Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner What do YOU do to gain/maintain finger dexterity?

Do you play Mozart Sonatas?
Play lots of techinical exercises?
Hanon,Czerny?
Bach Prelude and Fugues?
Mixture of the above?

Im just interested in knowing how you gain/maintain finger dexterity? I doubt I've listed many of the ways so please share away!

I use my Virgil Practice Clavier for about ten minutes night and morning.

I warm up for a bit with scales and a certain Brahms exercises selected by my teacher (I don't know which ones they are in the book, sorry; he just shows them to me and I learn them by rote).

I have cold hands in the winter too, so if my hands are cold I will let hot water from the tap run over my wrists. Works quite well!

I credit the development of my core finger technique to Pischna practiced slowly, with big sounds, and big wrist motions.

A slew of Hanon and Dohnanyi exercises, plus etudes by Clementi, Moscheles, Moszkowski, Chopin, Dohnanyi, Tagliapietra, and Persichetti.

My teacher would probably be unhappy to hear this, but I don't really do specific exercises .

I do finger exercises from Geoffrey Tankard's volume of 'Piano Technique'.

I focus primarily on my basic hand position, and anything I play, I do lots and lots of slow practice.

I have no problems with exercises, I think they are good, and I sometimes do them, but currently, I have many scalar passages in the music I'm playing so I do lots of slow practice on those, so it increases my dexterity AND I'm improving the repertoire I'm playing.

I practice a lot.

I do not do exercises or scales and never have, (do not follow my example), but I have been blessed with nimble fingers. I have always done all my dexterity and speed work within the music I am learning. These days, I warm up with the page of triplets in Beethoven's Opus 53, 2nd movement. Then I move to the LH runs that are earlier in that movement. Sometimes I play Bach.

I always practice my pieces lin tempo which is much more linteresting than doing exercises. I do play some Choplin Etudes but never any Hanlin or HameLin. My favorite pianist is Lin Lin.

I don't do anything specific outside of the music I’m working on. For my purposes I've never had to deliberately gain or maintain finger dexterity. It's there when I need it.

Practice.

Exercises are a great help to me. I like Alloys Schmitt's Preparatory Exercises, op. 16 (which are free as a pdf on the internet or $4.95 on Amazon). They are really efficient and save a great deal of time by targeting the salient difficulties of digital coordination in piano writing. I especially like the Schmitt exercises that involve holding down one or more notes while playing notes with the other fingers. Those are quite tough indeed, but immensely productive (and rapidly so).

Having said all that, I do believe fine manual dexterity is a product of an optimal approach to technique, without which no amount of exercises can do much good. Yes, practicing scales, exercises, etc., will help in any case, but a low plateau is hit early on in the absence of valid technical principles. I recommend chapter 19 of Reginald Gerig's book, Famous Pianists and their Technique for an illuminating analysis of the human physiology and how it relates to piano technique. Most pianists can't tell you whether they're playing with the flexors, extensors, lumbricals, interossei, or whatever else. Few pianists have even heard of those muscles, I'd venture to say. Considering that we use our bodies to play the piano, how can we expect to play with optimal manual dexterity without an approach rooted in the science of human anatomy?

Taking the liberty of summarizing some of Gerig's chapter 19 (with actually itself summarizes the groundbreaking work by Arnold Schutz), we need to find an alternative to the fatiguing and highly inefficient co-contraction of flexors and extensors (which is what most pianists are taught to do) and take up another type of touch that uses the intrinsic muscles of the hand--the lumbricals and interossei. The intrinsic muscles of the hand are much faster to act upon the keys than the flexors, because they're in the hand, not up in the arm--a foot or more away from the keys--like the flexors. Thus, the type of muscles we use is critical in achieving optimal manual dexterity, irrespective of how we practice.

Another book I like very much that addresses the issues of manual dexterity and technique is William S. Newman's The Pianist's Problems. It is not nearly as detailed and thorough as the Gerig book, but is very practical and filled with wonderful, helpful tidbits of insight on the top pianistic challenges.

I also do the Schmitt exercises that involve holding down notes (in all major keys), and, because of Newman's book, I practice trills and scales in thirds. Both have helped a lot; the thirds especially.

Mostly just Hanon at the start of each practice session.

I do Chopin etudes. I like the pieces and I found very useful for me.

Op. 10 #4.

Lately I do the first 20 or so Liszt technical exercises. Involves mostly holding down keys and playing one or two notes over and over. It's boring as heck, but it's helped my technique immensely - especially strengthening 4th & 5th fingers.

Maybe get some magazines. If it's good enough for Liszt... =P

Owning a Kindle has made reading while warming up a piece of cake.