Hanon Exercises #2, #3, and #4

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman. And in this lesson, we're going to learn more Hanon exercises along with tips on how to get the most out of your practicing. Let's get started by checking out the score. Well, we're finally ready to take a look at exercise two. If you've been watching my lessons in order, you know that I've already shown you how to do exercises eight, nine, and ten, and I've saved exercise two because it has some tricky things which we are now ready to tackle today. So let's start by just looking at the first three notes in the pattern. And tell me what you notice about these three notes. Can you try playing them on your piano? Let's play that as a block chord. You can see that this is a first inversion triad. We've got C E A, a third and then a fourth, and if you look, just like all Hanon exercises this pattern repeats in each measure, and will slowly be moving up one step at a time. So let's actually try this. Take your fingers 1 2 and 5 like it asks for in the score, and play these first three notes, these first three pitches, as a block chord, and that's what we'll have in measure one, and then let's try measure two with again with fingers 1 2 and 5, just step up and then try measure three, and let's just keep going up. And that's the top of the pattern. Now let's try playing them as broken chords. So play 1 2 5, 1 2 5, so we're just skipping all of these notes that I didn't draw the box around. 1 2 5, 1 2 5. Try it with me. Go from the start, go. 1 2 5, 1 2 5, up a step, 1 2 5, up a step, 1 2 5, up a step, 1 2 5, up a step, 1 2 5, up a step, 1 2 5, and now let's look at descending. So I want take a look at the first three notes of this pattern. Now what we've seen in past exercises is whatever pattern we have going up we reverse it going down. So since going up we had a third, and then a fourth, we would kind of expect to see a third and a fourth going down, but that's not what Hanon does. He does a fourth. If you look carefully at that interval right there, we have a fourth and then a third, and what that does, is it keeps the chords in first inversion. Why does Hanon do that? Well first inversion chords just tend to have a really nice sound, so maybe he was doing it for the sound, maybe he just wanted to keep you on your toes. Since he's not alive we can't ask him why he did it this way, but this is the way he did it. so let's go with it. So 5 2 1, try these as block chords. So now we're playing just the first three notes. I always like isolating the tricky parts, and focus on those because then the rest will be easy so play these first three pitches as a block chord using 5 2 and 1, and then step down, then step down, then step down, then step down, then step down, then step down, and that's the last pattern. Okay. Now, let's take a look at what the left hand is doing. What note does the left hand start on? We can see we're two ledger lines below the bass staff. The bottom line of the bass staff is ground G, ledger line down, ledger line down, brings us to low C, and the left hand's playing the same thing as the right hand but two octaves down. 5 3 1. So the left hand use 5 3 and 1. It's going to be the same pattern. Notice that the left hand is using a finger 3 while the right hand is using a finger 2. This is maybe the trickiest part of this exercise, is usually when the left hand is playing a 3, the right hand is also playing a 3, and you'll see that actually later in this exercise the 3's do line up, but here on the first three notes, the right hand and left hand are using different fingerings. That's also part of the challenge of this exercise. Let's come to the piano to try to play it. Now let's try this with both hands. Just the first three notes of each measure played as a block chord. So with the right hand, again be sure you have fingers 1 2 and 5 on C E, and A, and then left hand way down here two octaves down on low C, fingers 5 3 and 1 on C E and A. Try this with me, and then we're going to step up. Step up, play along with me, step up, step up, step up, step up. Now we're in measure seven and starting in measure eight we're going to start doing descending, and it's the same chord again on the first three notes of measure eight, then the first three notes of measure nine we step down. Make sure you've got finger 2 in the right hand, finger 3 in the left hand. Step down, step down, step down, step down, step down, and then we're done. Now pause and try that again if you feel like you need more practice, otherwise let's now try doing it as a broken chord. So we're also still doing the first three notes only of each measure, but now let's go 1 2 3, skip to the next measure, 1 2 3. Okay, try this with me, and be very very careful of the fingering. Right hand finger 2, left hand finger 3 on that second note of each measure. So let's start here in measure one. Try this with me, go. Next measure. Next measure. Next measure. Next measure. Next measure. Next measure. Now remember, all this practice is a waste if you're not doing the right fingering. We're trying to train correct habits, and when we do first inversion chords, this is the standard fingering, and part of what Hanon's trying to do is train your finger ...