I’m a fairly advanced pianist, currently taking piano lessons at a conservatory with a very good teacher. I am a very advanced amateur pianist and play a broad variety of e.g. Chopin/Beethoven/ Liszt literature. However, I’ve noticed over time that my understanding of harmony and harmonic structure is relatively weak compared to my technical and interpretative skills.
It’s not that I don’t understand the pieces at all, but I often feel like I’m not really grasping how they are built harmonically or how composers are actually thinking. I’d like to go deeper into the structure of the music—beyond just form—and develop a more solid sense of harmonic language. I’m not aiming to analyze or fully reconstruct everything from the ground up, but rather to develop a more solid, practical understanding of harmony.
The challenge is that, despite having a good teacher, the way harmony is explained to me doesn’t seem to “click” or translate into real understanding when I’m working on pieces.
So my questions are:
- What’s the best way to systematically improve harmonic understanding as an advanced pianist?
- Are there specific methods, exercises, or approaches that worked well for you?
- Would you recommend online courses or particular resources?
- Or is this something that really requires a different kind of teaching approach (even considering a different teacher)?
This doesn’t only apply to classical repertoire, but also to popular music and music in general—although I’m aware that these styles can be quite different, I still often find myself lacking a deeper harmonic understanding there as well. Thank you very much!
Any advice would be appreciated.