4 Piano Exercises That Actually Work!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, Robert Estrin giving you four piano exercises that actually work. If you have watched my videos, you know what, I'm not a big fan of doing endless exercises. As a matter of fact, I suggest taking your music and turning it into exercises, and that can solve a lot of problems while solidifying the pieces you actually play. Check out the description, I have that video for you. Today, we're going to talk about four essential exercises that can elevate your piano playing that anybody seriously playing the piano should do these four things because you'll get tremendous benefits from them.

Number one, scales. And it's not just practicing scales, it's how you practice scales that will really make the difference for you. Did you know that it's much more difficult to lift up previously played fingers than to push down fingers? I've demonstrated this many times showing how lifting up fingers is much more difficult than pushing them down. Just try that, especially your fourth finger doesn't want to lift up. And to get clean releases, and the way to practice this is slow practice, raising your fingers, making sure to just use only your fingers, not your arms for the power, as follows as I'll show you in this slow practicing.

I want you to notice how my right-hand thumb is tucked under the entire time except when it's playing. That way it's prepared for the thumb crossing, so you don't have to do this when playing fast.

It's already prepared well in advance. Watch how that works.

My right hand thumb is tucked under, raised rounded fingers, no up and down motion of the arms.

Now it reverses and it's the left hand thumb that's tucked under.

You can feel the strength you develop and independence of the fingers by practicing with these raised rounded fingers.

Incidentally, this slow practice will give you more benefit for the musculature of your hands than fast practice. So you should do that at least four times in a row. I'm at a very slow speed at like 60, whatever speed you are comfortable with. But then after this, you go to two notes to the beat and you do exactly the same thing. I'll just demonstrate a little bit so you get the idea.

And finally, you do that four times also or more times if necessary, both on one note to the beat, add a two notes to the beat until you're really secure and comfortable and relaxed in your playing and you really feel like you're digging into those keys with your fingers. And finally, when you get to four notes to the beat, you lighten things up so you gain fluency.

Staying close to the keys, there's no time to raise your fingers.

So you do four times at one note to the beat, four times at two notes to the beat, and as many times as you can fast, listening for the evenness from top to bottom. There's innumerable other things you can do with different phrasings, articulations, dynamics, but this is the fundamental. Learn all major scales. What's the second thing? Well, you probably guessed it already. Arpeggios.

Arpeggios are practiced almost the same way. Now there's a little bit of a complication with arpeggios because the thumb crossings are so far that you might be running into problems where you're doing this sort of thing.

So aside from tucking the thumb under just like with scales, there's a little bit of a rotation this way with the hand because you don't want to do this raising your shoulders.

And watch how this works.

And now the left hand thumb and rotating so you can accommodate the notes, always preparing in advance.

Now here are the arpeggios. You might also want to practice in this manner which can really be helpful.

Then you can do this.

There are many, many different ways of approaching practicing scales and arpeggios. I have a lot of videos on that and you can check them out on my website, livingpianos.com. There's a search box. Just type in scales or arpeggios. You'll keep me busy for a long time, but these are fundamentals that you can use right now. Let's move on. Fingers are one part of the piano. Wrists are also instrumental in your technique for staccatos, for octaves, for chords. And the way to practice this initially is by just playing a very simple exercise in thirds using the wrist. You must identify the wrist separate from the arms because the arms are big and clumsy and heavy and they can't go fast enough.

So identifying and being able to isolate the wrist from the arms, here's a perfect exercise to achieve this.

Notice how my arms are not going up and down, but my arms are guiding right over the right keys. And that's what you must do.

Strike from above in one sudden motion.

By the way, if you've never done this before, you'll feel it in your arms because they're not muscles you use that often.

And if you're doing this, then you're doing it wrong.

Even if you're doing this with the arms and the wrist, all the motion comes from the wrist, not the arms.

Now this seems like a really simple exercise, but it's all how you execute it that makes the difference. You'll feel it here in your arms. These muscles get a nice workout. And just going through that, just as I did, go through that a couple of times each day and you'll be surprised at how it will heighten your technique for chords. It's utilizing countless phrasing from simple staccatos...

...to get that clarity, or in chord work.

Notice that was all on the wrist and it makes it effortless. That piece is a great piece, by the way, if you want to develop your wrist and your strength, because it's such a torrid of force with all the repeats that if you tried to do that with your arms, you would be exhausted, it would be sluggish. When you learn to use your wrist, you can lighten up, you can get speed and fluency, which leads us seamlessly to the last exercise, which is actually an extension of working on staccatos, which is octaves, which is the same principle of the wrist with the addition of the power of the arch. The arch equalizes the force of the weak pinky and the strong thumb. And once again, using the metronome at 60.

Striking from above, the end of each note is the preparation over the next key.

Keep the second finger curled.

Here the equal pinky and thumb, if I didn't do that, the thumb would be heavy like this, but it's all the wrist keeping your shoulders relaxed.

It's light, striking from above.

If you tried to do this with your arms, you could never get any more speed.

Do as many repetitions as you can.

And those are four essential exercises. Spend just a few minutes each day doing these and your technique will be elevated.

Learn all the major and minor scales and arpeggios. Take one a week. There's no rush. You've got a lifetime to enjoy the piano and to develop your playing.

I'm Robert Estrin. This is livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks so much for joining me. Subscribe if you like videos like this. There's a lot more to come just to help your piano playing. We'll see you next time.

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