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A reason why I'm not that active in the forum at the moment: started to learn keyboard instruments in April, aiming for early music. The following little video contains three "hand pieces" by Daniel Gottlob Türk (1750 - 1813, picture below), a German organ player, composer, music teacher and theorist.
I love practising those simple pieces, although it is hard enough for me to learn and play. Should have started 7 decades earlier! 🤣
Interesting, how tough it feels to coordinate the left and the right hand, after lifelong music making ... But I really enjoy trying to "perform" Türk's pieces as proper as possible on "period instruments".
Excellent!! Great sounds coming from your vintage gear!!!
@Willie I await your next album with Jordi Savall!
Really cool sound. When you start learnin a piece, do you learn the whole thing for one hand and then the other or you play both at the same time?
Those pieces are short, so I indeed learn the whole thing for the left hand first and then for the right hand. This is the first piece in the video:
Started learning longer and "more complicated" exercises now; here I learn in parts left/right and put them together. One of my actual homeworks, a handpiece by Georg Adam Kress (1744 -1788):
The Andante can be played with one fingering for each hand. The new challenge with the Allegro is to change the fingering for the left hand in bar 3 and 5 in the first part and for both hands at the beginning of the second part. For the left hand the fingering changes again in bar 11 and 13, for both hands in bar 17. I learn the chunks "fingeringwhise", then try to play two parts with different fingerings and so on.
I do the same thing on some of the few piano pieces I've tried to learn. It is almost like 3 different learning phases. One for the left hand timing and fingering, one for the right hand, and then that third one where everything goes stupid and fingers don't want to work well together. It isn't starting over, but the integration can sometimes be challenging, especially with syncopated pieces. It really is a place where following the sheet music is helpful. It shows you which notes (left and right hands) are played together. Really helps me "sync" the 2 parts.
If I remember correctly, in all of the 18th century study collections I know (Türk, Kress, Löhlein) they urgently recommend keeping your eyes to the sheet, and even not to repeat your study too often, because playing everything by heart does not help to learn playing sheet music.
I try to play both ways: reading and not looking at my keys too often (still have to when fingerings change) while working on something new ; trying to play my "older" homework by heart.
Interesting how in the forewords of their books those old teachers write about teaching music: good playing and good teaching are totally different things; sometimes autodidacts are the better teachers because they know the stumbling stones and the dead end streets on the way; they even stress the necessarity of different methods and materials for different types of pupils; and so on. Rather modern concepts.
A lot of it is how the blind pianist, Ignasi Cambra, describes his own learning process.
there are time stamps in the description of the video for specific topics.
If I remember correctly, in all of the 18th century study collections I know (Türk, Kress, Löhlein) they urgently recommend keeping your eyes to the sheet, and even not to repeat your study too often, because playing everything by heart does not help to learn playing sheet music.
That's really curious. To be a proficient music reader is an incredibly useful skill. And playing everything by heart doesn't help to get better at reading. But if that's what you focus on, then the visual input takes priority and auditory sense takes a backseat. I've played with two classical musicians who couldn't improvise unless they looked at the music. For them, that visual input is a necessity. They made great music regardless. But I'm not convinced that that's a great position for a musician.
Another friend, a trumpet player with a PhD in music, told me once, when I said I'm kinda bummed that I never got good at reading music, that if you have to choose between being able to read or play by ear, then playing by ear if a far better choice. The interesting part a blind concert pianist has no choice but to learn the piece by heart.
@Buco I did not look at the video yet, but will do as soon as possible.
I could not read music, and played everything by heart, until I took my first euphonium lessons. My teacher convinced me that if I wanted to join his brass choir, I should be able to play written music. I know fantastic musicians who don't read. And I know musicians who play every written thing at first sight but cannot play a single piece without a sheet. And many who play both ways.
After 36 years of making music by heart and 22 years playing from sheets AND by heart I think that both are useful and necessary, depending on the style, the context, the ensemble, the situation, ...
For my keyboard voyage, I have to improve my reading skills, so that I don't have to work on one written piece for weeks before I have it in my fingers. But the real intention is to play the music by heart (maybe with a little sheet as a memory aid).