HOW to Practice Hanon Exercises to Get The Absolute Most From Them

back in the 1800s there was a French guy named Charles Lewis Hannon or I guess probably something like char Louie Hannon I don't know how to speak French he wrote a book called the virtuoso pianist and 60 exercises there it is over the years the book has become incredibly famous and millions and millions of kids around the world have used it at some point another when they start to learn on a play piano I personally used it when I started learning about four years ago and I think it's wonderful a bit tedious and irrelevant to do the entire thing but we're going to use it strategically to help you develop some finger strength and dexterity and independence basically the gist of it is this each exercise in the book is a repetitive sequence of notes that you play with both hands climbing up the piano and then coming back down what I like about it is that the patterns are really easy to understand but they get progressively harder to execute plus because the exercises are simple to understand you can concentrate fully on how your fingers are executing the patterns really focus on developing good technique so important each day of the program starting today we're going to do five minutes of Hanan that's it no more no less we'll keep it to one or two exercises per day and the focus will always be on precision and relaxation when you first encounter a new pattern spend some time and play it slowly with hands separately or together depending on your comfort level if you like you can play it without a metronome first but once you have the pattern solidly in your hands then grab a metronome and set it to a comfortable speed over time you can begin to bump the speed up but like I said at first super super slow just you can get it comfortably precise and relaxed I'll be guiding you through this process at first but as the program goes on you can start setting your own metronome goals if you're just starting to play the piano these exercises will be challenging so watch out but they give a lot of bang for the buck they really get you in touch with their fingers so with enough time and enough consistency these exercises will make your fingers stronger steadier more dexterous and much more skilled for this first video on hand exercises I'm going to walk you through the whole process here is the first exercise out of the handbook it goes like this [Music] notice how the same pattern repeats and it ascends all the way up the piano we have this first note skip a note now use all the fingers now we have them a note one higher skip a note once we get up to this place up here we reverse the order so this G is typically gonna be your reversal point so we have [Music] cetera I will play that pattern all the way until we get down to see most of the time to hand in exercises mirror each other as they go up and go down but sometimes there will be little subtle distinctions and you'll have to just watch the whole video of me playing so you can see what the full pattern is also watch out for the turnaround when it comes up to the top you want that to be smooth as well and the turnaround when it gets all the way to the bottom at the bottom it goes [Music] that's how we end up back at sea okay let's put this all in context for you I'm gonna do the whole exercise I'm gonna set my metronome here at sixty beats per minute and I'm gonna play it sixteenth notes so it's gonna sound like that good good good good duck Duck Duck okay [Music] you [Music] of course if I wanted to I could continue all the way back up now that I got all the way down [Music] notes I could use that last measure going down as the turn around to get me back going up okay when you approach a new hand and exercise simply consult the index of hand exercises watch me play it all the way through once get the pattern into your hands be mindful of the turn around at the top and at the bottom and set the metronome at a comfortable pace for yourself so that you can play through it smoothly I want to make one more point about hand drills sometimes you're going to introduce yourself to a new hand in drill and it's gonna be tricky enough that you can't play it with the metronome yet even at the slowest possible speed if that happens to you if that's okay play without the metronome first and just get the pattern into your hands so for example if this was the first one was giving you trouble you just sit there first note there's a second oh there it is you can play this out of time you're just getting your fingers used to the motions what fingers comes after the next all that kind of stuff then you can say your metronome at the slowest possible speed my metronome has a slowest possible speed of 40 beats per minute and you can start playing on quarter notes this is gonna be very slow here we go etc if that's excruciatingly Li slow to you that is okay the idea is just set the metronome to a place where you can comfortably play the piece with precision and with consistency and with relaxation once you get there and you're starting to work with the metronome it's gonna be much easier to start pushing the metronome speed higher and higher if you get it say at 40 beats per minute then tomorrow come back and you're at 50 beats per minute next day come back you might be at 60 or you might be 55 or you might be 52 it doesn't matter wherever you are that day is totally okay but the idea once again just to reiterate is get the pattern into your hands first then use the metronome and lock it in major major focus when you play Hanan drills needs to be on developing evenness in the fingers what do I mean by that when you first start out typically your thumb is the strongest finger and your ring finger is the weakest this has an effect on your playing dynamics when you play a note with your thumb it'll tend to be stronger and louder than if you play a note with your ring finger head and drills are great because they ask you to concentrate on getting the same amount of volume out per finger this is what I mean when I say eveness so when you're playing handed for now no fancy accent patterns no involuntary dynamic variations you're going for perfect evenness across all fingers [Music] as you can imagine this is quite a challenge especially as the exercises get more complex and you start having to isolate certain fingers in different ways but practicing hand them with a focus towards this I guarantee you will see huge benefits down the line

Channel: Zero To Piano

Views: 156,560

Keywords: Piano, piano exercises, hanon exercises, piano drills, hanon drills, finger dexterity, finger exercise, finger exercises, how to play piano, practice piano, technique, piano technique, zero to piano, zerotopiano, ztp, josh lavine, lavine, learn piano fast

Id: H-8Qre0-IyM

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 10 2017