Chuan C. Chang - Fundamentals Of Piano Practice (ang. 2006), Muzyka\Pianino
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Fundamentals
of
Piano Practice
by
Chuan C. Chang
To my wife
Merry
,
and our daughters
Eileen and Sue-Lynn
The material of Chapter One originated from my notes on how the late Mlle. Yvonne
Combe taught our daughters. Mlle. Combe was Debussy's disciple and helped transcribe
his new compositions as he played them out on the piano. She performed that incredible
Second Piano Concerto by Saint Saens with the composer conducting. Every audience
that attended recitals by her students, especially when they played Debussy and Saint
Saens, was mesmerized. This book had to be written: without it, her passing would have
deprived this world of a priceless art.
Chapter One: PIANO TECHNIQUE
Chapter Two: TUNING YOUR PIANO
References
Second Edition, Feb. 10, 2006
Copyright 1991-2006, by Chuan C. Chang
This entire book can be downloaded free at:
http://members.aol.com/chang8828/contents.htm
Copyright 1994-2006; No part of this document shall be copied without including the name of the author:
Chuan C. Chang
, and this copyright statement.
This book provides free piano lessons, piano teaching material, and piano tuning instructions. You can
learn piano up to
1000 times faster (!)
compared to other methods (see Chapter One, IV.5). This is the
first book ever written on how to practice at the piano. For hundreds of years, many teachers and other
books taught you what techniques to acquire, but that is of little use unless you know how to acquire them
quickly, as Mozart, Liszt, etc., did.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
I was born in Taiwan in 1938, grew up in Japan (1945-1958), and then moved to the U.S. in 1958;
received a BS degree in Physics from RPI in Troy, NY, and PhD in Physics from Cornell Univ. Started
taking piano lessons in 1950. The basis for writing this book originated with an incident in 1978 when I
took one of our 2 daughters to her piano lesson with Mlle. Yvonne Combe. Little did I know that it would
change my life, a once in a lifetime experience. In a few years of lessons, our two daughters were
progressing at unbelievable speed, which my wife and I attributed naturally (and mistakenly) to their
intelligence. During this lesson, it became time to choose a new piece of music, so the teacher took out
this frayed book with all the candidate pieces arranged according to difficulty. Mlle. Combe said,
"Choose whatever you want!!!", and my daughter went all over the book, easy and difficult, looking for
what she might like. I couldn't help interfering to ask "Shouldn't she stay within her level of difficulty?"
The teacher smiled knowingly with my daughter and said "Difficulty isn't our problem, is it?" I was so
embarrassed by my apparent ignorance and flabbergasted by the implications of what she said that I shut
up the rest of the lesson and had long conversations with our daughters afterwards on this topic. Soon
thereafter, I decided to take notes on how this teaching system worked. It took me about 15 years of
further observations, comparisons, and research to realize that most teachers do not teach practice
methods and to understand the reasons why.
I also taught myself to tune the piano by reading books because I did not have the money to pay a piano
tuner. Since neither my wife nor I have perfect pitch, I must attribute our two daughters' accurate perfect
pitch to the fact that our piano was always in tune since their birth.
Most recent revision dates:
Year 2004
Ch. One: II.20 & II.21, significant additions, Jan. 25;
III.5, Scales and Arpeggios, significant additions, Jan. 25;
III.10, significant additions, Jan. 26;
III.20, new section on Bach’s Inventions, Feb. 5;
III.5, III.7.d, small additions, Feb. 16;
III.4.b, small additions, Mar. 3;
III.16.e, new section, Mar. 4;
III.5, Scales and Arpeggios, small additions, Mar. 5;
III.21, new section, "Psychology of Piano", Apr. 18;
Changed my address from Colts Neck, NJ, to Odessa, Florida, Apr. 18;
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Changed my address from Odessa, to Tampa, Florida, May 15;
Testimonials: inserted testimonial (#2), Jun. 28; minor changes, Jul. 11;
III.7, Exercises, major revisions, added section on speed, Jul. 11;
References: Added important new references, Jul. 12;
Preface: added notes on tuning and scientific methods, Jul. 15;
I & II: split into 4 sections for easier downloading/printing, Jul. 19;
First printing of entire 2nd Edition book!!!!!! Jul. 29;
Preface: revised, because this section is so informative, Aug. 6;
I, First Section (for download), major rewrite; the link for entire Chapter One, sections I & II has been
eliminated, Aug. 11;
III.15-18, major rewrite, added info on electronic pianos, Aug. 26, 30, & 31;
III.6, Memorizing, major rewrite (mostly near the end), Sept. 23;
Added instructions for printing this book using Kinko's, Sept. 24;
III.22, new section "Outline Summary of Entire Method", Nov. 6;
III.18, complete rewrite, Nov. 6;
III.22, Improved layout of "outline", Nov. 9;
III.1, added "Definition of Rhythm", Nov. 9;
II, Third and Fourth download sections, significant rewrites, Nov. 21;
Changed my address from Tampa, FL to Odessa, FL, Nov. 28.
