Hey, I was wondering what you guys think about this. I've been improvising atonal inventions and was wondering if I could use this as an exercise to help solidify my technique. I've been trying to go through as many patterns as possible on the keys usually with awkward fingerings but I don't know if it's doing me much good. But from a technical standpoint, I don't see much of a difference between a two-part atonal invention like this and a Bach invention.

I'm trying to see if there's any way I can isolate finger technique and improvise exercises. I have studied all the major and minor scales and arpeggios, so that has given me substantial technique, but that obviously isn't enough for a professional technique, which is my goal. My hands still aren't flexible enough to play more advanced repertoire.

Any constructive comments?

Anything can be helpful, but if you are using a lot of awkward fingerings, then that probably will not help your technique, and indicates a lack therein. Go back to some Bach and you will start to develop an instinct for good fingering. If you wrote out some of your improvisations, you might be able to find better fingerings than just what you can manage to do in the moment.
Practicing improvisation is one thing, and what you are doing is probably really beneficial in that regard.
If you wanted to isolate practicing technique, you might be better served by working out a good fingering for some of the improvised passages you come up with.

I would like to hear some of it too.

I meant awkward fingerings more in the vein of using weaker fingers to do more complex technical feats. The awkwardness is fully conscious as I usually know how to finger a particular passage quite naturally.

I may post a recording.

Would it not be a more efficient way of strengthening weaker fingers by using proven exercises already written for that purpose? Those by Dohnanyi, for example, are very brief, technically challenging, and do the job very efficiently.

Regards,

Why re-invent the wheel? Get a copy of Rafael Joseffy's "School of Advanced Piano Playing (Exercises).

I too want to hear the Atonal inventions. Why don't you focus on your composing and your tehnique at different times. Your music sounds interesting.

I would encourage you to think of tehnique more in the realm of tone production, rather than fingering and drills. Fingering and strength are the means to tone production.

I like Czerny op 821 8 measure excercises.

And remember, I said 8 measure excercises, so don't start flaming me, all you hanon haters.

To me it seems like a fundamental contradiction to attempt to improvise a technical exercise. Improvisation is entirely different from technical development - arguable completely opposite. Technical exercises, by their nature, require repetition of a pre-set fingering pattern - starting slowly, then increasing tempo as the pattern is learned and maintaining sound quality. The keys to success are repetition and discipline. Improvisation, by its very nature, is anything but repetitive.