Hanon: The Original Exercises

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman,

and in this lesson we're going to take a look at how to practice using Hanon's original finger power exercises

from his famous collection the virtuoso pianist.

In past lessons, I've taught you how to play these finger power exercises using a simplified version,

but today you're leveling up to the full original version. Let's come to the piano to get started.

So let's look at the original version for Hanon number one.

Tell me what you notice that's different from the simplified hand we've learned in the past.

You might notice we're all 16th notes now because we're going to be playing this faster.

What do you notice about the clefs?

It's a little bit rare to have both hands in bass staff.

So, can you find on your piano where both hands will be starting?

Play this note, left hand finger 5.

If this is my middle C,

then this is two octaves down on low C and where does the right hand start?

On bass C. Remember before our hands were two octaves apart, but now they're one octave apart both starting in the bass staff.

Now does it stay in bass staff forever?

Well, as we go higher and higher,

you'll notice we switch back to treble staff. So this seems like a big jump, but you'll see if we're here in bass staff,

this is just continuing up. Now we're on A in treble staff

to help us keep going higher and higher.

And that's the other main difference from before, is now

instead of just going up one octave,

you'll notice we'll go up a whole octave. Here we make it to C, but we're going to keep going even higher.

So we start down here,

and then I'm going to skip, skip, skip, skip. We get to here and we're going to keep going even higher.

And now I'm here.

And then on the next page we start descending.

And we go back down two octaves,

and then you'll notice here a repeat sign.

So instead of playing that last note, I'm going to start right here.

It goes right back to the start, and we do the whole thing again.

Play through the whole thing twice

Before we finally end. So get lots of exercise from this now.

A couple measures to be extra careful on are always the measure right before we get to the ending,

and the measure right before we turn around and start going to descending. Remember, right here we get:

And then students always want to play a C there, but remember the last note here is D.

D, and then it turns around.

So be extra careful on this measure as well.

Quick piano posture review: Remember to make sure your bench is far enough away

that your arms can comfortably rest with your elbow slightly in front of your body.

You want your forearm mostly parallel with the floor, wrist parallel with the floor, and really flexible.

Sit with a nice tall back.

Remember to use arm weight as you play. You want your arm, shoulder, whole body working together to play.

Also, remember as you play to keep this first joint in a properly curved shape not

bent backwards like this.

Needs to be just firm enough to keep that correct shape as you play each finger.

And then another quick reminder to keep your pinky playing near the tip, not flat.

Near the tip.

Now let's talk about the wrist for a second. It's so important as you play to keep your wrist flexible. In fact, put your hands on the piano keys. Let your fingers just rest on the piano keys. And I want you to just kind of wobble your wrists around for a little bit.

See how I'm doing this? Your wrists should feel always like they're floating and flexible as you play.

And in fact, as you play Hannon,

I want you to think of your wrist kind of floating through the notes. Make sure your wrist is never locked too low or too high.

It should always be

moving in motion. Notice how as I step up my wrist kind of glides to the side.

it's going to always be

in motion. Never locked. Notice, here's the wrong way:

See how my wrist is locked into one position?

If I practice that way for long enough it's going to start to hurt after a while. You want your wrist to move with the nose.

Doesn't have to be a big motion, but never locked in place.

So let's talk about some ways that you can practice Hanon to get the most out of your practice time.

This isn't repertoire, this is just to get faster, stronger,

better, fingers for playing your repertoire. So we want to make the most of this time ...