Hello, and welcome! So, in this video I've got three exercises for you that are gonna help you
take your piano playing to the next level! Now, we're targeting three very specific aspects of
your piano playing abilities in this video. So, first things first we're targeting probably the
most requested exercise ever and that is it's a speed exercise. Everybody wants to play fast,
so we're going to dive into that. The next thing that we're going to be looking at is
hand independence, and this is probably the most challenging skill to develop as a piano player.
It's something that you never actually really fully master it's always a work in progress so
I've got some great hand independence challenges for you here and then finally we're going to
be looking at what's probably the most important skill to focus on everything's important but this
one's really important because this is control and if you can be in control of your hands and those
little tiny nuances that's going to be what takes your playing from good to great and
gives you what you need to be a very impactful player so without further ado let's dive in
all right one of my most favorite ways to target speed when it comes to playing the piano is using
hanon exercises these have been around forever i'm fairly convinced since the dawn of time really
and they're a fantastic way to not only develop speed but also to make sure that you're also
developing the control the fine movements in your fingers so if you ever feel like you're kind of
sluggish between your four and your five finger this exercise is not only going to help you be a
faster player it's going to help you to really develop skill and control between the fingers
so let's dive in hannons are awesome because you don't have to read notes you just have to learn
a pattern so for this particular hannan i've selected hand in number 10 you're going to play
c with your thumb we'll just look at the uh this is my right hand i had to think about that we'll
just look at the right hand for now so you're gonna play c and then you're going to move your
five finger up one from the position so if each finger kind of gets a note you're gonna go c and
then this guy's gonna go all the way up to a and then you're gonna let go here and just move down
and play that pattern so it would be one reach up five four three two three two three
one five so you notice when you do this movement it kind of lets you bring your
thumb up to where it's going to be next which is a really really important point for speed
you always need to be setting yourself up for success so while i'm playing this slow
that's okay because to get fast you have to start slow i'm going to start to speed up here a little
bit and we can land back on the c now i'm going to provide a download for you so that you can
see this pattern ascending and descending on notation with your right hand and your left hand
but i just wanted to show you the pattern and then teach you how to actually develop
that into something quick so number one make sure you start slowly and you nail this down at a slow
tempo first number two when developing speed you must practice with a metronome because it doesn't
count as speed development if you're all over the place if you're inconsistent with your tempo like
that's not that's not well developed speed that's just that's just having fun and you
can have fun if you want but to develop speed you need to be consistent that is really
really important so set your metronome find a temple that you can play this out comfortably
and once you're there you're going to increase your tempo by 3 to 5 bpm
so you're going to be able to play it quite fast as long as you can stay in control i'm
staying relaxed through my wrist there's a little rotation there and that's helpful
the other thing that's helpful is to kind of accent this that that one beat in each section
so if i'm targeting with my thumb to land on the one beat for each measure that really really helps
me to kind of stay on track and stay on tempo so you can do that with your right hand your
left hand is especially excellent because in this pattern you're working that four and the three and
you will find that you have to play the left hand a fair bit slower in this case so just be prepared
for that they don't have to be the same speed usually our left hand needs a little bit more
love and attention to get up to speed and especially because we're rocking back and
forth on that four and three the five fingers gonna want to pop up just try to stay relaxed
and you're going to get faster all right moving on to hand independence now this is
the one that gets me every time you have to have a sense of humor when
you're developing hand independence because the whole point of having independence work is that
you have to get your hands to cooperate on something that they don't want to cooperate on
so there's immediately that frustration factor so just accept that it's going to be difficult
allow yourself to laugh and smile about it and just trust the process that you will get there
it just might take a little time so don't feel pressured to get this one right away
so what i'm going to have you do is we're going to actually be working with some fun
rhythms between the hands we're going to start as simple as we can and then i'll give you some tips
for increasing this in complexity so with our left hand we'll start here we're going to be playing
you can just play a fifth on c so you're gonna play it on the one and two and three and four and
so we're playing on the one the end of the two and the four so one and two and three and four
it's not so bad right but we're going to do something different with our left hand
our other left hand see it's tricky this is my right hand we're gonna do something different with
our right hand to begin i just want you to play c on all the down beats so that means you're gonna
be playing it on the one the two the three and the four which by itself seems very simple but when
you try to play these alternating rhythms between the hands it can derail very quickly so we've got
visuals for you on screen to help you track what's happening but i'm gonna go very slowly
and here's how it's going to sound one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four
and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and so if you can do that
by yourself on the back if it's still a struggle don't worry it'll take a little time to get it
you can tap it on your legs if that's helpful too so it would be one and two and three and four and
one and two and three and four and it's a great way to get used to the back and forth movement
once that becomes easy you gotta up the challenge and so i find even if you don't change the rhythm
between the hands but you just change what you're doing with your right hand
