Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum HANON exercises is a waste of time...?

I think for the right student, Hanon can be great. I have an adult student who tends to play uneven 16ths or 8ths, and usually pauses at every bar line. She *loves* plying Hanon and it is actually helped her tremendously (with guidance to make sure she's not injuring herself, although she doesn't play them fast). Next I plan to work with her on playing faster while keeping things relaxed.

Hanon is *not* musical, nor was it ever intended to help with musicality. So to say it's unmusical is rather obvious. There are some pianists, however, that doing Hanon exercises without having a clear objective in mind (like helping them with trills by doing the trill exercises) would be pointless and painful. I happen to be one of those people who do not enjoy exercises, but love to make exercises out of the repertoire I'm learning, or at the very least choose an appropriate Hanon exercise to address a particular issue in my rep. But to deny that other pianists may really like it and need it simply because I do not wouldn't be very good pedagogically, IMO.

I don't know if there's a consensus on this, but I can share with you what I have learned.

What do you mean by works for you? When playing something (an exercise) that is supposed to prepare you for something else (a piece of music), I think it's important to ask yourself why? What is the purpose of this particular exercise?

Unfortunately, Mr. Hanon only gives metronome indications and says to repeat the exercises. He doesn't really tell us how to play the exercises, except to lift the fingers high(!). He tells us that they will produce agility, strength(!), independence and evenness.

The mindset from which this point of view stems has largely been replaced over the years, although some still cling doggedly to it, i.e., that it takes physical strength to play the piano. It does not. (A small child can do it.) We gain power not by lifting the fingers away from the hand, which is something they weren't designed to do efficiently, but rather with the discreet participation of the forearm. Hanon's supposition is that by lifting the fingers they will become strong and independent, but we don't train like weight lifters train, by building muscle mass. Rather, we train for refined coordination. The fingers never will be independent of each other, nor need they be; they can, however, be made to sound that way.

In short, "you can play whatever you want, dear," to quote my teacher, but once you know how to play the exercises correctly, i.e., with the participation of the forearm, there is no longer any reason to play them. In fact, there's no point in playing them at all because the technical issues can be addressed in music.

As for the Phd candidate, that routine may serve several purposes: provide a comforting and mindless routine, a delay tactic for avoiding the real work to come or some other obsessive/compulsive purpose. In graduate school I knew a wonderful pianist who drilled scales for hours. Her scales were indeed perfection and she played the 4th Beethoven concerto like an angel. But the same compulsion that drove her to drill those scales, and they were beautiful, drove her into some sort of breakdown and when I last heard she had given up the piano entirely and joined a protective order of some sort. Admittedly, that is an extreme case and this particular pianist was apparently troubled. Playing Hanon won't necessarily cause so severe a reaction and probably won't case any particular harm, unless the idea of lifting fingers is taken to extremes.

What's next from the Hanon Haters, Hanon causes cancer?

No. How about this:

Around 1980 I met a guy in NYC who was passionate about mastering the piano. He spent hours doing exercises. He never learned to read. He seemed like a great guy, but very obsessive.

About two years later he was dead, one of the first casualties of AIDS. Me prediction that the way he was working might lead to his never getting around to playing music turned out to be right.

And the danger of repetitive motion injury is no joke. Neil quite correctly cautioned against following Hanon's advice, to just lift the fingers.

I think Neil is right, and in this instance I think YOU are 100% off track. You are making fun of something very serious, and those of us who have been around long enough to have witnessed the damage caused by practicing the wrong way have every reason in the world to caution over-eager students.

Lighten up, Gary.

Hanon Haters typically condemn the series wholesale, without any regard whatsoever for its merits, and thus mislead people away from something that could be, and sometimes is, helpful. As you said earlier, Hanon is a tool to be used correctly.

That is what I am making fun of...the wholesale condemnation by its detractors. Not the repetitive stress thing.

As for Hanon's lifting fingers up high thing, any teacher worth their salt knows that is discredited and potentially harmful.

And yes, I have seen the damage done by repetitive stress, which is why I repeatedly harp on these forums about the importance of carefully developing good technique with a teacher who is capable of correct instruction. Check my posts for that.

As for your guy in NYC anecdote, and what that has to do with Hanon, or repetitive stress injuries, I don't get it.

LOL

I haven't heard that Hanon causes cancer and I don't hate it, but I have met some very accomplished performing pianists who could no longer play or even hold a coffee cup because of the kind of training advocated by Hanon and his ilk. You aren't being fair in your dismissive reply to my post, the gist of which is that you can play Hanon if you want to but you should ask yourself why.

I am sorry to interrupt, but I think that GaryD was joking. He even himself said:

I don't teach Hanon, I don't like Hanon, and I insist that what Hanon teaches can be accomplished in other ways. That said, other teachers have a different view and use Hanon with success. I'm sure as heck not going to make any judgments based on whether a teacher is a Hanon-fan - or not. And I'm not going to make snap judgments about their qualifications."

and

"There is no consensus. Hanon is a tool. All tools can be used for the wrong job. Any tool may come in handy when no other tool works as well."

