Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum I need some rudiments to follow

Yes I'm a drummer lol. I need the piano equivalent of rudiments. I need to know some things to be practicing every day.

I'm not sure of my piano level but looking at some of the exams I'd venture to guess grade 3 or 4. See I've never had a lesson and I just kind of figured it out on my own starting with playing around after church when I was a kid, and not really taking off until several years ago when I got my first 88key synth.

So I find myself able to play several pieces fairly well like Moonlight Sonata, Fur Elise, several Vince Guaraldi songs, Elton John etc. IE I can play songs reasonably well for a novice, but I have almost no rudimentary knowledge of the piano. I play chords I found on my own, but don't know the names for. I play by ear and I will take bits and pieces of other songs I got comfortable with, and use them when making my own interpretations of music Like the left hand triad octave from Linus and Lucy and I'll use that as accompanyment to what my right hand is playing.

Anyway, I'm more focused on piano now and starting to study, learn my scales, doing inversion exercises, doing runs up and down the piano with one or both hands, And that's my daily practice at this point. I have my runs smoothed out so they are very smooth going from pinky to hooking thumb under etc.

I looked at what they test for in the various piano grades and started doing those but there are just so many it's hard to pick where to start. I'm also really learning musical theory for the first time in spite of playing several instruments. Voiceless chords, chord inversions, etc.


Where do I start? I'm putting time in, a few hours a day, and I want to make it worth my while.

Honestly Kodack, I would say start with a teacher. Even just a few lessons. It will save you countless hours and you'll get your technique right from the start. It's really easy to learn to play a piece "wrongly" and once it's done it's very hard to unlearn. My two cents worth. Good luck with it :-)

I second this suggestion, completely !

The problem is that you can find "Scales and Arpeggios" books (some have been recommended here), but it takes a teacher to say:

. . . "That would be much easier if you held your hand like this . . . "

Without a teacher:

If you are practicing major and minor scales _with the correct fingering_, two octaves up and down, even dynamics, and

major and minor arpeggios, C-E-G-C' / E-G-C'-E' (etc), two octaves, up and down,

you are doing the basics of "technical exercises".

If you know minor blues scales, those are also worthwhile:

. . . C Eb F F# G Bb C' (up and down)

The next step is either Hanon or Czerny. But you should _really_ have a teacher for those -- it's easy to screw up.

Get a teacher. You will be surprised how "reasonably well" translate after a teacher helps you to fix all the things that you had no clue you were supposed to do or don't do.

I'll just chime in with the rest of the "get a teacher" crowd. For me it was worth every last penny.

Thanks this was really helpful and what I was looking for. I'm not interested in a piano teacher. I'm a little different and I tend to learn better when I'm over my head. I learned the correct fingering watching people doing their exams on youtube. Even the way they hold their hands like holding a ball. I kind of soak things up like that. I could tell who had practiced relentlessly and was doing everything optimally because it looked effortless, and I added some of their techniques to my own.

I'm like one of those people that gets a job in a foreign country and lands not knowing any of the language, but that sits in coffee shops absorbing and listening, and within a few months they are ordering coffee, giving directions to the cabbies, etc. I'm just different like that. Teachers and classrooms work well for some people.



Since i posted this I've now got my major and minor scales memorized, smooth, backwards and forwards sharps and flats. I figured out that the major scales are like a piano keyboard. Root whole whole half w w w h just like the arrangement of sharp/flat black keys. So I can start at any root note, and play the major or minor across the entire keyboard range.

This week I'm going to do the same but add the diminished voicings, 9th,s and 13ths (because i love jazz).

My goal before the end of the year is to be able to play all of the grade 6 work book scales and to learn 1 Rachmaninoff song.

Ah, I see. You're like one of those foreigners who learn to "speak" with an unbearable accent and think it's OK.

Hi Kodack-
I think that most of us can appreciate your desire for independance, but if you read through these forums, you will find a number of people here who developed bad habits while self-teaching, and now are backpedaling to try to correct them. A good teacher will hear and see things about your playing that you can't do alone.

If you are convinced not to go with a teacher, you need to get on a systematic learning schedule that has skills associated with repertoire that reinforce the skill. Look at this forum for Alfred's, Faber and Fundamental Keys as options.

Lastly, be patient with your learning expectations in terms of speed and level of repertoire-- it isn't easy to develop that patience... but the pieces that you learn will give you greater satisfaction if you have the skills to play them, and play them well. Take one level at a time-- Rach will be there when are ready for him.

Work on practicing effectively-- by working on small chunks, and not just playing from the beginning over and over.

Hope this helps a little.

LOL! (but sadly true)

Drummer, if you mean what you said. Sure. Get Hanon 60 exercises. do the whole book everyday in the last 30 years.

I pick up pronunciation and accent better from immersion than instruction. Like I said, everybody is different. I've heard about Alfred. Going to check out the Hanon exercises but do you think those would be better than concentrating on the scales in something like the ABRSM work books? The reason I ask is what I've seen of the tests, seems to be comprehensive and rudimentary which is where I'm most lacking.

