Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical Join the JOI jazz joint !

Hey 10,

It's a good thread. Thanks to Cus for starting it.
I'm very busy. Too many tunes to learn ...

Jazz is baaaaad for that.

Hi everyone
I just did the math. Correct me if I am wrong but this thread has been going for 14 months.
The average no. of reads is therefore 255 per day.
This is hot.

Thanks to Dave for his awesome methodology, to Knotty for his detailed and clear guidance, and to Ten for being such a motivated student.

Custard gets an gold star for doing extra maths.

I did some recordings today. I still don't feel like I have a real handle on lesson 12, so I'll give them a few days before moving on. But for what they're worth:

http://www.box.net/shared/zuq4pyh5v7fxj699q8oc
http://www.box.net/shared/sxs9qjldgmrpb7t7yaky

I also worked a little on sleepy leaves. I'm especially glad that I can play this from LH chords, not notes. It seems to come quite automatically, probably more from memory than from actually knowing the chords.

http://www.box.net/shared/xgxe94i05xll6rvjnk5j

I was just thinking the other day, how strong my fingers feel while playing, and I do put this down to the jazz hanons. The difference I notice is not so much in how I sound, but how I feel when I play. As I wrote in the thread started about technique, it's a physical pleasure now to play. I don't remember having that before from piano.

I know this is off-topic, but I need to play So what at this guitar party (aka recital) organised by my teacher on Wednesday evening. I am so looking forward to this being over. I could easily live without listening to Miles Davis ever again.

How's everyone? Knotty, you learning tunes? Custard, how's C min? Not two flat I hope.

Hi 10
Great postings. All very enjoyable.
You can move onto Lesson 13 which I did not find easy.
That was great that you played your composition so well. It would sound even more cool with a rhythm section IMO. But time to move on to Lesson 3 composition which again I did not find easy.
You're racing through the lessons. Awesome work.

The only modal Miles Davis song I know is All Blues because Knotty played it. I really like it.
And I love Miles Davis tonal improvs. I listen to them as he is often a soloist in the Bird tunes which I'm singing.

All the best at the guitar party.

10,

Lesson 12 sounded really good. Especially the blues.
Sleepy leaves sounded really good also now that you can play it well.

How are you doing on the Hanons? What lessons are you on, what speed etc ?

You will change your opinion on Miles, it's just a matter of time. He has some of the best music ever recorded.

hehe, Scottish humour at its best ! I do like the sound of the C harm min scale.

I had very good intentions at the start of the week. I was going to compose over Lesson 7 Topsy in C min.

But regretfully I've not actually done any improv the last few days as I've had to arrange an unexpected overseas trip.
When I get back in a few weeks time, I'm going to get my piano tuned. I'm looking forward to starting Lesson 29 tunes. Still on Lesson 20 Hanons.

Thanks guys! I had a real sense of pride doing sleepy leaves. I did sound an awful lot better once I played it decently.

If lesson 13 is also difficult, then I will spend more time here with 12. I have so many things I need to be doing, including guitar, and some classical piano, and really want to pay some attention to the Ligon book too.

My plan is to do a composition every fortnight.

I'm really working on keeping an open mind with Miles Davis.

Hanons - at lesson 12, yesterday I did up to 160 HT and 184 RH only. I think it was lesson 12, I had really struggled to keep hands together, and was tempted to drop the left. My hands were doing this strange symmetry thing around fingers 3 and 4 and getting confused. I'm glad I stuck at it, and now I'm back to normal (normal means there's 10-20 bpm difference between top speed HT and RH). I does just feel so good when I do it!

Apologies Ten for misleading you about Lesson 13. I just looked back at my stuff and in fact I was away for 3 weeks last year. In fact Lesson 13 was NOT difficult. You should be able to kinda race through it.

As a matter of interest, why do you love doing Hanons with both hands ? In the skype masterclass, we were told that the point of the Hanons is to do the RH at massive speed.

okey doke.



For 10 minutes every day I sit and exercise my right hand. In that time, what am I to do with my left? Sit and pick my nose? Just feels like a waste of time for it not to play.

or you could do 2(LH) against 3(RH) and make it a REAL challenge

mmmm. How do you mean? This would need to be straight, otherwise it's just a question of missing out a note in the LH.

How about 3 in LH against 2 in RH? (only kidding)

Yeah, I see what you mean. with the triplets, that would be really wild.
Well, you could set your met on 180 for the RH and a second met on 120 for the LH.

Yes, I'm only kidding, too! That's gotta be wild.

Lesson 12 for RH and lesson 2 for LH? Db in RH against C in LH?

Now we're getting silly.

A shade more seriously, I realise how much these hanons are responsible for drilling the major scales into my fingers. Majors, but not minors. That leaves me with the slightly unsettled feeling that the minor scales will never be as secure. I suppose I could just compensate by playing a few scales. Anyone done these hanons in minor?

This is a tradeoff I have been struggling with, too. For a long time, I have wanted to improve my left hand technique, but I was not sure how to begin. After I had worked through the Hanons in JOI Book 1, I was so impressed with the results that I concluded this might help my LH too, so I stopped and started all over again using both hands. The downside of course is that RH is now playing much slower.

What I like about the JOI Hanons is that they seem to train your fingers to think freely and be more open to new ideas; my thumb no longer has a big hangup about playing black notes, it feels free to go and hit whatever note is crying out to be played, and give it a good whack. Also, they are more like jazz phrases, with triplets and sixteenths thrown in, than the original Hanons. I suppose they drill in the modes of the major scale, too, or at least the bottom five notes. Personally I feel that I have beat that dead horse quite a bit already; still, some refreshing can't hurt.

Ed

beautiful, that's just what they were for. Can try LH alone to maximize LH chops, optional..

Dave Frank

Hi Ed!



Ditto



Again, ditto. I can whack with anything, even finger 4.



They do.

(This feels like a pretty pointless post. But I do so agree.)

Ditto with all the benefits above.

Yet other benefits I've found with Dave's Hanons:

1. Confidence to shift the whole hand when playing tunes. No more of the thumb under. This is liberating.

2. Even without practising the LH, my LH is significantly faster than before I started JOI. This is because the 2nd half of the Hanon is a mirror image which subconsciously trains the brain.

Really? I do a lot of thumb under. If I can't, I can't, and I do some lateral movement now - that wasn't previously in my vocab. But thumb under is still smoother.