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Can Anyone Please tell me from which Czerny exercise should I start... I'm a Self-Learner.. but very confused.. about Exercise... as i couldn't afford A professional teacher... Basically I'm learning(self) piano From last year.. But still Confused...About My level....I was preparing For Grade3 Trinity College LONDON..BUT PASSING INITIAL GRADE IS MANDATORY,, so I've changed My grade,, I can Play titanic with broken Chord Pattern, intro Of River flows In you... And Other Indians songs As well... but i can't play Long arpeggio with melody... can Anyone please help Me To clear My Doubts nd acquiring Piano techniques? How exercises can give benefits with pieces?

Without a teacher your second best is a good method book. Otherwise, you're just learning random stuff instead of following a progressive plan.

Can U suggest some books... BTW m following Alfred Adult all in one course Vol 1... But I think This book is mainly for sight reading purpose

Welcome to the forum,



there is no general agreement that exercises such as Czerny or Hanon are beneficial. My own personal experience was these types of exercises didn't do much to improve my playing. But you should experiment with anything and everything, however keep your expectations low as there are no guarantees.

If you are planning to take exams then you will no doubt be undertaking scales and arpeggios. These alone will be enough for you to notice an improvement in your general technique but don't expect it to transfer to your pieces as some sort of miracle cure.

The method books that are most often recommended here are Alfred and Faber but I don't know enough about method books to recommend any. As for short etudes I would say that Burgmüller op. 100 is more interesting than Czerny.

But Could you tell me from which exercise should I start from for finger strength, dexterity. And Arpeggio...

The easiest Czerny etudes are the 100 found in Opus 599.

Here's a link to the score.

http://imslp.nl/imglnks/usimg/9/95/..._Lehrmeister_Op_599_Peters_7901_scan.pdf

I'd be cautious about doing exams without a teacher. You need to know the curriculum and the requirements, i.e. what will pass and what will fail, as well as know when you're ready.

If you consider Alfred's as sight-reading material then it's not worth your while and Alfred's isn't geared towards classical repertoire anyway so it wouldn't help you much with preparation for Trinity.

If you're self teaching I would stick with repertoire. Exercises aren't for building technique as much as for fixing problem areas. If you don't know what your problem areas are, and you won't if you're self teaching, you won't know a) what areas to fix, b) what exercises will fix them and c) how to use the exercises to fix them. If you did know you wouldn't have had the problem areas in the first place.

Here's an analogy, just in case you can draw. You can teach yourself to draw using a live nude model - though a teacher helps - but you can't learn to draw using geometric shapes or photographs. You can use photos and geometric shapes to improve aspects of your drawing technique once that technique has been acquired. In the same way, you can acquire technique through repertoire and improve it through exercises but you can't acquire technique using exercises.

Does that make sense?

You say you were working towards Trinity Grade 3. Have you always taught yourself or have you had instruction up to Grade 2 level? Why did you take up piano? You've been playing since last year but you're still confused about your "level". Are you playing to reach a particular level or are you playing to enjoy the instrument and making music? Is it a test of what you can do or is it therapy from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?

One of the reasons for practising scales and arpeggios is that classical music is full of them. Really. So do you want to play the scales and arpeggios that the music is full of or do you want to play the music that's full of scales and arpeggios?

If you want to play the piano, play the piano - and who takes up piano in order to practise exercises? It would be like living in order to do squats and chin-ups. If you find you have a talent for it after a few years then investigate putting that talent to the test and get a teacher for exam coaching. If you just enjoy making music then just enjoy making music.

You don't need a licence to play piano, you don't have to pass a test.

Excellent point !!

Isn't this Czerny (op. 599) the one that sounds good? I haven't done this, but some of these exercise books can be good to practice sight-reading.

The most well-known opus is probably Opus 299. The etudes in Opus 599 tend to be easier and shorter than those in Opus 299. ALL of these works are excellent for sight reading.

Don't just believe when people tell you that Czerny is useless. Some people never crossed the bridge because they fear the long walk, so they burn it so that others cannot benefit from it.

In eastern Europe, Russia, China, and Japan, Czerny has been proven useful. Czerny and Hanon require patience, endurance, and self discipline. These etudes use all different muscles of the hands. Czerny is not popular in the US because teachers will lose business because of the soft life.

Czerny was the teacher of Franz Liszt, who honored him. Are the people who discourage you from benefiting from Czerny's teaching greater than Liszt?

Many say it's mindless, but if you can reach the level of playing it mindlessly, then you have reached your goal. By the time it becomes mindless, that's the time you can do parts of most difficult music in your sleep.

Many great musicians outside the US have Czerny as part of their education. The key word here is "PART"---not all. You must learn all you can, and do not listen to the devils.

