Technique in ten…

I’m always looking for ways to be as efficient as possible in piano practice.

I’m a huge believer in piano technical exercises as I think they allow you to target a wide range of very specific techniques in a very short period of time. Pianists tend to be quite divided as to whether exercises are useful and whether you should practise technique exclusively through pieces. I’m sure there is value in both approaches and it’s more down to the individual to decide what works best for their particular set-up.

I could practise technical exercises for hours as I quite enjoy them, but I devised this short programme for when I don’t have much time and still want to give my muscles a bit of a piano workout. It takes about ten minutes. It’s not exactly what I do as I practise some of the exercises in quite a variety of ways that are difficult to explain in a blog post, but hopefully it gives you some ideas.

The key to making the best use of exercises is to practise them in as wide a variety of ways as possible: different keys (with the same fingering), different dynamics, different registers and so on. Apparently when Egon Petri was asked how he built up his legendary technique he replied that he tries to practise and play everything in every way. Genius advice I think.

The exercises are from the following books:

Brahms - 51 Exercises

Joseffy - School Of Advanced Piano Playing

Dohnányi - Essential Finger Exercises For Obtaining A Sure Piano Technique

Beringer - Daily Technical Studies

Here’s the programme:

- Joseffy: any five finger exercise from page 1-3

- Joseffy:  octave exercise pg. 46, 3rd and 4th line (normal and broken octaves)

- A scale starting on a black key with C major fingering, hands together two octaves apart

- Dohnanyi: pick one exercise from Ex.9-Ex.11

- Brahms: 7

- Brahms: 8b

- Beringer: 179

- Beringer: 329

- Beringer: 164

- practise a trill hands together in short bursts

Let me know how you get on and if you enjoy it.