Year 2005
Added link to Spanish translation, Apr. 15;
III.5, extensive rewrite; added video of TO, TU, Sept. 19;
III.5, added section on Chromatic Scale, Sept. 21;
III.7, added photo of palm stretch exercise, Sept. 21;
Start project to list teachers who can teach these methods, Oct. 9;
References: added Combe's "biography" in review of Chang's book, fixed broken links, Oct. 13;
Ch. Two, Section 2: minor revisions, Oct. 26;
Ch. One, III.6, major rewrite, Dec. 13;
III.8-10, significant rewrite, Dec. 19;
III.22, significant rewrite, Dec.20;
III.11-12, major rewrite, Dec. 23;
III.6, minor touchup, Dec. 31.
Year 2006
III.14-15, major rewrite, Jan. 7;
III.16.a-c, major rewrite, Jan. 8;
Added "Abbreviations and Frequently Used Phrases" at beginning, Jan. 28;
III.5, expanded explanation of minor scales, Jan. 28.
Request:
to those who have found this material useful, please make an effort to let at least two people
know about my web site, so that we can start a chain reaction of ever more people that will be informed of
this site.
I am looking for volunteers to translate this book into any language. See "Notes for Translators" at the
end of the "Table of Contents". Please
to discuss this matter.
This book is now available in
,
,
,
and
I am very grateful to our
German translator, Edgar Lins, for his many suggestions that have significantly improved the quality of
this book.
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How to use this book.
This book is written in HTML and is intended to be printed out in sections for
reading.
You can also download the entire book in
or as a
This
(PDF) is the only version of this book with an index. After it is on your computer screen, you can either
print it out or save it on your hard drive. In order to print subsections, print by page number; in PDF
format, these page numbers appear in the contents section. In the HTML format, this book can be over
300 pages long, depending on your HTML settings (the page numbers will depend on the settings of your
computer) so you will have to find the right pages by trial-and-error or by left-clicking the scrolling bar.
One way to print this book is to choose one of the PDF formats above, download it to a file in your
computer and send the file electronically to
and follow directions (e.g., request double side,
regular white paper, collate, coil binding, clear front and black vinyl back covers, locate nearest Kinko's
Store, etc.); cost is about $30/copy (8 cents/page) if you pick it up at Kinko's, less if you order more
copies. Choose 10pt print or ask for a proof; larger print will produce a book over an inch thick and cost a
lot more!
I can print it for you: send $25 (includes shipping 1st class) to: C. C. Chang, 16212 Turnbury Oak Dr,
Odessa, FL 33556, or you can pay through
by using my email address, cc88m@aol.com. See
photos of the book
and
.
For learning piano, use this book as a supplementary textbook if you have a teacher. If you don't have a
teacher, pick any piece of music you want to learn (that is within your technical skill level) and start
practicing it using the methods described here; the methods are arranged roughly in the order in which
you will need them as you start learning a new piece. In either case (with or without a teacher), read the
entire book quickly the first time, starting with the Preface which gives you a quick overview. Skip any
section that you think is not relevant or is too detailed; do not try to understand every concept or to
remember anything -- read it like a science fiction novel, mainly for fun -- you just want to get acquainted
with the book and get some idea of where certain topics are discussed. Finally, read as much of the
Testimonial section as you find interesting. Then re-start from where you think the book gives material
that you need; most people will need to read all of Chapter One, sections I and II. Then you can skip
around to specific topics that apply to the composition you are learning. If you don't have a clear idea of
what compositions to learn, this book cites many examples, from beginner material (Chapter One, III.18)
to intermediate; therefore, in your first reading, look for where these examples/suggestions are.
.10
Trials, tribulations, and successes of pianists; helpful comments from teachers, and readers. See the
emails and reviews from readers. (Jul. 11/2004) P.10
TABLE OF CONTENTS
An overview of this book and its philosophy: what is in this book and why these practice methods work.
(Aug. 6/2004) P.18
CHAPTER ONE: PIANO TECHNIQUE
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