No problem with that.

Your highlighting of Neil's words seemed to ridicule what he was saying. Neil, in my opinion, was simply saying what we are saying, in different words.

Rocket, we are not ADDRESSING the teachers who "know their salt". We are addressing those who do NOT "know their salt", and that includes people who are lurking. And yes, some of them are "teachers".

No argument with that point. But we don't get many really knowledgeable people around like Neil, and lots of time the people who do NOT know what they are talking about dominate discussions in this forum. I'm sorry if I seem over serious, and I have never had a quarrel with you - and hope that we are not having one now - but the subject of the ignorant giving advice freely really upsets me. It is one step from dealing with the kind of pathetic teaching that almost all my transfer students receive. And if you think I am exaggerating, then you are one of many who simply can't imagine the extent and dominance of ignorance in this area. I believe Morodiene will back me up here.

1) He was heading for injury. He would have hurt himself had he continued, otherwise healthy, BUT

2) My main point was that there are teachers who stress rote exercises so much that there students do not learn to read.

These points were not aimed at you, Rocket. But I remain deadly serious about the points I am making. How common is wrong physical instruction? Very common.

And are the teachers who have strong reputations - and thus continue to attracts students, some of whom are highly talented - continuing to teach damaging ideas.

Absolutely. Do you disagree with this? <honest question>

Exactly. And regarding this topic, is the people who Hate Hanon who often dominate the talk, and in my opinion many do NOT know what they are talking about.

Which is why I have such a strong reaction to people putting it down. Hanon is a useful tool that when used correctly.

I am an award winning pianist, have taught for decades, (all ages) and have seen great results with Hanon both in my personal playing and with selected certain students. Rachmaninoff used it all the time.



Well, I have taught in Florida for almost 15 years, (not south Florida) and before that in California and New England, and the ignorance you speak of is not specific to Florida. Bad teaching is everywhere.



The blame there is on the bad teachers, not on Hanon.

I completely agree with you, basically. My transfers students are typically so poorly taught that I often contemplate not taking them any more. It is very frustrating.

Thanks, Rocket. No need to answer you point by point. I don't recall ever disagreeing with you on any important point, and I'm not doing so now.

I would make one little comment re Rachmaninov: we could easily assume that his "powers" as a pianist, which were absolutely awesome, came from something like Hanon. This goes back to "Hanon is a tool".

Another pianist who was known for always warming up with Hanon type things, including great emphasis on scales, was Arrau. I don't think there is any point in disputing his success either!

And finally on the subject of Previn: I said that he is not one of the people who stands out as a virtuoso, but that is not because he was lacking anything, and so my thought might be misinterpreted. I think he was just one of those special musicians who shined so much as an interpreter and creative force that it is hard not to focus on that, the whole package. In the video I linked, and I THINK it was in this thread, he started off joking that Peterson could probably do what he could so, with one hand. I find this kind of humility very typical in extraordinay musicians.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I mentioned Rachmaninoff not because Hanon made him what he was. . .not sure about that; Rather that Hanon did not appear to cause him harm.

All the best!

Any system, method, or approach is only as good as the teacher and the student practicing. The success probably goes beyond the method. I think that if something is repetitive, and if the person practicing it is wrongly guided or self-guides, there might be harm because a wrong motion done repeatedly will hurt. At the same time, if a right motion is well-guided, then you have a well-practiced set of right motions that will serve you well.

My only "dog in this fight" is in defense of all the people who are damaged or ruined by poor teaching. The problem with anything repetitive is that NATURE of doing something over and over and over leads to an inevitable conclusion:

BECAUSE of the repetition, wrong practice is deadly. Any kind of repeatedly wrong practice is harmful, so with a wrong general concept applied to all music, something just as deadly happens.

The real issue here is correct teaching, correct guidance.

That said, I suppose the real issue is not really about Hanon but about what happens when it is used wrong. Any teacher can teach the concept of "lift the fingers high" in the wrong way, with deadly results. It is possible that we are making assumptions about what Hanon taught. I think that if Hannon is taught as written but with the technical ideas of Chopin, for a starting point, the result could be 100% positive.

So it ALWAYS ends up about teaching, doesn't it?

I have to say that since moving to S. FL I have seen a lot worse teachers than I have in WI. Perhaps because it's more built-up than WI there's a draw for cheap teachers who don't know what they're doing, I don't know. But I do agree that in the wrong hands, like any tool, it can be dangerous, and in the right hands it can be rewarding.

Join the club!

And I'm not the only teacher getting horrid transfers. Two other teachers in my MTAC branch routinely get bad transfers, especially from two local "music schools." One of these students can't even tell what a quarter note is, and she's been playing for two years.

