Piano Practice Trick: Highlight the Thumb Notes

June 2, 2020 Jennifer Boster

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Today I want to share a great piano practice trick that I like to use when learning a piece with a lot of fast notes.

First I must mention the importance of choosing a good fingering, and playing the section with the SAME FINGERING EACH TIME. As we learn a piece of music we should be using several different learning modes to really engage with the piece and learn it well (this is especially true when memorizing a piece of music). The easiest type of learning is through muscle memory – when you play a passage enough times in a row, your fingers just sort of automatically learn where to go next. This can be really helpful, but it’s important to remember to not ONLY rely on this type of learning. When you use the same fingering every time, it allows your fingers to learn the passage more quickly and more accurately.

I like to write in my fingerings, especially on tricky sections – it ensures I use the same fingers every time and helps me to engage and learn the section using some analytical thinking, or the “read and write” learning mode.

But I like to go one step further. On especially thorny passages I will take a colored pencil or highlighter and highlight every single note that will be played by my thumb. This adds a really helpful visual cue to my learning and helps me to nail those fingerings. If I can get my thumb landing on the correct notes each time, everything else seems to fall into place. The thumb is the pivot point on your hand as you play scales and arpeggios, and so landing your thumb at the right time makes a world of difference as you navigate a tricky passage.

Here is a section of Beethoven’s Waldstein sonata in which I have highlighted all of the thumb notes. Once I did this, this passage went SO much smoother!

I encourage you to try this practice technique with your piano students and with your own practicing. I also encourage you to find ways to use several different modes of learning and several different practice tricks on the same passages in your music. Using kinesthetic (muscle memory), aural, visual and analytical memory (not just muscle memory alone) will really help you engage with the music and learn your pieces faster.

Happy practicing!

Interested in more practice tricks? Check out my Practice Tricks Pack and my Memory Tricks Pack for tons of ideas and resources!

Piano Anno: A New Resource for Fingering and Interpretation

January 15, 2015 Jennifer Boster

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Blog, Featured Posts, Uncategorized

Today I’m excited to share another guest post written by pianist and teacher Christie Sowby. I love Christie’s insights into using technology in our teaching, and today she is going to introduce us to an amazing new website for pianists and teachers!

I would like to share an excellent new resource I have found for piano teachers and students. It’s called Piano Anno (www.pianoanno.com) and is an online platform for sharing annotated music in the public domain. The “Annos” contain fingering, markings, interpretation, and performance tips from professional pianists. Annos sell for $3 each in the form of a downloadable PDF.

For teachers, this is a welcome relief. How many times have I written in fingering for the same piece of music for my students? Or how many times have I wondered if there is a better fingering out there to approach something technically? Piano Anno is a real timesaver in this way with its reliable fingerings and other interpretive markings. I can affordably purchase as many copies as I need for my students. (Annos are licensed for a single user.) Sometimes I have found its fingering suggestions better than my own, as they have been stage-tested by other pianists.

For students, Piano Anno jumpstarts the often time-consuming process of annotating one’s own copy of the same music. The print-ready Annos are handy and inexpensive. Even if you don’t use the public-domain edition (perhaps you prefer your own), the Anno is still a good reference and you can hand-copy as many fingerings to your preferred edition as you need to.

Piano Anno invites qualified contributors to submit their own Annos and earn a commission on each sale. They are always looking for new pieces, or even new Annos of a piece already offered. Since only public-domain works are shared on Piano Anno, many 20th-century composers like Bartók, Scriabin, and Cage are off limits. Nevertheless, there is a growing selection of other favorites to which you might add your own. If you have great fingerings or ideas and want to share them with the world, this is a good opportunity. (And maybe even to get paid while you sleep!)

I’m thrilled to see innovative efforts like this, where pianists can harness digital technology to share their ideas and advance their musicianship. Think of it. A digital library of classical piano scores, with annotations by real performers. It’s like downloading some of that performer’s experience into your own learning, and it also gives you a way to pass on yours.

Visit Piano Anno to see what Annos are currently available, to suggest Annos you want to see there, or to become a contributor yourself. This is an excellent resource for all pianists, so please share this website with your students, colleagues, and the music community.

Pedagogy Books: How to Teach Piano Successfully

July 7, 2010 Jennifer Boster

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Book: How to Teach Piano Successfully by James W. Bastien, Neil A. Kjos Music Company

I really like this book. Although possibly a bit out of date (first published in 1973, and the Third Edition published in 1995), particularly when discussing things like technology and piano methods (mainly because there are newer methods out there now that are not listed in this book), it really has a wonderful variety of topics and is a great overall piano pedagogy text.

Some sections I really like:

A Guide to Piano Fingering

Written by pianist Robert Roux, this twenty-page section on fingering talks about topographical fingering (using the most natural position possible), special uses of the fingers, physical versus mental convenience, and the relationship of fingering to musical content. Roux states that “the student should learn and apply general principles of piano fingering, and not blindly follow published fingerings.”

Editions of Keyboard Music

This is a great section written by Maurice Hinson. It is an awesome reference because he goes through each musical period and each major composer and lists the best music editions of each one.

Basic Theory Outline

This is a brief overview of basic music theory, found in the appendix – a great review for any piano teacher!

Music Reference Books

Also found in the appendix, this is a HUGE list of books about piano pedagogy and other music-related topics.

Ideal Precollege Training – Repertoire List

One of my favorite sections of this book includes an ideal repertoire list that a student should be familiar with after studying for about ten years and before entering a college music department. I’d like to share that list because I think it can be so helpful to us as teachers in choosing repertoire for our students. This list includes representative works from each musical period. I should also note that my pedagogy teacher in college emphasized that this list is only a minimum of what students should know at that point.

Baroque Period

Bach: Two- or Three-Part Inventions, preludes and fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier, French Suites

Scarlatti: any of the Sonatas

Handel: Aylesford Pieces, any of the Suites or Sonatas

Classical Period

Haydn: easier Sonatas

Mozart: Sonatas, Variations, or easier Concertos

Beethoven: easier Sonatas, Variations, or Concertos

Romantic Period

Representative works by Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Brahms, etc.

Contemporary Period

Bartok: Rumanian Folk Dances, Three Rondos, later books of the Mikrokosmos

Barber: Excursions

Bloch: Poems of the Sea

Copland: The Cat and the Mouse

Debussy: Children’s Corner Suite, easier Preludes, or either of the Arabesques

Dello Joio: Suite for Piano

Hindemith: Sonata No. 2

Kabalevsky: Twenty-four Preludes

Muczynski: Six Preludes, Op. 6

Poulenc: Mouvements perpetuels

Tcherepnin: Bagatelles, Op. 5

There are so many more great sections in this book – check it out! I have learned a lot from it.