Technical exercises for piano are a drag, it had to be said. Who else loves sitting there practising scales, arpeggios and other such technical exercises?
Not me!
However, the tragic truth is that they are amongst the most important types of ‘generic’ practice that we can do - that is, practice that doesn’t lead to a specific piece of music by the end of it.
And whilst exercises such as the scales and the arpeggios etc. are great as a standard, it has to be said that arguably the strongest thing that you can do whilst you are learning a piece of music is to work out your own.
Why?
Because you know your limitations, and it is your limitations that are holding you back!
Certainly Schmitt, for example, is there to help with finger independence and strength, but you may find that certain pieces still allude you if you practice his exercises all day every day because you’re not considering the context.
Firstly, identify what needs strengthening up and then work out your own exercises to try to better it.
Let’s create a few of our own to get you started!
Example One: Strengthening of Fingers 4 and 5
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: fingers 4 and 5 are the weak fingers! Not only that, but they always will be weaker than the rest, no matter how hard you try to improve.
However, half of the problem from trying to bring them up to the standards of the other three comes from the idea that exercises such as Hanon and Schmitt work on each finger in a non-discriminatory way, and so everything improves relatively, meaning 4 and 5 still lag behind.
When creating an exercise, you need to consider two things:
Can you do it? Even if you can only do it slowly, you need to be able to do it otherwise the whole thing will not work.
Can you feel it? You don’t want to encourage pain, but you want to be able to do an exercise and feel the benefit. A bit like a good run causing a stitch and sweat, your fingers need to feel like they’ve been ‘worked out’!
Exercises can be built up using simple rhythms to start, and we can stick to a couple of notes before bringing in extra notes. Try to incorporate stretches into your intervals as you progress through your exercises as well - adding that extra layer of initial discomfort really helps you get used to working through the awkwardness!
Once you feel confident with these, we can incorporate what we may recognise as the ‘Schmitt’ element which is that we can strengthen these fingers even more by simple keeping down another note at the same time as fingers 4 and 5 play through theirs (replaying on every repeat):
The final step that we could incorporate into these exercises is that of rhythm, adding variations. They don’t have to be extravagant - we could just mix up the crotchet we already have with the odd two quavers instead. These can either be the same note doubled up, or we could rise and fall back down to our starting note. Take a look at some examples below for some inspiration:
Example Two: Tightening of Rhythm
The most desirable results from rhythmic exercises such as those that follow come from understanding a little about harmony i.e. what sounds good with what. Although rhythm is the principal focus, it will help you feel better about what you are creating if it sounds good.
Therefore, we will use our left hand to find a chord. Let’s choose D major this time for variety, and make a simple triad comprising of D - F♯ - A.
Our right hand now needs to find a suitable pattern to repeat. Let’s choose a four note pattern and choose four notes in the key of D major. For this example, I am going to choose D - F♯ - E - A.
I am going to play this pattern along with a broken chord of D major in the left hand - a broken chord being structured 1 - 3 - 5 - 3 (D - F♯ - A - F♯). We will assume that these are crotchets, as when we have performed these well we can start to double time one of our hands. The easiest one to start with is the right hand, thus we keep the left hand playing the crotchets and our right hand will play our pattern at double speed (quavers) - which means we will play the pattern twice over the top of the left hand.
Of course, the next step is to semiquaver it, meaning we will fit four runs of the pattern over the broken chord in the left hand! :
Let’s continue with the idea that the right hand is the one building up its momentum each time and explore how we can just strengthen up our performance of rhythm in the left hand too.
One simple idea would be to double or quadruple each individual note so that it directly corresponds with the rhythm that our right hand is playing, therefore when the first two quavers of our pattern play in the right hand, two quaver Ds play in the left as opposed to one crotchet D. This type of exercise can also help to build up strength of individual fingers in the left hand:
But for even more of a challenge, we could add a slight bit of syncopation. Until you have mastered a very tight discipline using simple rhythms, don’t worry about this so much, but use dotted notes followed by half of their un-dotted value to fill (for example - a dotted crotchet followed by a quaver):
Needless to say, rhythm exercises require an extremely disciplined pulse. Make sure you practice these slowly to begin with, and with a metronome! When you feel ready to ditch the metronome, try recording yourself and listening back to see if you can ascertain as to whether or not your pulse is in check or not. If not - bring back the metronome!
Example Three: Speed
Speed is one that comes very differently to us all. Some of us have naturally looser fingers than others, some of us have more tension through our arms than others etc. - and so this is yet another example of something that may be a personal journey.
However, one example of something that works extremely well by way of building up speed is to build up the individual relationships between fingers. If you are struggling with a particular bar in a piece of music and find yourself constantly hitting a completely wrong note, a lot of the time it is because the relationship between the fingers needed isn’t as natural as the one between the note of origin and the one you end up hitting. Needless to say, these are the ones you should focus on when creating your exercises.
Otherwise, we can still consider developing speed using the build up of staccato notes.
Let’s pretend that you wish to play this at roughly the tempo it says - 180 BPM:
How could we break this down?
Firstly, let’s identify the two main parts that require extra attention with speed - the semiquavers:
In the first bar, our semiquavers are a straight run down the C minor pentascale starting from C.
In the second bar, we effectively have a semiquaver trill between C and D.
Let’s make up an exercise to build up to the first one - and remember, we don’t take things like this at speed to begin with. We build up!
I’m going to start the run in bar 1 on finger 5 in the right hand and for the following examples, I will focus on right hand only. Let’s work a slight strengthening exercise for finger 5 into this exercise and keep it fairly staccato by repeatedly striking that note - G.
When we feel comfortable with this, we can alternate our crotchet Gs with a quaver flick from G to F, keeping the F at its full length and then repeating the pattern with another staccato G. By keeping these crotchets staccato, we get used to playing continually but allowing tensions in our hands and wrists to ease.
When you feel ready to continue, we repeat using finger 4 on the F doing crotchets, then alternating between crotchet Fs and quaver F to E♭ using fingers 4 and 3 to continue that pentascale down.
When this feels a bit more comfortable, put the two together and see how the natural progression down feels. Keep working down in this way:
Now that you have been building this up nicely, it’s time to start putting it together. One very strong way to thing about building up rapid passages of music is to keep some of it rapid and keep some of it at a steadier tempo, which we can easily achieve by distributing note values across the bar, as in the following examples:
As you can see, there are many ways to build up your dexterity.
Conclusion - The Art of Making Up Technical Exercises for Piano
Sadly, there is no way I can write a completely concise blog subject on the matter of covering every possible eventuality when it comes to you creating your own piano exercises, however I hope it has given you some inspiration to move forward and some ideas as to how to practise some of those problem areas.
The key things to remember are as follows:
Focus on what you need to focus on.
Keep the pulse going (including through all your repeats - try not to hesitate when you get back to the beginning!)
Be patient.
Don’t strain. A little a day goes a lot farther than a lot a day but with completely destroyed hands!
Remember that positions of our hands affect our flow. Try playing your exercises across the keyboard in different registers and / or transposing the key to get a good mix of black and white notes into your practising!
And always…enjoy!
Watch my video recap of the exercises I created above and be inspired to try some of your own:
And to make sure you never miss a piano based video update, make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel as well!
Jack Mitchell Smith is a piano teacher based in Macclesfield, Cheshire. Click here to find out more.
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