it gets difficult all over again so i'm going to be playing the notes of my five tone scale
on my right hand while i maintain that same rhythm here and this will still be on the one two three
and four beats so go like this one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four
and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one so if you can do that
then it's time to switch it up between the hands and this is where i really fell apart because
now we're gonna put the the downbeats in the left and we're gonna put the fun rhythm in the
right and so your brain is gonna be like ah what are we doing but this is all part of it
it only counts as hand independence work if it's making your brain hurt a little bit so
now we get the rhythm in our right one and two and three and four and one and two and three
and if you want to play the scale in the left hand um just like we did the other way feel
free to so this is a great starting point for you to begin developing that hand independence
have fun with this one and good luck all right my third and final exercise for you
has to do with control and dynamics so we've got something notated for you it's so pretty
it's very short it's very simple and if you don't know how to read notes don't worry you can watch
my hands play through it and learn what to do in the downloads for the sheet music we're going to
have this presented for you three different ways with three different sets of articulations and
dynamics that are going to challenge your control and this is what's going to give you the skills
to really communicate through the things that you play often people will say to me well when
i played it sounds like this but when so-and-so plays it sounds like this and the difference
isn't always that their their skill levels are different that their notes are different that
they're playing wrong notes and this person isn't that's not it it's the control that the person has
the ability to create emotion through you know staccato legato loud soft and all of those things
so let's see what we can do with this beautiful short and sweet melody so your right hand's gonna
start with its third finger on a you're gonna jump up to c and then you're gonna go to low c
and then hold d for three counts and then you're gonna go e tuck underneath f g a two three repeat
one two three one and then you're going to tuck like that now the left hand even if you
don't read notes is pretty simple to read because you've got those chord names above the measures
so you can just follow those because that's what the left hand is doing so all together one-two
so once you can do that this is where we get into the fun and if you need to do this hand
separately at first absolutely go for that, uh the main thing here is that you're able to
really control the pressure in the volume that you're playing within
your right hand to follow what's on the page so first things first we're starting
piano that means quietly so you're going to see if you can get through this line
quietly and then you're going to crescendo you're going to become gradually louder but only to about
mezzo-forte so that's medium loud and then you're going to get slightly quieter at mezzo piano
and then you're going to crescendo again
and land softly which is challenging to do when you're playing with your thumb because
the thumb is quite crashy and strong so make sure when you're coming off of that
you practice that reduction in weight in this in this hand the final thing that i have shown in
this version is we've got a staccato on just that one note there so see if you can be smooth here
and then the rest of it will be quite smooth the main focus being of course those dynamics
so that'll take the playing from what it sounded like the first time i played it
i'm going to add in the paddle as well and it's going to make it a little bit more
i don't know dramatic and maybe pretty here it goes
okay so that's the first version now once your hands get comfortable with that you're going to
want to change it up so you can continuously be developing that control so in the next
version of this exact same piece we've got phrases marked so this is going to tell you
where to play smoothly and where to kind of take a breath with your hand so I'd love for
you to still consider adding dynamics but let the main focus be on those beautiful smooth
phrases so what you'll get is something like this there's no staccato it's going to be really smooth
and then you do a little lift
and then a little lift and here's the staccato in a new place and then it's smooth there
now i've got one more version of this and this is where things get a little bit crazy because we've
got dynamics and we're changing the left hand a bit so instead of playing um dotted half notes
that hold for three beats you're playing quarter notes that are staccato let me tell you playing
something staccato in one hand while you're playing legato or smoothly in the other hand
is really challenging so that's going to be a big skill here you want to play legato which means
smoothly connected so think back to the previous version where we had those beautiful phrases
but this left hand is not going to be holding the notes usually I like to play with my pedal
because it makes everything sound more smooth and connected and pretty but in this example I'm not
going to use my pedal so you can really hear that staccato in the left hand so here we go
and it's challenging to play staccato quietly so you'll notice the dynamics are a bit different
here we start loud and we decrescendo and then we are quiet we crescendo a bit and then we
end quietly and all while playing smoothly and all while remembering to lift in the left hand
and not crash into the notes and maintain the right appropriate volumes in our left as we go
through the piece so it's something really pretty that allows you to kind of practice dynamics and
articulations in different places and when you are in charge of the volume of your hands like what
the volume is in size but the volume is how heavy you're playing on the note so that you can control
the volume of sound you are really in control of the experience of your listener you can create
something incredible so i would encourage you as a final challenge make your own version of this
with your own articulations and dynamics and find something that sounds beautiful to you and see how
it sounds so there you go that's three exercises that you can integrate into your daily routine
that are gonna help you improve some of the most important aspects of playing the piano
speed and independence and control with those dynamics so comment below let me know what your
favorite exercises and which one you found the most challenging and have a great time practicing!