Fingering Techniques - What Order?

[Si]

I was wondering roughly speaking in what order should all the fingering techinques be learnt.

Or maybe to put it another way is it possible to divise say 3 groups of techniques. Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced.

Basically I just wanted to make sure I cover enough techniques and dont miss out something important that might need a teachers help.

[SCWGuqin]

There...really aren't that many fingering techniques. And most of them appear in even the simplest pieces, making a "beginner/intermediate/advanced" rubric ill-suited.

I'd say just learn the techniques required for each piece, while learning the pieces in a reasonable order and at a slow, deliberate rate.

[Charlie Huang]

I agree. learn a technqiue when it crops up in a piece.

[Si]

Well are there any pieces that seem to introduce a lot of techinques together. Not thinking of the beginner pieces. Main reason I ask is that maybe the tunes I like are not good tunes to learn that introduce important techniques.

For example I like PAZ but its soo long and I suspect that having my teacher teach that for ages could be not so good use of time. So I have started that on my own.

It was my Idea to learn SRC but maybe I should have listened to her and just started on YGR.

So are there a few KEY tunes to pick up that are very useful in drilling home important techniques.

[Charlie Huang]

It's difficult to say because normally, you either learn most of the fingerings at the beginning and then start learning pieces, or you learn only the fundamentals and then the rest when they crop up in some pieces. I find it redundant to treat pieces like some sort of exercise for fingerings. If you want to practice technique, you should do some of the exercises at the front of GY's green book rather than going on a quest to look for pieces with finger techniques and have to learn the whole piece just to 'obtain' those said fingerings. It's too labour intensive.

Either learn them all at the start, or l;earn them as you come across them.

[SCWGuqin]

Also, there's a difference between "featuring a [new] technique" and "featuring a [new or challenging] musical content". For instance, Guan Shan Yue is technically rather hard, but not because it introduces any new techniques: it's just that the melody, dynamics etc. are rather challenging to get perfect. All the techniques are basic. Same for something like Jiu Kuang. If you're worried about not having basic fingering techniques down, that might be evidence that your teachers skimped on the basics, which they should not have done. I would actually recommend months of basic technique practice before starting on any mainstream pieces. And again that's not so much because basic qin techniques are hard as because it's hard to get perfect intonation, tone color, rhythm, etc.

[guzhenglover]

What do YGR and SRC stand for again, syburn?

[Si]

Haha - Shen Ren Chang and the other is my mistake - should be Guan Shan Yue.


Actually the whole reason for my asking this question originally was that say if I will only be in Shanghai for another 6 months or 1 year, then I want to make the most of it.

Thats why I was seeking tunes that allow the most learning opportunities. Im sure there must be a few "musts learn" pieces.

[guzhenglover]

I think that's a very worthwhile question, syburn. I too am thinking about those lines, particularly since I travel a lot as well (and many places do not have any guqin teacher and/or help with guqin questions).