You gotta practice your Czerny

For my piano learning, I have a few music books that I practice every week.

These include Hannon, Beethoven’s piano sonatas, Sonatinas and 30 Etudes by Czerny.

I always start out practicing my favorite song, and that inevitably would be something in Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Of course, you know, he’s the man.

The dexterity training by Czerny would always be left until the last minute, or worse, not touched at all. Then I end up having to practice it the following week again, and then prehaps the following week still, until I finally make it sound okay-ish.

Czerny’s practice pieces are not very interesting in terms of musicality, and there are lots of repetitions for training the fingers.

When I practice it though, I do see the purpose of it. It’s exercises for the fingers, you do reps, and then the passage repeats, because you need to do multiple sets.

Czerny is like bench press.

If you make bench press or squats into music, it probably wouldn’t sound as romantic as Sonata Pathétique, but you gotta do them.

Because one day when you feel tall and walking with your chest open, you know it’s the reps and sets that created it.

And I suppose when I enjoy playing Beethoven, I’d have to thank myself for practicing Czerny, even though, he’s not the man.