Playing classical piano can be a challenge. Honestly, mastering any instrument is going to take an awful lot of practice. But the piano is very different from many instruments in the fact that there are some ways to play the piano that don’t require perfection. It’s much the same with the guitar. You don’t have to be a virtuoso in order to play good chord music with the piano or guitar. However, playing classical piano is an entirely different thing altogether.
If you really want to know where to begin practicing classical piano, the answer is really much simpler than you might think. Yes, your practice time needs to include more sight reading, and you should also send more time practicing sections of a piece of music as opposed to entire pieces of music so that you master one little part at a time, but there is another element that you should absolutely add to your practice without fail. This one practice tip is used by almost every concert level pianist in the world to begin their daily practice routine.
It’s called Hanon and it was written quite a long time ago, but it will never go out of style. Hanon was written to help concert pianists master the fingering for the note runs in some of the world’s most challenging classical music. It will increase finger strength, dexterity and even muscle memory for those very difficult note runs that even give the very best pianists fits. A concert pianist will begin his practice sessions by playing all the way through the entire book. While that is not entirely necessary for the amateur pianist, it certainly wouldn’t hurt you one little bit.
Practice is all about learning and improving what you happen to be practicing on. And the best way to improve certain aspects of your classic piano ability is to use Hanon to master the most difficult scales from the most difficult music in the world. If you can master Hanon, you can play just about anything.
