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Good morning,

I began playing the piano already as an adult, at 36. I played for about three years and then opened a long parenthesis of almost 10 years in which I have lost all my (limited) abilities. I have not lost contact with the instrument, though, because my youngest song does play and I have helped him to read the music during the first five years of his learning.

I have been trying to play these last few days, only to discover that my fingers seem unable of any flexibility.

I would very much appreciate if you could propose me some sheet music to recover dexterity and confidence, without it being too musically boring.

Many thanks in advance for your help,
Gloria

Well, it depends on which level you were at when you stopped. Some suggestions:

JS Bach Anna Magdalena Notebook
Burgmuller op. 100
Czerny op. 139
Tchaikovsky Album for the Young op. 39
Schumann Album for the Young op. 68
Bartok Mikrokosmos (start at whichever volume is appropriate for your level)

I would begin by relearning pieces you played before you stopped. Not the *most* difficult ones, and ones you liked.
It'll take a little while to come back, but it will come back.

Welcome back to the piano, and back to PW, Gloria!

I second Barbaram's advice, with some added instructions:

First, don't assume it to all come back in a flash (even though there may be times when it does just that!)

Take a piece you used to play, but approach it almost as if you've never played it. Do some HS (hands separate) practice, zoom in for isolated section practice, slow it way down etc. What you will find is that it will come back, perhaps that will take longer than you expected, but it will take less time than with a piece you've never played before.

Also re any finger flexibility or dexterity, that will take a bit of time but it will definitely come back. If you ever used a method book, scales book or something like Hanon or Czerny, get those books back out and re-do some of the exercises you did in the early stages of learning the piano. The key is to take things very slowly, and also maybe play/practice for a shorter amount of time than you might be inclined to. Give your body some time to get used to being at the keyboard again.

And whatever you do, don't give up! It will come back!

I can definitely recommend the Burgmüller. I learned all 25 of those pieces in my first year back at the piano as an adult (after one year of serious lessons in my youth, and then a twelve-year break). Burgmüller was introduced to me by my (wonderful) piano teacher as 'exercises that sound like music'. And they do.

Good luck. Don't give up!

Thank you all very much for all your tips and advice, and above all for your encouragement!

I'll maintain you informed about my "progress". So to speak :-)

G.

Hi Gloria,

I noticed you said that you're re-beginning after a 10 year absence. I'm curious, what caused you to stop in the first place?

I played as an adult for about 10 years, then had a long period of 12 years absence from the piano. I returned not too long ago, and am trying to rework some of the pieces I knew back then. It's as if the trauma of losing my son almost 13 years ago completely erased any piano I knew. We were very closely connected not only as mother and child, but through music also.

I remember when I was taking lessons back in my youth my instructor used to beat me up with Czerny and Hanon. From my memories - I will be re-engaging myself with those books shortly, as well - those books were excellent at teaching finger flexibility, common run patterns, as well as dexterity and reach.

Good luck, I'm an adult re-beginner, myself.

I have started playing again recently for the first time in 6-7 years. I took lessons when I was around 7 for 2-3 years, took more lessons when I was in high school, then took lessons as an adult starting around 10 years ago and stopped after a couple of years because my teacher's personality was getting on my nerves. Let's just say she'd get nasty now and then....and I got tired of it. She destroyed my confidence and I didn't want to play again for a few years. But I'm over it now!

I don't know what your personal goals are but there are 2 books that I would recommend.

If you are interested in continuing in the traditional approach (exercises, learning repertoire, sight-reading, performing), I would get a copy of Playing the Piano for Pleasure by Charles Cooke. It's available in a low-cost reprint these days and is a delightful and encouraging book.

If you are lazy (like me) and don't enjoy playing the same piece day in and day out to perfect it and don't like piano exercises but don't mind sight-reading (or the idea of sight-reading), search the libraries (or the on-line used bookstores) and get a copy of Leonhard Deutsch's Piano: Guided Sight Reading.

There are several comments on this site about this book but from what I can tell, most people don't "get it". The first thing Deutsch believed is that many people aren't interested in playing the piano to perform, but want to play for their own enjoyment. He also believed that most people are never going to become virtuosos so the grind of traditional style piano lessons (technical exercises and working on repertoire, repertoire, repertoire) may not suit them. He advocated sight-reading for enjoyment.

But he didn't mean prima vista sight-reading. He advocated reading of pieces that are harder than a person can play and playing them slowly enough so that the person can play the notes accurately. Then, after the first prima vista sight-reading session, the pianist should select the pieces that he/she is most interested in and play them again and again by re-reading the music. He advocated working through a broad selection of piano works and working on them with pure enjoyment in mind. Deutsch has got me excited knowing that I can "get through" pieces that are too hard for me and probably always will be, but I still get a kick out of trying to play them.

I love, love, love both of these books and recommend them highly.

That's a great philosophy - and even 'serious' students should bear that in mind.

I was a serious student (when I was a student, which was a long, long, long time ago ), but piano playing was also fun for me. I regarded it as an enjoyable pastime from the time when I could read music well enough to have a stab at any piece of intermediate level or below. I'd spend my meagre pocket money on cheap sheet music at my local music store, which had a bargain box of such Victorian delicacies as The Maiden's Prayer , to pretty salon pieces like Oscar Merikanto's Valse lente and Ilyinsky's Berceuse, all the way to Rachmaninov's C# minor Prelude. I'd buy anything that looked like it would be fun to play, or had an appealing tune (by then, I could also sight-sing and could 'hear' simple music in my head), regardless of its difficulty.

I've kept all of them ever since, and still bring them out occasionally to play through. The thing is, I never tried to 'perfect' any of them, because I was only playing them for fun. Memorizing, much less performing, any of them was never on the agenda, and I never told my teachers about them. Some pieces became pretty fluent through repeated playing; others I never ever played properly, but still had fun trying them out. For me, playing them was like reading trashy (but enjoyable) novels, except that I wouldn't read the same novel twice - which meant that buying sheet music was far better value.

The upshot of all that playing stuff purely for fun was that I developed excellent sight-reading skills and improved my technique, even during the periods when lessons stopped during school holidays (- my piano lessons were during school hours, from peripatetic teachers).