Piano Exercises for Students
Piano practice is for those who want to learn to play piano pieces for performance or just for fun. Most students should set up some weekly steps to achieve a goal, mainly getting a piece learned. After the student sets up some small steps and executes them, results will follow for the patient pianist.
Most pianists need to work on developing the arm muscles as well as the hand and finger dexterity to get the power needed for chords and endurance. Finger exercises such as studies by Hanon or Czerny are effective for developing finger power. When finger exercises are practiced along with arm exercises such as lifting light weights, you will find that you are armed with the power to become a better pianist.
Scales and arpeggios are the backbone of piano technique and with regular practice fingers will become more agile and dexterous. Speed will gradually be gained after much practice, but it is not crucial until accuracy is achieved. Pianists can practice these exercises at any speed in the beginning, as accuracy will get better with repetition.
Remember you should start your exercises before you play your actual assignments for your daily practice sessions. You don’t want to spend great quantities of time exercising your fingers and muscles in your hands and arms. This can be counterproductive as too much muscle mass in the fingers will prevent dexterity instead of enhancing it.
Finger muscles are found in the arm so twisting or bending the wrist or fingers in abrupt or odd ways that can cause harm to your hand. Aim for playing with a relaxed wrist, not a tense froze wrist while you play. Tension in the arm, wrist or fingers will lead to mistakes and possible injury, so if you find your arm or hand in pain stop as you are overdoing it.
Piano exercises are generally not popular with piano students, because they have a reputation of being boring and tedious. Many piano teachers expect students to play exercises as a part of the practice routine, and they usually expect the student to play them at the beginning of practice. Students should not feel that it is a useless waste of time, as they can look forward to some degree of improvement in finger dexterity and strength in just a few weeks.
Students do not necessarily have to repeat scales over and over. The selection of certain etudes are a great choice as many contain scales already in the piece, depending on the composer. Piano exercises are important as they assist the student to increase finger agility so that their technique is improved for their learning their main pieces.
Keep in mind that playing exercises, scales, and etudes or studies will be better finger dexterity and technique. Do not overdo the exercises, but spend about ten minutes maximum daily. Make the best of your time playing the exercises, even try to play them musically with dynamics and with feeling if you can because you are improving your ability as a pianist.
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