What a Pain! 3-year on follow-up comments on hand problems
Wow how time flies! It’s almost 3 years ago I started getting numbness and strange sensations in my left hand pinky. Over the next few months (early 2010) the condition worsened. I wrote an entry about it then What a pain in the… this describes typical “hand” issues: cubital tunnel, carpal tunnel, epicondylitis and nerve problems with the ulna nerve. The post also has some YouTube videos of exercises that I found researching the problem.
So have have things progressed?
I want a piano teacher like Pebber Brown!
Check out Pebber Brown’s Youtube channel and site!
Pebber is an amazing teacher. He has some awesome lessons available on-line (500), he has ton’s of free PDF study sheets to download from his website. There’s a huge amount of talent, effort and thought gone into all this. Only one problem: he teaches guitar/bass.
An Extreme Sight-Reading Pre-study Checklist!
We are used to the idea of “Extreme Sports” so how about an “Extreme Sight-Reading Pre-study” Checklist? 😉
Lately I’ve formalised my sight-reading practice into two tasks: firstly an away from the piano pre-study task of around 20 minutes. Secondly the play through at the piano.
The aim of the pre-study of the score is to really suck out as much information as possible. This is completed prior to sitting down and playing through the piece at the piano. I think that this skill is one aspect of what good sight-readers do intuitively and quickly.
To help this process, I started writing a check list of things that I must look for in the score during the pre-study. In recent weeks this has now evolved into the “Sight-Reading Pre-study Checklist” shown here and which has gone through several cycles of revision.
My experience using this has been very positive in that it helps to grasp and assimilate the score and keep focus during the pre-study of the piece. What has also been an eye-opener, is writing out the notes, staffs, scales runs, chords and so forth on the blank staffs I’ve put in the checklist. This greatly helps with the decoding of for example, the highest or lowest notes on each staff and those in particular with lots of ledger lines.
I’m finding it’s currently taking around about 20 minutes to go through a simple Grade 2 piece (ABRSM). I’ve also noticed that the number of problems encountered during the “real” play through at the piano have reduced (and so I have dropped the ‘at the piano’ study task to 3 minutes). Any problems are noted down afterwards. The completed forms for each sight-read piece are available for subsequent review.
Further details and a link to a PDF of the checklist can be found in the full article. The checklist is in an evolutionary state and your thoughts, ideas and comments are most welcome!
Installing and running PracticePrompt under Windows Vista and Seven
Hi folks,
I’ve updated the main post about downloading and installing PracticePrompt. However, I’ve also done a test under Vista and have looked into issues for Seven.
Windows Vista
I downloaded and installed the PP22_setup.exe OK into a folder. The setup routine ran OK, but I was required to click “Allow” in a security dialogue. The application appears to have installed to the new target directory and created the desktop icon successfully.
When running the application from the desktop I also got a Security dialogue that I selected “Allow” and PracticePrompt ran fine, adding, editing and saving tasks to log files. The uninstall routine also ran cleanly.
Windows Seven
Found a link where I’m sure that the security/certificate issues are fully explained here
Hope this helps!
PracticePrompt – The Practice Management Application
Welcome to PracticePrompt the application. This is a FREEWARE Windows application (sorry nothing for Mac, Unix or Android!).
The main features:
- Use it to manage your practice plan and tasks.
- Let it guide you through your practice session in real time.
- Build up a data log of all your completed practice tasks that are then available for review and analysis.
PracticePrompt - The Application
A new year – a new beginning
Last year has been a bit of an “annus horibilis”. Early in the year I started getting numbness in my left hand little pinkie, this worsened eventually affected my outer side of my left hand with the fourth and fifth fingers becoming less than useless. All last years plans for learning advanced pieces went out the window! I effectively took nearly two months off (with just a couple of practice sessions). I focussed on conservative treatment and stretching/stengthening exercises. All of this seemed to help greatly. I continue with these exercises as often as I can remember but try to do four or five sessions weekly. These involve stretching exercises for golfer’s elbow, cubital & carpal tunnel and a couple of strengthing exercises using hand weights.
The time away from piano provided an opportunity for a re-think. Upon return, I started working on sight-reading and completing learning all the scales around the circle of fifths. Now I wish I’d taken this approach when I first returned to piano several years ago. Still, better late than never.
The sight-reading has been incredibly interesting. It’s gone off the boil a bit over the Xmas period, but hoping to get back into it ASAP. Sight-reading lots of easy material has been very useful, but studying pieces 1 level above the sight-reading level has been very revealing. These are like a mini-audit of abilities, and completing one piece a week has covered a lot of ground (compared to my former approach of spending months on a single piece). This has revealed technical weaknesses in my left hand in particular.
Lately then, I’ve been focussed on lots of technique: scales, a Hanon (no 5) and some of my own making to improve my left hand and the weak fouth finger in particular. All this work being done to a metronome. For a while I think I was too focussed on just being able to ratchet up the tempo regularly. Whilst this has greatly improved, its not the key focus (which is increasing control and dexterity, of the left hand). Alternatively, perhaps I’ve completed “phase one” of getting scales and the Hanon to a metronome setting of 76 (four notes per click).
My philosophy now is to treat all these exercises like learning to speak a language fluently (I’m still struggling with just one). What I mean is to completely internalise the skill and play with the brain. I completed 30 cycles scales around the circle of fifths, but for many that were new I was “working out” each minor scale from the relative major. Now I try to anticipate the notes each time before playing. I’ve even gone back to playing 1 octave of quarter notes with one finger, but trying to visualise the scales first. Lately I’ve been playing quarter notes (1 octave), eighth notes (2 octaves) and then sixteenth notes (2 or 3 octaves) with several repeats, first HS then HT and then playing with rhythms and alternating stacatto/legato. During the last 6-7 months, the study task time for this has increased from 15 to 30 minutes. In addition, I have one focussed task to work on the current “worst scale”.
The Hanon exercise (I’m only doing one) has been a revelation. Hanon/Czerny exercises seem to get a lot of crticism and it’s been useful to default to this camp and take the “I learn technique from doing pieces”. I now don’t believe this to work. It just seems so sensible to work on the technical building blocks that are the basis for all pieces, rather than struggle with them in situ. When young, my piano teacher gave me Czerny exercises (101) which I didn’t enjoy. But I can see the point in musicless Hanon, where you learn fluency in generic finger patterns (which is my primary left hand weakness overall).
In many ways, this has been a bit like starting over and I’m enjoying the sense of doing it “properly” for once!
A few screen shots…
Here’s a few screen shots of the windows application I use to manage my practice sessions and generate the blog entries.
The first is the main application showing the list of practice tasks, the red clock is a count down timer for each task and it automatically moves to the next. The second shows a date range search of completed tasks….
A Change of Tack…
A change of tack seems to have occurred of late. I have caught a “back-to-basics” sight-reading bug. Some thoughts and ideas, and the usual philosophical ramblings follow.
A method (Dr Dianne Hardy’s) for improving sight-reading is described and a DIY approach outlined…
Sight-reading: YouTube Tutorials, Notes and Thoughts
There are many piano tutorials on YouTube and I started reviewing some of these. You can find a collection of these and a summary of their key points and my thoughts and strategy in the full article… (more…)
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