Am I saying that piano warm-ups are bad and pointless?
No. Most people start their piano practice with warm-ups either scales or
Hanon or whatever exercises you use. In this video, I want to play Devil's
advocate by giving you a different perspective to think about. I'm gonna
make the case that dedicating time and energy to piano warm-ups actually
creates less output for you from your practice session. You might be thinking
how is this even possible? Make sure you stick to the end to find out. After my
explanations, I will also give you 3 bonus tips on how you can succeed in
your piano practice without piano warm-ups. Before we get into why piano
warm-ups may not be as necessary as you think, make sure you LIKE and SUBSCRIBE
to this channel to stay in touch with more of these free piano lessons and
tutorials. In this video, I'm going to advocate that you actually
consider skipping the piano warm-ups and get straight to learning your pieces.
Have you ever had the experience of practicing
60, 90 minutes? And as you're practicing this lengthy amount of time, as time goes
on, you realize you have less and less output as the time goes on. You feel like
you're not as mindful and your brain is not as receptive of information as it
was when you've just started. It's like you're just playing for the sake of
playing without any real conscious thought into what you're doing. This is
completely normal. Your brain is simply not going to be great at concentrating
in the 84th minute versus the fifth minute. in these tired moments, I
recommend you to rest your brain so that you can come back fresh and then get
more work done when you're practicing. But this brings us to a really important
point in your practice sessions. You have a limited attention span and a
concentration span. So when you first get to the piano, you have this much energy
to concentrate and to get good work done. And as you keep practicing,
your brain power sort of gets less and less over time. From my personal
experience, the first 10 to 15 minutes of practice is when my brain is the
freshest and the most receptive to information download. And because the
first 10 to 15 minutes is when my brain is at its best, I should be dedicating
this time for the most challenging and brain intensive work as opposed to
something that's potentially brainless and repetitive. I started to realize the
really powerful implications of understanding this concept when I was
learning the Chopin E-flat Nocturne years ago.
In the time that I was learning this beautiful nocturne, let's say in a day
where I wanted to practice for 60 minutes. At that time, I would warm up for,
let's say, around 10 minutes. And then later I would spend about 30 minutes to
play through other pieces, so not the nocturne piece, I play through things
like...
Or for example...
You know these were pieces at that time I knew really well and I could sort of
just whip it out of my hands at any time. So, I would spend about 30 minutes
playing through the stuff I knew really well and then only in the last 20
minutes of my practice sessions what I dedicated to learning a new piece which
I knew was the most important thing, I actually wanted to do in that practice
session. So in the last 20 minutes of my practice session, I would try my best to
learn the Nocturne in E-flat. And after doing this routine for a few days, so the
warm up and then the playing through pieces that I knew well and then only
dedicating the last bit to learning new notes, I realized I was getting nowhere. I
didn't feel like I remembered the parts well.
It was like I was practicing it, but nothing really was going into my brain.
So I thought "Hmm why don't I try something... why don't I try..."
Instead of warming up and playing the pieces I know for about 40
minutes, why don't I just jump straight into doing the hardest thing I needed to
do in that practice session right from the first minute. So instead
of allocating my limited brain energy and time
to focusing on things I already knew well. I now wanted to focus that
limited brain energy and time into things that I knew was going to be the
most challenging to do. And I put that right at the start of my practice,
just to test the results. And of course, voila! I made huge progress doing that
when I skipped playing the warm-ups and the pieces I knew well and got straight
into what I really needed to do which was to learn the new notes. I had huge
gains over the next few days. This is something I really want you to try in
your future practice sessions. Let's say you've given yourself a goal of learning
a new piece. Try to begin your practice sessions
with learning the new notes as opposed to warming up. Dedicate those freshest
brain cells to doing the hard things first. Congrats on making it to this part
of the video so far. Here are three bonus tips I have for you on how to succeed in
your piano practice without the warm-ups. Tip Number 1, if you absolutely feel
like you need to warm up experiment limiting that to just about
two to three minutes. When you sit down at the piano and you're starting to work,
try and think about that you have a limited brain capacity to concentrate
and get good work done. And as time goes by, let's say 60 minutes -
okay 15 minutes. It's getting less and 40 minutes getting less. And it's sort of
getting less and less. And as time goes by, it's hard to really get things in
there and to have it retained in there. So really make sure it's at the start, to
dedicate most of that fresh brain cells to the hardest things - which is either to
learn either new notes or to hone some technical parts that you wish to get
better. Tip Number 2 are for people who live in colder climates especially.
If you ask me, "Jazer, I cannot play piano without a warm up because my hands
are too cold and stiff." The tip I have for you is to either wash or soak your
hands in warm water before you practice. I've tried this multiple times so during
autumn and winter when it's a bit colder. I just put my hands in a big bowl of
warm water for about a minute. Feels nice and then when I come to the piano, I'm
all warmed up and ready to get into any passages I need to get into. So I've
played piano all my life and I've dealt with this problem a lot. When your hands
are cold and stiff, you can't play anything over time. I realize that my
hand's temperature is actually an indication of the temperature of the
rest of my body. So if I want to keep my hands warm and ready to play piano, I
have to keep the rest of my body warm. So go and put on more layers or some socks
or something. And Last Tip (Number 3) for you today
would be to take regular breaks. You can
experiment not to practice for more than, let's say, around 45 minutes. As we were
saying before earlier in this video is your brain has a limited capacity to
concentrate. So when you start the practice session, it's going to get less
and less and less as time goes by. Experiment with having shorter sessions.
Taking a break so that your brain can reset into its full capacity before it
then goes down again and take a break to reset and so on and so forth. Give your
brain more opportunities to reset. Sometimes when I'm practicing piano, the
simplest things can reset my brain. For example, even just getting up and
drinking some water. Or maybe I just get up and do let's say 10 squats or
something. And I just look outside and look at the birds and the trees. Just
simple things like that help me to reset. And I come back to the piano fresh and
suddenly I can do things much better. Another tricky thing to talk about here
though is that when you are practicing for that 45 minutes, just make sure you
are 1,000 %
concentrating on everything that is happening.
So that means the smartphone needs to be not near you. It needs to be locked in
another room. And you want to try to not think about work or anything else and
just make this a really meditative and mindful experience. I want
you to concentrate so much that maybe you don't even realize if there is a
fire on the other side of your house. You're just so in the zone, you're so in
the flow that you don't see anything else. Of course I'm exaggerating but I
think you understand the point I'm trying to make. You make every session on
the piano a really deep session. We have come to the end of this video. Do you
think piano warm-ups are necessary or do you think they're overrated? Let me know
in the comments below. Catch you in the next video guys