Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Does technique or playing the notes come first

Hi

Started playing piano in November with a teacher. Two weeks prior used Internet to learn the notes rather than finger numbers. Had 6 1/2 hour fortnightly lessons. Want to play with the right technique does this develop later.

Just do what your teacher tells you to do and you will be just fine.

Technique is playing the notes! It's just that there are good ways of doing it.

Chemblue, can you put us into the picture a little bit, so we can see what prompted the question, and just to orient us. There are many ways that the teachers out there teach. Can you give a bit of a run-down of what happened, and maybe what kinds of things you're concerned about?

"Technique" itself is not necessarily that straightforward to define.

Hi Chemblue, welcome to ABF!

Technique develops over many years. Your teacher should pick any technical problems you're having and address them. Don't worry about it.

I'm picking up on this, not knowing atm whether it's a random point or part of a concern:

If the teaching in these 6 lessons all involved writing in finger numbers on every note, for example, so the music can be learned fast without reading, that is something you don't want to have go on. But if this is just a random example of what the OP means by "technique" that's a different story. In the meantime, a good teacher may have her own ideas of how to develop reading skills, and might not want note memorization to be learned in a given way, ahead of time.

The to OP - a lot of teaching of skills can be done covertly so that you don't see it. For example, a teacher may assign a given piece, and certain things to do with it or pay attention to, because of some skill she has in mind.

There is and interesting YouTube with Maria Pires, where she says technique doesn't exist.

Some years ago when I was studying violin, I was conversing with a very old teacher on-line who showed me one thing and said "You will understand this; there is no technique. This is all there is." My own teacher said, in the course of the year. "Everything is technique." "Not everything is technique, you know." and finally executing a flawless simply bow stroke "There is no technique. This is all there is.". I got it. Demystifying this:

Technique is not a formula or a system. It is not the prescription for perfect legato, or pearly scales, or the exact fingering one must always use. No teacher holds the secret set of rules, which if you have mastered them all, you will play monstrously wonderful. There is no one way to play passage x. In this sense there is no technique.

However we have the music with the sounds we want to produce, our bodies that act on the instrument with their nature, and the instrument with its characteristics and nature. A piano string resonates with a given loudness when the hammer flies to it at a given speed; how long it resonates depends on how long the key is held up by fingers or damper = nature of the instrument. How your hands move on those keys, and how the rest of your body works with those hands, and with what degree of ease you can move, affects what happens with the instrument. Your understanding, intent, getting in your own way or the opposite, direct all of this. The interaction of all this is the technique that isn't but is. As soon as you strike a single note and make it sound, that is technique, including bad technique.

For us students, the abilities are also something that must form over time, and are not there all at once, immediately.

This is the video where Maria Pires says there is no technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIiCPjPZyYE

Throughout a young man is featured playing the piano. He uses the pedal effectively, his wrists are loose, he moves in and out of black keys as needed, he leans to the right and left as the notes demand --- in short, he is doing the things that I am learning to do. Should he or Ms. Pires abandon all these things they learned, their playing would sound pretty bad, I'd wager. I think she is talking about the formulaic, magical, rule-ridden world, but not technique as we students need to acquire.

@Isabelle, the video looks intriguing. I plan to watch it.

A famous pianist once said: "The technique is the expression."

What he meant is that without technique, you can't bring expression to the music. How often that is true, when I hear pianists who're struggling with the notes in pieces that are beyond their technique, to the extent that everything sounds stilted and same-y, if not slow and lumbering.

Whereas when pianists play music that's well within their technique, they have the freedom to express freely, whether it's tonal nuances, rubato, variety of articulation or dynamics.

Do you know what the OP's teacher is telling him to do? Unless we know that, we cannot make any statement. I would not want to make a statement in either direction.

If anything a forum thread is good for is hashing out semantics.
To me anything beyong the point of pluncking one's finger down onto a piano key is technique. Any pedaling, any inflection to one's fingering is technique.
Yes, plunking can be a technique if that is one's deliberate intension.

Chemblue,
I'd learn the note names as they lay on a piano keyboard the very first thing.
This would save time and teacher expense. If you know this already, then good for you.
Then one might find those notes on a printed clef. If you can read the note off the printed page, and at the same time finger the note, according to the time signature, you're on your way. All the Best, FJ

As others have pointed out, "Technique doesn't exist. Technique is how to use your body in order to produce something you want to do, and this is every moment changing. Since it is every moment changing, you can't consider it a technique." - Maria Joao Pires

In my years of lessons, my teacher have never mentioned the word technique. Instead she focuses on the physicality of what I am doing and what needs to be different each and every time. Even the exact same note, depending on the last note and the next note, and other circumstances, is never the same again. Instead my teacher shows me what needs to be done at every point, and she is very meticulous in this. It is through learning hundreds of pieces of music, thousands of expressive challenges, that eventually we find for ourselves our way.

Whatever you want to call it, to answer your question, you're developing it the entire time you play piano, not now, not later, and certainly don't expect there is something to be had that would allow you to go on autopilot for the future.

I would like to hear from the OP Chemblue.

If I understand the question correctly, the answer is both together. Even when you're struggling to figure out which fingers go where when, remember that the goal is to make it sound like music. There's a famous old Beethoven quote, "To play without passion is inexcusable."

Answering rather than philosophizing:

When you are beginning, you are trying to get some very basic skills down. You may have just enough control to play every note with an even sound while keeping your movements even and relaxed. In fact, these can be the cornerstone on which everything else is built. I remember when I was on my own, trying to play loud and fast made my hands tense and jerky because my "loud" was a tense "forceful" hand. If I tried to make one voice loud, the other soft, I couldn't do it. Under instruction, one skill was brought in at a time. There are times even now that with a new piece I dial it down to only notes and proper timing at reduced speed, and then add in the other things that make it expressive.

The big thing here is the new teacher, who has only been teaching 6 weeks so far. This teacher, if good, will hve a plan and methodology. To allow your skills to develop, assuming such good instruction, you have to do as instructed, consistently, every day. This also allows a good teacher to see whether her approach is working with you. If you change the instructions, how can she tell, and how can she get anywhere with you.

I may have seemed to disagree with dmd before, but actually I wasn't. I was simply leaving the door open to the possibility that there can be poor teaching, so I don't like absolutes about following instructions and all will (always) go well - but in the absence of any red flags unless "finger numbers" means anything, I'll assume that instruction is decent.

Chemblue, everyone is guessing here since you haven't responded in the forum.

I'm not guessing! As I said (and others besides) technique is playing the notes.

Hi

I have looked at arm weight. This hasn't been mentioned during my half hour lessons yet. I was concerned that I didn't want to start having bad habits. Would a particular book be worth considering

I suppose I am trying to find out how well I should be able to play after 6 1/2 hour fortnightly lessons. I do not feel there is a problem with my teacher. This is about my expectations.

You should be able to play about as well as anyone else that has had only the same amount of instruction. Better, if you practiced at least 1/2 hour daily between lessons and they did not. Not as good if they practiced and you did not. This is a very small amount of time to go on. People spend life times perfecting the craft and their technique. There is no expectation from anyone but yourself.

If you are already investing in lessons then trust in teacher i think is best bet for now.

I tend to teach arm weight by about lesson 3. You can't get it from a book - ask your teacher to show you how to use it on accents as a starter.