I want to thank you for your patience guys. I know I am a hard headed person but I know what my strengths are and how I learn. I want something and I go at it like I'm possessed until I reach my goal and then I move onto the next thing that interests me. It took me a long time to learn that hard work and practice can lead to better and faster results.

I don't know if anyone here has flown RC helicopters but I went from never flown, to doing some very complex stunts in 6 months, a level it takes many fliers years to reach and it's not because I am good at it it's because I strictly followed my training regiment and put in 20-25 hours a week for 6 months straight.

The way I see piano, it takes X number of hours on average to reach a certain aptitude. I can do more hours of practice a week and get there faster. I'm no prodigy but I do have some gifts where music is concerned and so far it's helping me along. I know more about the piano than a complete novice but that knowledge is specific and not very organized. I'm trying to shore that up with a good foundation so I can start playing other styles of music, and the challenge is very rewarding for me. Music is my drug my entire life and the only reason I can give as to why I appreciated it more than I worked at it is laziness. Something I finally rid myself of in my middle age.


Quick question, why do some people do scales without using their pinkies? I go thumb to pinky, hook thumb under hand and start again and going the other way pinky over thumb. Every 2 octaves your finger ends up back at it's starting position.

"classical" standard fingering for a major scale doesn't use pinkie, except as the top (or bottom, for LH) note. It's always (RH, going up)

. . . 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 . . .

The finger for the tonic (first note of the scale) depends on which scale it is. For example, in the F# scale, finger 2 (index finger) is on the F#. So it goes (RH, upward):

. . F# G# A# B C# D# E# F#

. . 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2

Your "thumb under pinkie" move is unique, as far as I know. That's why you have so many "Get a teacher!" recommendations -- what you invent may be a lot worse than what's been developed by others.

For a reference, Cooke's "Mastering the Scales and Arpeggios" is available as a free PDF file. It's old, but the scales haven't changed for a long time.

http://imslp.org/wiki/Mastering_the_Scales_and_Arpeggios_(Cooke,_James_Francis)

You're playing scales 1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5 etc?

Are you sure you're listening to yourself carefully?

Can you hear a 'bump' when you cross your pinky beneath your thumb? Unless you have very flexible hands and fingers, there will be a bump - a gap between the notes and/or an unevenness in rhythm and/or an accent.

Saying that of course, if you're not bothered by it and you don't want a teacher, anything goes.....

Somehow I have a hard time believing that you're able to play the Moonlight Sonata "fairly well".

Oh, you're changing subject already? You sure have very short attention span from all indication. I truly doubt who you say you are.

This is what it's like for me. I had never done an organized fingering going up and down the piano. I would do 1 2 1 2 or 2 3 4 just whatever I felt like at the moment. But I wanted a precise, repeateable fingering for piano runs for scales.

So I forced myself to do 1 2 3 4 5 <hook thumb under> 1 2 3 4 5 etc. I have very large hands and this is not a stretch for me to do.

The first 3 or 4 times I did it, there was a definite interruption in my playing every time I did it. By the end of a 20 minute session I was doing 1/4 notes at 60bpm smoothly and with no change in volume. legato, or intonation going from thumb to pinky in either direction.

I keep adding different variations, playing one scale backwards, one forward at the same time, playing octave scales, alternate keying for each note lrlrlrlrlr etc. Just trying to find rough spots, and smooth them out.

Some of the people replying in the thread are being pretty negative and rude, it's not helpful. If you don't have piano advice please take your venom somewhere else.

I'm looking for advice on practical exercises I can do every day, and most of you are being so very helpful and I appreciate it greatly and thank you.

Charles Cohen, your post was really helpful. I am going to try some of those techniques and see if they make the scales which make heavy use of flats and sharps easier.

No, we're just skeptical. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude but your posts so far are pretty naive. Some people are trying to tell you nicely but pretty much everyone here can probably see that.


The problem with doing exercises without supervision is that you might end up doing it completely wrong without even being aware of it, such as your 1-5 finger scale. You might be oblivious to many other mistakes but there's no way to know unless you post a video. Then you'll get more concrete advice.

I can understand that and again, I know I'm coming off as hard headed, but I really am listening and I've already made several changes to my practice routine since I started. Fingering is flexible and I want to try different ways and find what works best for me. 1-5 was cake and in spite of thinking it will result in uneven playing, it is fast and fluid for me. But so is 1-4, or even 1-2 or 60bpm 1 finger quarter notes.

I'm not sure of the reason for skepticism, I'm not selling anything or saying I know a better way. I'm looking for practical exercises and rudimentary guidance and sharing my experience so far.

Okay, but 60 bpm for quarter notes is really slow. When you try to speed up with your home-brew thing you're going to hit a wall and you will not be able to progress. And it's going to be hard like heck to roll back and learn it properly.

So, again, post a video if you want concrete advice.