Amen to that!

And after I've finished 599, I'll enter the toddler stage of piano playing.

Threads become confusing because we talk of many different things. Thank you for the answers. I am going to summarize what I have understood, and correct me when I am wrong because I'll be talking of things I haven't even tested myself!

Czerny exercises are not that good to use for simple repetition, but they are very good as material study, treating it as if it were a method book or simple repertoire to practice sight reading. It sounds better than many method books! (this is my personal opinion).

The easiest: Czerny op. 599

Another that sounds good: Czerny op 139 (100 progressive studies)

The most famous: Czerny Opus 299 (The School of Velocity; 40 Studies for piano). This one doesn't sound as good to me. Maybe I'd like it if slower?



If you want to learn Scales, go to YouTube and enter something like C SCALE PIANO TUTORIAL, and so on with other scales. I did this with a video in Spanish so I don't know the one I'm pasting. An example of a video here


And the same with Arpeggios. An example of a video entering C ARPEGGIO PIANO TUTORIAL here

I happen to know another book of exercises, which starts even easier, and with little scales. But you won't really learn how to play scales with it without a teacher. It just comes with the symbols for a 5 finger scale and tells you to do it in all the other keys. It is good in the sense that can be used by a complete beginner, for simple practice or sight reading. This book is Schmitt Op. 16.

Two videos as examples. The first one with one of the first pieces, and the second to have an idea what it is intended for:

Video 1 - Schmitt

Video 2 - Schmitt

Since I'm the one who suggested avoiding exercises and focus on repertoire I suspect that I'm the devil you're decrying.

The OP is self-teaching and can't afford a teacher. He is not intent on Juilliard anytime soon.

Czerny and Hanon are flawed in their very premise - that we play with our fingers or that we need to strengthen them or that we need to equalise them. There is a use for these exercises if you have the concert platform as a target but not if your goals are more modest and your budget tighter.

What Czerny left us is exercises - the what - but he didn't leave us the real clue - the how. Exercises are useless without the how. It's like a non-thinking machine telling us we'll get better with practise, practise, practise. What a load of boloney. It's deliberate practise we need. We need a target and a method of achieving it. Without these we are likely to fire wide of the mark.

Our first goal is the music. Bach and Mozart give us music. Czerny exercises do not. They are a means to an end and little more. There are better and more economical ways of getting there.

Dismissing finger exercise for a budding pianist is not dismissing finger exercises - it's dismissing them for a budding pianist. Piano playing is not finger exercise.

If you want to tell someone you love them no-one's interested in how well the words are formed. The message is the key. If you want to read the news on national TV as a career then some diction might be in order.

A few Czerny exercises are "musical enough" that they are actually fun to play.

Absolutely, Carey, and they also make excellent sight-reading fodder when you have the technique to play them without having to spend much time on them but if you're going to spend time acquiring that technique by a lot of rigorous practise over days and weeks then I think it makes more sense to struggle with Bach or Mozart than with Czerny.

If you don't know the material beforehand it's difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff but if you go to Bach or Mozart you've automatically reduced the chaff if not removed it altogether.

It's not like the student is being directed by a teacher to the exercises that are targeting the student's weaknesses. Most teachers will know 599, 139, 299 and 740 well enough to direct the student to what's beneficial and fun but the self-learner has to struggle through the dross to find it and may not hit on the right physical motions to effect it when he gets there.

There's nothing wrong with voluminous exercise, per se, but if the autodidact starts doing several hours of scales a week only to find out later that he's been baking in the wrong technique how does he correct all that wasted time? How does he make K545 sing if all his scales have only been done legato and staccato?

Abbhishek, if you're following the Trinity College program, you can download the syllabus here <http://www.trinitycollege.com/site/...mp;utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=piano> (if you don't already have it)
& you can order their course materials here <www.trinitycollege.com/shop> Sometimes you can pick up used copies, too, though that might be difficult for you in India.

I find Czerny exercises helpful for dexterity, etc, & because if I make a mess of one of them, I don't feel guilty about butchering some composer's piece of music. But I didn't start using them till I'd been playing for a few years - about the same time as I started playing some of the pieces from Anna Magdalena's Notebook.

I think I've become a fan of Czerny and was researching about him. By now, I've read people who come saying "it's musical despite just being exercises", and others say "bah boring exercises". So it's a question of tastes sometimes, or maybe which book of Czerny we use?

I've found a special testimony, which is Lang Lang saying "My basic training was Czerny Etudes". WHOOOAHH

Around minute 6:50.




This one is easier than op 599. Erster Anfang (link to a selling book; no imslp link)