Are you looking for some great resources to help you in your Piano Practice? I bought a series of Piano Practice eBooks by Graham Fitch a couple of years ago and have found them really useful.
Practicing is a skill in itself
I’ve said before that one thing that did occur to me when I restarted learning the piano was the importance of practicing. And I don’t mean in the sense of ‘practice an hour a day’. I mean ensuring that whilst you’re at the piano, you’re actually practicing. Practicing in a way that is helping you to improve. This then is a skill in itself.
I guess like many serious hobbyists, when I’m not actually playing piano I like to do as many piano related things as possible. Watching youtube performances, tutorials and other piano-related advice has become a regular habit. Reading up through magazines and blogs (both free and subscribed) also helps give me my piano fix. I also love to listen to piano music whenever I can.
The Digital Edition of Pianist Magazine is my regular subscription read … released every two months. Here you’ll find lots of ideas on practice including regular contributions by Graham Fitch. Graham is clearly an accomplished pianist and an excellent teacher with an international reputation.
Piano Practice eBooks by Graham Fitch’s to the rescue
I can’t remember exactly how, but one day I came across a series of Piano Practice eBooks that Graham Fitch. Recognising Graham’s name from the pages of Pianist Magazine, I bought them much there and then. Suffice to say this was one of my better impulse purchase decisions.
There are four parts to the series:
Part 1: The Practice Tools
Part 2: Mastering Piano Technique
Part 3: Scales and Arpeggios
Part 4: Practicing for Performance
Why the eBook format?
The first thing to mention is that these are eBooks. I know many people like a ‘real’ book. However, in honesty, for this type of resource, the eBook format has numerous advantages. Given that at its heart, this set of books is trying to teach you new skills, then being able to view demonstrations is key. Images are of course good to have, however, video and audio are far more powerful learning tools. The benefit of the eBook format is that links to videos, audio or indeed any other type of file are provided. For example, in Part 1 there are over 30 audio and video examples to help you – plus links to other files that you can download.
I’ve said before that I think an iPad (or similar tablet) is a great thing for any Pianist to have. With these eBooks on your iPad, you can read, watch and listen. You don’t need to find a CD player or go off googling videos on your laptop. Everything is in one place for you. I’ve already done a couple of posts on why the iPad an invaluable asset.
All piano practice bases covered
Secondly, the books cover the major pillars of learning piano – but from the perspective of ‘Practicing’ rather than ‘Playing’. I’ve become increasingly convinced that I stopped playing all those years ago because I simply didn’t know how to Practice. I’d just play through things until they ‘stuck’. For a long time this worked well enough – up to maybe grade 6/7.
Once I got onto Grade 8 level repertoire, the ‘play through’ approach simply didn’t work. At this level, solving technical problems is the name of the game and knowing how to Practice is arguably the most important thing. In fact, at any level, if you practice efficiently you’ll make progress both faster and more easily.
This is where Graham’s eBooks come to the rescue. So, for example, as well as describing what technique should help you achieve a specific goal (for example, Chord Playing technique), Graham focuses on how you can ‘Practice’ specifically to gain that technique. This is often by breaking something down into a set of component parts and then re-combining them.
This is where the real value comes … the basic advice is available everywhere on YouTube … however Graham deconstructs it and provides a whole new level of depth on each topic. He includes literally hundreds of fully written out examples using deconstructed repertoire to illustrate what he is saying. The attention to detail is clearly evident – a lot of time and effort has gone into this. You can look at my post on Chopin’s C Sharp Minor Waltz or Liszt’s second cadenza in Liebestraum No. 3. I tried to be as clear by writing out my examples. I can assure you that this literally took me hours to do – and I only had a few of them to do.
A very balanced view on the topic
Thirdly, what I really like about Graham’s approach is that he doesn’t evangelise (and I use the word on purpose) any single ‘school’ of playing.
YouTube, for example, is a fabulous resource. You can find a wealth of video advice on pretty much any topic, including piano. However, it’s often contradictory and can be hard to know who, if anybody, is actually right. Graham on the other hand takes the time to explain the different schools of thought – including possible advantages and disadvantages of each. He presents a very balanced view.
For example, if you’ve spent as much time looking into technique as me (in the hope of finding that silver bullet), then you’ll have come across the ‘thumb under’ versus ‘thumb over’ debate I’m sure. You then get lots of people who evangelically tell you that either one or the other is the ONLY way. However, Graham concludes that either is possible and the advantages of one over the other are probably marginal.
Let’s face it, for any one thing – such as using ‘flat fingers’ – you’ll see very notable exceptions in the piano world. Here, take Horowitz who very often played with totally flat fingers. On that basis, any you tube teacher insisting that you can’t play with flat fingers can’t be entirely right. He might not be entirely wrong either. Horowitz had phenomenal control and strength in his fingers and he may have chosen to play like on purpose. You can read my reasoning for this in this post – just look for Horowitz on the page.
Lots of suggestions for further reading on piano practice
Finally, Graham cites lots of other piano resources … some of which I’ve subsequently gone on to buy. He has clearly researched this topic in depth and then applied these results in his teaching career. These eBooks are the result of a lot of hard work and experience.
I wish that I had discovered them in my twenties (they weren’t of course written then – no such thing as an eBook when I was younger) …. they provide an encyclopaedic wealth of information.
I initially read through them all (on holidays away from the piano). Now, I find that when I’m starting to learn a new piece that gives me any specific challenge, then I’ll go looking at the relevant chapters in Graham’s books that cover the problem. Of course, as they are eBooks, searching through them is super easy. This is another great advantage of this format.
You can pick up these Piano Practice eBooks by Graham Fitch either from Graham’s website or of course on Amazon. They are split down into a set of different volumes (I assume to ensure smaller file sizes for downloading).
Graham also offers an Online Academy on a subscription basis which gives automatic access not only to these books but also to a wealth of additional resources. Here’s a link to the Online Academy for you.
Let me know your experience with them.
