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I'm really curious as a student to hear how people here became fluent in pianese.

Hanon and Czerny's op.740 seem to be the common denominator. Is that the case?

Nope - in fact, I never heard of them when I was a student.

I became 'fluent' (whatever that means) over my ten student years simply by learning from my teachers who gave me pieces that developed aspects of technique, plus - of course - the usual scales & arpeggios, following the ABRSM syllabus.

No studies of any sort were involved at any stage.

Never did Hanon (thankfully) and only played a few Czerny studies (not from Opus 740). The only real benefit I got from Czerny was learning how to play polyrhythms (3 against 2 and 4 against 3). Had a teacher from age 13-14 who taught me scales and arpeggios. Basically learned from the John W. Schaum and John Thompson piano courses - and then started studying short classical works from age 12 on.

I had a similar experience. The teacher I had in my teens didn’t cover much theory and didn’t require me to learn scales, arpeggios, etc. I did a few of the Hanon exercises but never learned Czerny. I too started with the Schaum series and moved on to short classical works when I was about 11. I learned technique within the pieces I was playing and continue to do so. Here it is, a gazillion years later, and I seem to have enough technique to pull of a decent rendition of almost anything that interests me.

Practice scales a lot, arpeggios, chords, use your body, legs, back, belly, etc. when improvising.

Play sections from pieces that are challenging and try and figure out the technique from them e.g. octaves in heroic polonaise (it's really just moving your hands in a circle while being relaxed, also using wrist at appropriate time and circling with your body if necessary)

Czerny, clementi, cramer, are the three C's according to busoni for exercise you should be doing.

Bach is also probably what I think is the best for technique, I would use czerny editions of bach or busoni, though, make sure you use an edition that was edited by PIANISTS.

I also recommend plaidy exercises, the double sixths with fingering 2,5 and 1,4 really stretched out my hand in a comfortable position, legit just two chords made my hands grow into piano really well..

Bach though is really the best, all of my other advice is just details, if you really want good technique play Bach music, and then just improvise/practice scales a lot...

Another best advice is... WORK on your weaknesses, I'm good at scales now, so I focus a lot more on arpeggios, trills, and chords, it's fun to practice what you're good at, but, you improve faster by tackling your weaknesses.

I did No.1 Hanon for a week and maybe one or two Czerny studies. I did around 6 Chopin Etudes as a teenager but unfortunately my teachers, who I think were excellent in many ways, didn't give me much specific technical instruction on those etudes or even on scales and arpeggios. I did all the scales and arps but certainly wish my teachers, who were all high level professionals, had given me a lot more detailed instructions on technique. In general, many of my teachers weren't demanding enough. I studied Chopin Op.31 and 53 in high school but would be revolted by the way I played them back then if I could hear what they sounded like.

The result of all the above is that I don't have enough technique to play very advanced music well. Back in high school and college I was blissfully unaware of my shortcomings, both musical and technical. Now I have much higher standards and only learn music that I think I can play well(using my concept of "well"). But I finally realized there are so many very great pieces I can handle well it doesn't bother me much. I may not be able to play Chopin Op.42 well but I can play all the other waltzes OK.

I’ve never heard of using your body, legs, back and belly when improvising, but rather the same body parts used with other styles of playing. How, for example, are you suggesting the belly should be used?

I have never heard of this term "pianese." The implication is that piano playing is like a language, which I agree with. My teacher always said stay away from Czerny etudes, Hannon, etc. because they emphasize technique rather than musical qualities such as we experience say with Chopin etudes.

Many feel that working on pieces that only are about technique like Hanon or some Czerny Etudes(many are very musical and terrific pieces) allows one to concentrate purely on the technique and/or work on a very specific aspect of technique. Very few would say that practicing scales and arpeggios is a bad idea although that is purely technical work. And one certainly does not have to spend a high percentage of practice on purely technical work like scales. If one practices for an hour/day, ten minutes on scales is not a disaster.

