Hanon Piano / Keyboard Exercises 1 - 30
Condensed and Simplified for Beginners Easy Reading

In this short book you will find condensed and simplified versions of the Hanon piano finger exercises 1 - 30 as well as the major, harmonic minor and melodic minor scales in every key (two octaves).

What is Hanon?

The ‘Hanon Virtuoso Pianist’ is a collection of piano finger exercises designed to give equal strength, agility and flexibility to all five fingers of both hands. Written by Charles-Louis Hanon sometime in the 1800s, these exercises without doubt have become one of the most widely used techniques by today’s pianists. In my opinion these are the best finger exercises available.

One really great thing about these exercises is that they are applicable to both absolute beginners and advanced players alike, particularly as the reading ability required is minimal. Whatever your ability, these exercises will help improve your technique and finger strength.

Having been written well over 100 years ago, the original work is now in the public domain and therefore digital copies can be acquired free of charge on the internet. However, most of these are very poor quality and the instructions are mainly in French or Russian - neither of which work too well for me! For the full version I personally recommend the ‘Alfred’ Edition edited by Allan Small which is clear and has instructions in English.

So why do I need this book?

The whole point is to make it easy to read and to reduce page turns - less is more! In the full version the first 30 exercises take up fifty pages whereas here there are three exercises per page for the first 20, then two per page for the next 10, reducing the fifty pages to just twelve. I initially produced this for my own use only but figured that others may like to take advantage of what I’ve done.

Does this mean that the print is just smaller?

No, not at all. If you are familiar with these exercises you will know that they are repeated patterns which ascend and descend for two octaves diatonically.

To condense and simplify them and consequently eliminate an enormous amount of page turns I have shown:

• the all-important fingering on the first pattern (as per the original)
• then the repeated second pattern
• then ‘changeover’ patterns between ascending and descending - which are sometimes slightly different
• then finally the last pattern of each exercise which again is often very slightly different.

I have also written them two octaves apart (for easy reading) and only shown them for one octave instead of two. In practice they should be played one octave apart and ultimately be practiced for two octaves.

You can print out any or all the pages as required (the link for the pdf printable version is given at the end of the book).