Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Help on a simple exercise. Can't get it sounding even

What I'm wrestling with is fixing what got built up first time round, and turning things around because I was stopped dead in my tracks for a number of things. It's hard. That's for piano. With the other instrument, I stopped for 10 years, and there was a time that the advice I got on-line which I thought I understood and thought was correct made a mess. You are probably a lot wiser than I was, and we also have a lot better resources on-line than we had a decade ago. People are more careful and savvy than when everything was just coming out of its infancy. If you take everything with a grain of salt and test it all out, you should be fine.

Actually the worst damage comes from poor quality or misguided teaching, because here you tend to trust, and you are locked into whatever routine occurs in those lessons and your assignments. I am gradually revamping my own attitudes.

Why bother paying a teacher when you already (believe you) know how to learn to play?

I have a teacher. I intend to bring this to her. I enjoy playing piano for fun. It's a hobby. I was curious and asked my peers a question.

Sheesh.

I totally understand where you're coming from. Thanks Keystring! I'm looking forward to going over this with my teacher.

Just to clarify, Joe, you are not playing the same thing with your left hand as you are with your right.

With the right hand, which is giving the trouble, you are playing the root "C" with your thumb.

With the left hand, which you say is nice and stable, you are playing the root "C" with your fifth finger (aka "Pinky")

Those are the same notes, but the left hand is playing the mirror image of what you are playing with the right hand. And it most likely will not cause the same response, because it is very different.

To play the same thing with your left hand, you would have to play it exactly the same, i.e. by first playing a note (I suggest a G) with your thumb, then the rest of the C root chord, (E and G), with fingers 3 and 5.

Doing this might help diagnose the problem.

All the best, and I hope you get this sorted out.

I spent some time working on this exercise last night and enjoyed it quite a bit. I flicked through the other exercises and it seems a much better effort over his first book (which I bought ages ago). It would be nice if he uploaded a video or at least an audio of him playing each one through. I thought that seemed like an obvious thing to do but couldn't find it anywhere.

Yea, I really like the exercises in that they are more fully realized examples, rather than just a snippet explaining a concept (like his first book).

I think he'll release some videos once the book is officially published. I think this is just the beta version for people to review and give him comments on. Have you seen his book on cocktail piano? It's a step or two above where I am, I think. It explains the concepts but I probably need more of a progressive guide. Or just more work on the basics.

I appreciate your sharing this resource joename. It looks like an interesting thing to play around with and I would not have found it without your mention.

To put another viewpoint out there, I almost always start new pieces (including etudes) and practice them a week before seeing my teacher. I find some benefit in doing this - I get a sense of where I am having difficulties and can ask questions and/or listen more carefully to gain insight. It gives me an opportunity to try to hear what needs fixing even when I don't know how yet. My teacher encourages this, he feels ultimately you are trying to learn to be your own teacher (though this may be long long way off for me). To be clear, I'm not practicing something repetitively to the point of potential injury, I'm exploring the new pieces and working through them as best I can.

I think you did a great job in noticing what the problem was even if you couldn't fix it, and being able to identify problems is a big step in improvement. Thanks again for sharing.