HOW PIANO WARMUP ROUTINE DELIVERS BIG RESULTS

Do you know a pianist is also like an athlete with small muscles and there are physical therapists specially trained to work with musicians to treat the physical issues they encounter throughout their years of playing? Warming up before a physical workout is something we normally think of such as running because stretching our muscles and all of those connective ligaments and tendons helps us to prevent injury during our workout and allows our bodies to wake up a bit before putting so many demands on it. With pianist, it is the same; taking time to warm up before you begin practicing the piano will prepare you to play better, not hurt from straining your hands or wrists, and provides you with a feeling of connectedness to the piano before you start on the hard work of practicing.

Given below are some warmup exercises suggested by Piano lessons NYC:

1. Start with scales and arpeggios: It is okay if you do not know all of your scales and arpeggios because this warmup provides you the perfect time to practice them and learn them better each day. A good practice for learning your scales and arpeggios is to do something new/different each day like try starting with C and move up chronologically in order as you move through a new scale each day, which means you start on the scale that is ½ step above the one you did the day before. Try to play as many octaves as you know each day moving up to 4 octaves of the same scale and arpeggio at a time, and go through this sequence of a new scale/arpeggio every day until you arrive back at C. Similarly, try to play through your minor scales and arpeggios the same way, start with the Harmonic minors first, then you can add in the natural and melodic afterwards.

2. Use your metronome: Set tempo at 60 equal quarter notes to start with for your scales and arpeggios and once you have excelled your notes at this speed, then move up two or three numbers and try again at this tempo. Do not try to set the metronome at a tempo that is too fast for you to play.

3. Sight reading: Sight-reading a piece of new music each day is an excellent way to warm up your brain power similar to warming up your fingers and hands by starting with scales and arpeggios. This activity grabs our focus, keeps us alert, and brings us into the moment. Try to pick something new to play that may seem a little easy to start with. Remember always that you have seen or played this music before, so you do not want to get deluged with a lot of new technical things - keep it simple.

4. Practice Arpeggios in Octaves: Start with this step very slowly and try playing with both hands together as you can do it if you will go slowly enough, feel the form of your hand as you play in this position, and as they move across the keyboard, allow yourself and your hands to learn this form as you practice each day. Here, accuracy is the main goal, so aim to play just the 2-octave notes in each hand. Gradually, with this great warm-up exercise, you will get more comfortable each day as these types of exercises add on to what you started with your scales and arpeggios, they will increase your finger speed, knowledge of the keyboard, and clear articulation, and accuracy.