The Best Warm-Up Exercises
for the Piano
Nadia Dandachi, 06/03/2020
Before every practice session on the piano, you must warm-up warm-up warm-up!
Doing certain exercises to get your hands and fingers ready for your next practice session is very important and valuable. Warming finger exercises actually help you play and perform better, while also preventing you from injuring yourself, like developing a painful wrist, inflamed tendons, or muscle strains.
Some warm up exercises train the pianist in speed, precision, agility, and strength of all of the fingers, as well as wrists' flexibility. You'll notice the benefits right away, such as: better endurance, meaning that you can play for longer periods of time without getting tired, improved control and technique, as well as a better hand position on the keyboard and body posture when sitting on the piano!
However do remember, some exercises have to be followed precisely and SLOWLY at first. If the exercise you're doing has a specific finger placement written, then make sure that you follow them exactly, so that you can soon play much better and faster!
Warm up for 10 minutes
(Always start slow)
I usually warm my fingers up for about 10 minutes before I start playing, and even longer if I am preparing for a public performance.
Note: If sometimes you don't have the time to practice at all, try to at least do a warm-up! Trust me, you'll notice a huge improvement in your skills overtime.
Here are all the best exercises you can do:
Hanon Exercises
Charles-Louis Hanon was a French piano composer and music pedagogue who wrote the "The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises" in 1873, which is still used today in modern piano teaching! His method is so renowned and respected, for effectively and incredibly improving pianists' skills, that many music schools organize competitive "Hanon Marathons" for their students!
It is also believed to be the key to why Russia has had -and still does- such a huge number of incredibly skilled virtuoso pianists, some of the best in the world. Hanon exercises were always obligatory in Russian conservatories / music schools, where they even have special tests examining whether a pianist could know all the exercises by heart and play them in all the keys at a very high speed.
But don't worry, the exercises start simple and easy! As you develop and learn more exercises, the difficulty level increases.
If you wish to learn the piano well, I definitely recommend you practice these exercises!
Scales and Chords
If you feel like starting with something simpler and easier, playing scales and chords is the perfect way to go! You can learn them in all the keys, and play them faster and faster the better that you get.
They're easy to learn by heart, and you can also improvise while playing to make them more fun over time, by changing the rhythm for example!
More Tips
Do these exercises very slowly at first. Remember to sit straight, relaxed, and to have your feet comfortably sitting close together on the ground. When you're reading, look for finger placement signs, to put the right finger on the right note. It can feel a bit odd sometimes, but learning the right technique is the way to play better and faster!
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