Fundamentals of Piano Practice
by Chuan C Chang
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Book Summary Information
Author: Chuan C ChangEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-10-31
ISBN: 1419678590
Number of pages: 266
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
Book Reviews of Fundamentals of Piano Practice
Book Review: The only book on playing the piano which can really help you
Summary: 5 Stars
Dr. Chang's book is not perfect - as he says, it's a work in progress - but it's a tremendous contribution that sheds major light on a series of related topics which, up til now, have remained as mysterious as the dark side of the moon to every other author, for a century or more.
Piano technique and virtuosity are, by their very nature, rather mysterious: they seem to arise in 'geniuses' while being withheld and kept out of reach from the rest of the human race. Can that really be? Or is it actually just a matter of proper training and teaching? Dr. Chang held the first view until he saw his two daughters making extraordinary progress under French piano teacher Yvonne Combe, who had once long ago been Debussy's assistant. At first believing that his kids were just amazingly talented, he then turned his scientist's eye to take a closer look and reached the opposite conclusion: his daughters learned to play extremely well because they had been trained correctly by Yvonne Combe, the teacher whom he acknowledges on his book's title page.
Like all good scientific work, those real-world results and phenomena form the basis for Dr. Chang's book: starting from phenomena that seemed hard to understand at first, the extraordinary results brought about by a master teacher drew Dr. Chang's analytical eye - causing him to analyze exactly what was going on, then carefully setting down his observations, ideas and the techniques he observed in this book, and in an effort to help others accomplish the same things.
Dr. Chang carried all this out with the objectivity and meticulous attention to detail of a master scientist, which he certainly is - his book, at first offered for free on the internet, becoming a major gift to the rest of the human race - or at least, to that segment of it dedicated to learning how to play the piano!
In this work Dr. Chang sets out a number of incredibly important insights about practicing and playing the piano which you will find nowhere else.
He discusses the basic piano techniques for accomplishing the shift of fingers and weight around the thumb - the "thumb over" technique as he calls it, which steers students - especially beginners - away from the "turning the thumb under" that all beginners are taught when playing scales, and which becomes a profound handicap even in intermediate playing.
He also talks about speed in arpeggios, leaps and octaves in a way that I have only heard discussed from one master teacher, Artur Schnabel's assistant in the 1930's. Dr. Chang has come to the same conclusion by analysis, but he is right: the 'infinite speed' of the rolled chord that leaps from octave to octave becomes the basis for playing arpeggios at virtuosic velocities - not the impossible task of turning the thumb under (which stops you and makes the gesture impossible) and pushing down the fingers on the keys individually. I only offer this as a sample, superficially described here, of the profound kind of insight you'll find in Dr. Chang's work.
If you follow what he says, it will transform your playing. There is no other source which will give you this kind of practical information.
Note on competing works: to put Dr. Chang's work in context, you have to start from the embarrassing, universal fact that nearly all the other books on the topic of piano practice and piano technique are pure swamp gas and snake oil!
Why? Famous pianists are the worst in trying to analyze and describe what they do - and you can see the results as their prose turns notoriously vaporous and vague when dancing around the practical issues of how they achieved results. Even the most famous share precious little in the books you will find under their names (and notice that all have been ghost written, usually by non-experts who know little about the piano or how to play it).
Then there are the other authors, some of whose names may be familiar: most, sad to say, are either deeply confused or just quacks selling worthless twaddle, a situation that's been going on in some cases for many, many years.
I could name them by author, but you can find them yourself - all listed on this Amazon page under "Customers who bought this book also bought..."
Beware of that Wall of Shame. Avoid them all. I own them all, and except for a few small excerpts from some of the books by known artists, all deserve to be shredded. They will waste your time and consume years of your life with no result.
Here's a tipoff: without exception you will find that these other books are all written in impenetrable, purple prose aimed at concealing their lack of content behind a cloud pretentious verbiage (this is true of music technical writing and criticism in general, btw).
By contrast, Dr. Chang's book is written in the clearest English he can bring to bear on a topic that's subtle and hard to describe verbally with precision (he also has online videos to demonstrate clearly what he means).
To properly appreciate Dr. Chang's contribution, consider what he's up against - decades of pure nonsense.
Dr. Chang is a different kind of writer from all the others: a top professional scientist who worked for years at elite Bell Labs, he's a trained, hard-eyed objective searcher after truth who questions all the swampy and gassy assumptions found everywhere in the worm-eaten piano technique literature.
He found much of it to be nonsense, and he was right. As an aspiring pianist struggling to learn the keyboard, Dr. Change realized early on that he was getting a lot of bad advice. His book prevents you from suffering the same fate.
PS NOTE to unhappy one-star reviewer Jian Zeng: You are having a problem understanding what Dr. Chang is saying. "Thumb over" is simply a term to contrast with "thumb under" - a practice taught to all beginning piano students when playing scales, but which becomes a tremendous handicap to even the intermediate pianist. "Thumb over" - yes, it means the thumb has to move from one key to another, but by shifting sideways when the hand is in the proper attitude: elbows slightly out, with the hand angled with wrist close to the extremes of the keyboard and fingertips closer together, as if your middle fingers of the flat hand were angled so as to nearly touch each other.
This is hard to describe in words, but very easy to see. When the hand is in that attitude, there is room for the thumb to move effortlessly even before it needs to. Beginners are taught to tuck that movable thumb *under* the stationary hand, which is painful after a while and will prevent virtuoso playing faster than baby steps.
Good luck and keep trying - Dr. Chang's book will help you get the results you seek.
Summary of Fundamentals of Piano Practice
This is the first book ever written on how to practice at the piano! Learn the most efficient practice methods, musical playing, relaxation, and Mental Play (playing the piano or the music in your mind) which has been neglected by most teachers; all great musicians used it, yet often failed to teach it. Mental play impacts every aspect of piano playing: memorizing, controlling nervousness, developing performance skills, playing musically, acquiring absolute pitch, composing, improvisation, etc. Genius is more created than born; most of what had been attributed to talent are simple knowledge-based solutions that we can all learn. Improved memory can raise the effective IQ; memory is an associative process based on algorithms -- music is such an algorithm, enabling us to memorize hours of repertoire. Learning piano makes you smarter and teaches project management. Includes chapter on tuning your own piano; the chromatic scale, temperaments, circle of fifths, etc., are explained.Theory, Composition & Performance Books
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