Help to play better

[Darqen]

Hey All,

I'm new here and was just wondering if someone could help me. I've been playing piano / keyboard since I was about 7-8. I took my lessons through a school called Technics Music Academy and having gone back to playing after a gap of around 10 years, I realise that sadly I'm not very good. The course teaches basic left hand playing with solid chords and basic rhythms, but not much in the way of advanced stuff and i struggle to play a lot of pieces. I was wondering if there's any music books anyone could recommend for practicing techniques, and hand strength (particularly left hand strength). I did see the Hanon one but there's a lot of criticism against this. I would also like to play blues riffs etc, so any book that could help with this would be much appreciated. Not sure if anyone else studied at the Technics academy, but it seems to have been more geared to play using the keyboard with the inbuilt sounds and rhythms etc.

[chrisw]

I believe that Hanon is ok for strengthening fingers and basic techniques but it is a method meant for pianos rather than keyboards. If you want to strengthen your fingers it would be best to use an acoustic piano with a down weight of at least 50grams. Also if you start to use Hanon I would recommend no more than 15 minutes use each day and try not to speed up too quickly. I would also avoid advanced music at this stage and only increase the level of difficulty slowly. There are lots of adult tutor books none of which I am familiar with but Alfred's Course seems to be used a lot.