A Dozen A Day: Pre-Practice Technical Exercises For The Piano [Book 1 Primary]

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The obvious idea here is that at the start of practice, the current Group of 12 exercises provide a suitably varied and helpful warmup routine.

A Dozen A Day • All Year Round – Pianodao A Dozen A Day • All Year Round – Pianodao

Together the exercises form a rich resource for piano teachers and students to draw upon, and with the addition of the book’s special thematic index, it’s easy to focus on specific areas of technique. The Dozen a Day books are universally recognized as one of the most remarkable technique series on the market for all ages! Some exercises gradually get harder and test your hand and finger coordination and geography (playing both hands together). A Dozen A Day: All Year Around brings together the full material from all six of the original volumes in a single 248-page bumper book.While A Dozen A Day exercises can be taught by rote in lessons as a quick fix when the primary objective is to understand and develop the technique they are introducing, they offer great sight reading material too. Linking the stick character illustration to the written notation before trying to play it can sometimes be a great way to help learners recognise patterns in the music, as well as the character with which they might be played. This index is a powerful tool, making it easy to grab All Year Round at any point in a lesson, quickly locate and introduce an appropriate, progressive set of bespoke exercises that suitably address technical issues and development. Edna-Mae Burnam’s six books of technical exercises, A Dozen A Day, quickly established themselves as classics in the piano pedagogy literature, and in the decades since their first appearance back in the 1950’s, their short routines and iconic illustrations have found their way into the hearts (and fingers) of developing pianists around the world, selling some 25 million copies. A Dozen A Day: All Year Round offers additional attractions for teachers, which I will outline, but I would still steer students towards the individual books, appropriate for each level.

A Dozen a Day Book 1 Willis (413366) by Hal Leonard

It is also worth noting at this point that Burnam herself suggested learning a couple of exercises at a time, playing them slowly and softly at first, then introducing a range of dynamics and speeding up the tempi. Dozen A Day exercises naturally lend themselves to written theory too, building on all the points made above. Encouraging a fresh look, publishers Willis Music brought out a bumper edition back in 2017, which I am going to be focusing on in this review. While the first three books are broadly appropriate for players working towards UK Initial, Grades 1 and 2 respectively, the later three books have scope to be used more freely; individual exercises are useful and appropriate right up to Grade 8. As such, they offer ideal material for practising transposition, discovering different shapes in each key, and adapting physical strategies to meet the needs of working with the black keys on the piano.When these are mastered, add another, then another, and keep adding until the twelve can be played perfectly. Nota: Los envíos a España peninsular, Baleares y Canarias se realizan a través de mensajería urgente. Dozen A Day exercises can equally make great quick studies for the learner to work on during the week, without hearing or watching any teacher demonstration first.

A Dozen a Day: Technical Exercises for the Piano to Be Done A Dozen a Day: Technical Exercises for the Piano to Be Done

I was struggling with the main pieces and especially with finger strength, flexibility and familiarity with common shapes and notes. I hope that the suggestions in this review will help teachers and learners alike to find fresh engagement with these little marvels. Paul Harris’s superb Piece A Week series ( reviewed here) is of course an ideal resource for this, but before it appeared, A Dozen A Day was my go-to, and proved very effective. Each book offers six groups of twelve exercises, totalling 60 exercises per book and thus 360 across the full series. With its brilliant Thematic Index, and kept ever within reach, this bumper book succeeds wonderfully as a teacher’s companion, making Burnam’s exercises ever-accessible without encroaching too seriously on lesson time.

All the exercises are named after physical exercises or activities, suitably (and quirkily) illustrated. compound), writing in different octaves, key signatures and clefs can all be explored as they relevantly relate to the learner’s ongoing music tuition. Each book in this series contains short warm-up exercises to be played at the beginning of each practice session, providing excellent day-to-day training for the student. The combination of simple joy and pedagogic value embedded in this classic material has not only stood the test of time, but remains as accessible, worthwhile and engaging as ever, seemingly transcending the fads of fashion. Dozen A Day exercises can even be used for aural development, for example by altering the exercise and playing ‘spot the difference’, comparing sound with symbol.