One cannot begin to hope to learn any of the Chopin Etudes, even if one is aiming to play them considerably below professional speed, until one is quite advanced. So I wonder what kind of technical work your teacher recommends before one reaches that very advanced level.

I doubt anyone else has either. I'd say music itself is like a language. Playing the piano is one way of making music. Hanon perhaps, but some Czerny etudes are actually quite musical and fun to play. But as PL states above, you can't successfully play Chopin etudes without a solid technique. Many folks develop their technique over a period of time simply by learning repertoire - from easy to advanced. Whatever works is fine as long as it takes you where you need to go.

No Hanon and so far just one Czerny. Instead, very good, in-depth lessons from my teacher, who sees every single piece as an opportunity for her students to develop a broad range of technical and musical skills.

My teacher studied with Sophia Rosoff, student of Abie Whiteside. She does not teach the Czerny and Hanon because of the stress created doing pure finger exercises. You might check out Abie Whiteside's book "On Piano Playing as an introduction to the method. It does focus on techniques for mastering Chopin Etudes and general body oriented playing approaches.

Dogperson - in particular you might want to check this approach out, all about using the body, back etc to play piano.

Of course, no pianist totally eliminates body movements when playing: we may lean into or away from the keys. Maybe this is all Pablo meant, but I have no explanation for how the belly is used. Not do I know what he specifically meant. Nor do I understand why he singled out improvisation.

Your title mentions technique, but what you list is a bunch of notes, and not technique. That is, the manner in which that bunch of notes is executed can give technique, and that is the point. In the least they go hand in hand. Technique involves how you physically act upon the instrument, given the nature of the instrument, the nature of physics, the nature of the human body, in order to produce notes and their quality as desired. We can expand out from there.

I know some very good teachers who give their students Czerny to some extent. I don't see any reason why practicing a Czerny etude would cause stress unless one practiced it obsessively or with poor technique. Most of his etudes are very short.

You can hear a student playing a delightful Czerny Etude at a lesson at around 2:00 in this video:

Delightful indeed !!!

I think it would be more fruitful to ask people who have gone through instruction, "What were you not taught that you had to learn later?"

It is indeed delightful. But I find everything leading up to that playing to be much more important and pertinent. The etude, and any etude or exercise, is meaningless, and can in fact be destructive, unless you also get these kinds of elements - the how of it all. And this is what technique is, in the sense of what I wrote before rather cryptically.

This also goes to what BDB wrote.
In the instrument I studied first with a teacher, I did etudes and such for each grade level, but the "how" element was missing. I discovered, going on Youtube later and seeing these things and related items taught, that my "being able to play" them had been pointless, because I had missed what was meant to be learned. As in the Etude lesson.

In this thread, the OP seems to be asking how pianists here became technically good (or 'fluent in pianese' as he puts it). Though if one is talking purely about technical learning, all decent teachers would surely teach all the important technical skills if the student keeps progressing and continues with instruction for long enough - say 10 years - and he would eventually reach an advanced level. Good enough to play any of the WTC and most Beethoven sonatas to a reasonable standard, if he puts his mind to it.

In his other thread, he was asking whether we wished we had been taught differently:
https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthre...bout-the-way-you-learnt.html#Post3181656 - which seems akin to your proposed query.

I'd guess that most pianists would learn stuff later that they didn't learn from their teachers when their tastes changed or they started branching out into things other than pure classical piano.

For instance, I 'picked up' on playing from lead sheets without even realizing that's what I was doing (as I'd never heard about lead sheets or fake books then) simply because I was asked to accompany pop songs, using song books with guitar chords as my guide. Similarly, I also played pop and folk etc by ear, and improvised on their tunes - none of which I was taught. The important thing, to my mind, is that though I was never taught specifically how to do them, I was taught the skills with which to do all that (i.e. ear training, theory & harmony & composition etc).

Something like "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for life." (Though I was never taught how to fish, have never fished, and never knowingly caught a fish, not even of any sort......)