Mornings and piano

Three years of compulsory piano lessons at Uni made me hate it. My russian teacher was kind somehow but she never taught me to play properly. She would always say that I couldn't play well because I didn't practice enough. In reality, I used to schedule two or three hours each day to piano practice exclusively.

My teacher's problem was assuming that her intuitive technique method worked for everybody. That was never the case so I searched for a method that could give me pointers to get a technique that was natural for my body. My strategy after some time failing playing Mozart was to start my learning process all over again. Yeah, I went as low as possible and climbed the mountain again by playing really easy pieces from Bela Bartok's Microcosmos book series.

The beginner crusade ended on book four, there are six of them. Honestly, the pieces were boring and I couldn't see much progress in my piano skills. Perhaps Bartok's work was better for other people but not for me, I was getting impatient and frustrated. So, I tried to make changes by reading an online book about piano technique but unfortunately it gave me no more than what I'd already known. I was stuck.

A dance teacher told me that my biggest dance technique problem was to push my body beyond it's natural shape. His feedback showed me that I was forcing myself to reach an ideal that was against who I was. In piano for instance, I basically punished my hands with shapes and movements I thought could help me satissfy my russian teacher demands. While my intentions were for a good cause, I never listened to my body hence I got really bad habits for my hands.

The Chopin method basically points out that each finger is different so piano students should treat them accordingly. There's a lot of more technicalities of course but that's the principle Chopin built his students' technique from with splendid results. So, I tried it, I experimented with it and finally I started to develop a smooth and natural piano technique. Right now, there's still a lot of rework going on but not feeling pain in my hands and seeing my progress playing J.S Bach well-tempered clavier has been amazing.