I've been to recitals at these places. It never ceases to surprise me what horrid playing is produced and accepted as "normal."

Hanon is boring... Yup... And it's a fine tool to build some techniquie on specific issues.

I should be working but this thread caught my interest. Well, I will be busy from tomorrow so, hey, what's 5 min here, right.

I took piano total 13 years off and on. 7 years as a child and 3 + 3 years as an adult. Now I am my 4th straight years with my current teacher (my third). I feel like I made visible (audible) progress in the last couple of years. It's not the pieces I play but more in the tones I produce. Many advices I have received since childhood suddenly makes sense now. strange, isn't it? I used lots of method books and technique books like Hanon, little/big pishuna, czerny, etc over the years. I spend about 10 to 15 min a day in techniques. I don't know what worked. But I had an epiphany when i was doing the latter half of Hanon #49. My teacher had me play it slow at first at 84 to an 8th note at p in both legato and staccato. We then slowly increased the tempo to 112. This practice forces your 1-4. 2-4 & 2-5 fingers to stretch a bit. I was working hard to play it as smoothly as I could & as quietly (p) as I could while making all the notes audible. Playing it that way made me feel really good. I enjoyed the feeling of my finger gently pushing the keys and making fast yet mellow run of sounds. Then I thought, " Ahh, this could be what people call playing into the keys". I immediately tried the technique to the third movement of Pathetique I happened to be playing. It worked. What an incredible difference it made. I was having hard time playing it softly, sweetly, without killing the sound. Especially in my left fingers. It requires sensitive touch I did not have. I don't know if the transformation happened at that moment with Hanon but certainly something clicked with it. Just fyi, I used to be known as a "banger" in my family. Give me a Schubert's waltz - I will Rock you like Japanese rice farmers dancing porka (LOL).

I agree with most of you that Hanon or Pishuna by itself won't do much. But teacher's advice is what makes it worthwhile. i am wondering now that my teacher made me do this particular exercise considering the particular challenge included in the piece I was playing. Timing seems to be too good to be unplanned.

You are right. But just as the success goes beyond the method, so too do the failures. By failures I mean conceptual misunderstandings. Perhaps this is what you mean by practicing "wrongly." But it's more than practicing wrongly. (Please don't think I'm just being argumentative here. I'm genuinely concerned about this issue.)

The concept inherent in exercises in general is that repetition of note patterns will create strong fingers or independent fingers or that these patterns will occur in the same way in music. These ideas date from the 1880's and have their origins in the experience of keyboard players who were steeped in harpsichord techniques. I believe Czerny and Hanon and the others were probably sincere, although I don't completely discount the notion that money was to be made off of the burgeoning piano market. When Hanon, for example, was popular and adopted by so many institutions, Matthay had not yet written about the use of the forearm. Keyboard players thought primarily about lifting fingers, despite Schumann's unfortunate experience. (Google Landowska's photo of her claw-like hands.)

If you discard Hanon's "instructions," as I believe all pianists should, the exercises can be used to show how patterns can be grouped together for technical ease, how to shape. But I learned these techniques in a Mozart sonata (K. 333). If you don't believe in lifting the fingers away from the hand (as he instructs) or training for strength and therefore using repetition for endurance (wrong concepts), then I implore you to ask yourself what specifically you hope to gain by practicing Hanon.

Let me be clear: I don't think the exercises themselves are "dangerous" and carcinogenic (LOL) but the underlying concepts that students take away are not in sync with a system of playing that uses the body efficiently, the way it was designed to be used. Students invariably take away the idea that repetition of patterns is the key to success, when the "working-in" of specific, local and correct physical movements is the key to success. By "local" I mean "what do the finger, hand, arm do in this spot to get easily and efficiently from here to there?" This, of course, requires knowledge of the working mechanism (but one doesn't have to be a doctor). When students focus on the repetition of patterns, the danger that mindless rote will take over is considerable. (Perhaps this too is what you mean by practicing "wrongly.")

It is possible to play the piano with great success using many different points of view, or from no point of view at all. I choose to use a specific physical approach that allows my hands to be used according to their design. The fingers are strong and sound independent if the forearm is allowed to play its part, and there is nothing wrong with the 4th finger, just in case anyone was wondering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw3FstKlse0

Landowska would have been about 75 in this. It is totally unfair and misleading to use a photo to give an idea of how someone played, or how that person used the hands.

I would, instead, consider the longevity of the performer along with the playing. Landowska was a tiny person, and she lived to the age of around 80, I think.

Examining this video, I see unusually curved or "curled" fingers, but I see and hear nothing that tells me that what she did was either unnatural or limiting - for her. You can actually see the involvement of the forearm, and there is a lot to like from what I see. And everything to like, from what I hear!

Now, having said, her use of fingers is almost exactly the opposite of what I teach.

It is interesting to compare her playing late in life to that of Horowitz's.