# Hanon — Part I

**Interactive twin:** [`hanon.html`](hanon.html)

Charles-Louis Hanon's *The Virtuoso Pianist* (1873) opens with **twenty preparatory exercises** that
build finger independence and strength — especially the weak 4th and 5th — and bring the left hand up to
the level of the right. All twenty are **transcribed to notation** here so you can read *and* hear them.

**How Hanon says to practise:** lift each finger firmly and play with an even, strong tone; keep the wrist
loose; play **hands together, two octaves up and down**; start with the **metronome at 60** and only push
the tempo (toward ~108) once every note is clean; practise **daily**.

## Read & hear — one exercise at a time

- Pick a number (1–20). The exercise is drawn on a grand staff and played back on the on-screen keyboard.
- Each exercise carries a short **description** of what it trains (e.g. No. 6 builds pinky endurance, No. 14
  is the core 3-4-5 workout, No. 20 is the big hand-stretcher), alongside its note count, key, and opening
  fingering.
- **Right hand shows in gold, left hand in blue** — one octave apart, moving together — with finger
  numbers where Hanon marked them.
- **Play** runs the exercise: a highlight band sweeps the staff, the current note turns red, the
  keyboard lights up, and the view auto-scrolls. **Stop** clears it.
- Playback runs at the shared **metronome bar's tempo** (four notes per beat) — lower the BPM to slow it
  down. **Stop** halts playback.
- **Play this in _X_** transposes the exercise to any of the twelve major keys. Because Part I is written
  entirely in C (white keys), a constant transposition keeps every note diatonic to the chosen key, so the
  staff shows the correct **key signature** (up to 6 sharps / 5 flats) with no messy per-note accidentals.
  The on-screen keyboard also only labels the notes that belong to the selected key's major scale, hiding
  the rest to cut clutter. The pattern is kept near middle C, so it never runs off the keyboard — ideal for taking one exercise
  around the circle of fifths, exactly as Hanon recommends.

The note + fingering data is parsed from the Mutopia Project LilyPond engraving (typeset by
Javier Ruiz-Alma, CC BY-SA 4.0); the music itself is public domain (Hanon, 1873).

## All 60 exercises & the original score

These twenty are just Part I. To **read the full engraved score** for all three parts — Part II (scales,
arpeggios, broken chords) and Part III (octaves, repeated notes, trills, tremolos) — use the score reader
on the [Sight reading](reading.md#hanon-read) page, where the complete PDF is embedded with a
Part I / II / III selector and downloads. For every exercise transposed to all keys with audio, see
[hanon-online.com](https://www.hanon-online.com/).