony and counterpoint. Why? Because you will be using orchestration pretty much all the time. Classical music and studying it will really help with all of these things. I am not saying you can't learn harmony and counterpoint from jazz, you certainly can, but as a composer you are working for your client. What if your client came to you and said "I want you to compose a romantic piano piece for this scene, something in the style of Chopin"? Or "I would like a piece that emulates the sound of La Mere" and you have to use reference tracks and scores? As a piano player it is good to be well rounded too.
I’ll have to agree with @@Vasioth here. I’m a jazz pianist and composer, and learning classical/romantic/impressionistic style and harmony have only helped my playing. It helps you understand the movement or certain cliches within the music, and that seeps into your lexicon. Also, the techniques needed to learn some of these pieces are extremely valuable. On the improvisation front, there are a lot of different avenues people take. Jimmy Smith once called up a young organist and told him, “chords my man, it’s all about the chords.” Anyone I’ve told to learn their ii-V-Is has immediately increased their playing and understand of chords 2 fold. Outlining changes 1-3-5-7-(9) in time is a great place to start. What sounds good to you? A question you should ask yourself as you advance. Some musicians don’t even want to know the chords, they play by listening. It takes ALOT of time on the instrument to develop this skill, but the underlying question should always be in your playing. A deeper dive into it, is the theory of is all. There is melodic minor theory, musical modes, quartal movement., triad pairs, extensions, tri-tone substitutions, negative harmony to name a few areas one could study.
Not just faster. You need to have the dexterity and control over your fingers to be able to play slower and softer piece. If your fingers are weak, each note might be either too loud or just doesn't sound at all. Ironically, the way to practice softer and slower piece is to train the dexterity and strength. I learned it the hard way.
I'm mostly self taught and I always neglected these horrible finger exercises and I now regret it very much. I should make a video on it. When I straighten my right hand you can really see how my ring finger doesn't move along properly. It's become like a hammer toe. I can use it but its much less strong and it looks off. I hope I can fix this after nearly 13 years of improper use. I'm also horrible at scales. It's something I still avoid
Your EAR is absolutely AMAZING. Do you have perfect pitch? You knowledge of music theory is also excellent and deep. I also know jazz harmony and I play by ear, but your ear blows mine away. If you don't have perfect pitch could you please tell me how you developed such an amazing ear?
Any beginner lesson that does not include the Black Keys set up the player for a difficult time ahead. Beginner lessons include the sharp and flat. I do not recommend these lessons to anyone looking to looking to create their own original music. You will be locked into a muscle memory system that will not allow you to express yourself fully. You better make sure you know who your teacher is and if you want to play like them. Students that stay with only one teacher, most of the time play exactly like that teacher and nothing else
The way people become good at reading, just read A LOT! It’s organic! If you wanna become a great pianist and have great technique, just transcribe A LOT! Take it to different keys! It’s organic! Babies don’t become good at their mother language thru speaking exercises, dictionaries, and grammar textbooks. They just transcribe and fail until they get fluent. That’s why music is a language.
sure babies don't use exercises and dictionaries, but you might notice that adults who were educated in english and studied the language are usually much more fluent and can articulate their thoughts better than those who haven't. It's not that those who weren't educated in English can't speak well, it's just that learning through education is usually a shortcut to getting better
@@madhavraghu Yes, I agree with your point! But I believe just like spoken language, the meticulous targeted studying of theory should be saved for after you have good ears and have learned to “talk” on your instrument organically and fluently. It’s true good art and artists are supposed to challenge, push, and dare the sensations and thoughts of their audience, and that only comes with pushing the theories, boundaries, and making a constant conscious effort to create something outside of your fluency and organic skills, but at the same time, a much more major part of art is self expression and projection of emotions! If you can’t play your instrument fluently from the heart and are only worried about technique, licks, and the shiny stuff; then that’s not true expressive art. A good example of a very expressive artist who allows the music to organically channel through him, would be non other than Keith Jarrett! Even people like Art Tatum, Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, and etc. would often find themselves in the back seat, while allowing the music to takeover and organically channel through their body and soul! That’s peak artistry! BUT it doesn’t make people who push the theoretical and technical boundaries with meticulous deliberation, such as Chick Corea and Bill Evans any less of an artist. They have a huge role too in pushing the envelope and making the genre move forward!
Finally, no adds! Piece of advice folks, if you have to restart even a single video, enough times for it going deep into the double digits, until they're nowhere. Then just dip heck out there! Right?
Maybe it’s just me, but having the quiet jazz playing in the background intermittently throughout the lesson I think it would be distracting to beginner piano players. Also there seems to be a faint echo of about three seconds. Great channel! Great topics! Keep up the good work!
