Daily exercises

[Choplisztrach]

That´s a question:

What's better for play every day?
-scales...;
-studies (Czerny, Chopin...);
-Bach;
-or nothing.

I prefer Chopin'  studies.

[comme_le_vent]

Chopin and Bach....in other words REAL music.
try the finale to chopin's second sonata as a warm up.

[PoSeiDoN]

Hanon exercises, bar-none.  

[clarinetwife]

I think the answer to this question depends on what you are playing, what the specific challenges are to what you are playing, and any particular areas you might need to work on as an individual.  Technical goals should dovetail with one's other musical goals.  I feel much more motivated to practice scales in octaves, for example, when such practice will actually help me with a piece I want to learn.

[Choplisztrach]

In fact I Know what I want to do. I like it and it is apropriated to me. I do all Chopin' studies, 1 or 3 a day.
I want Know how others pianists warm up. Here, in Brazil, they used to do scales and so on. I don't  like that. It's disgusting and no musical. And in others countries, what they do?

You , how you warm up ?

This is my question.

Forgive my poor english.

[Bob]

[rlefebvr]

I would also lie it hear more answers here. Not politically correct answers, but truthful ones.
Do you warm up at all.
Has you warm up changed with time.
Does it really depend on your repertoire or are there things you do no matter what.
Do u use your repertoire are warm up.
Scales, Hanon, certain pieces.
and more....

Myself, I am still at a basic level because of my playing skill.
I do scales, arpeggios, chords, 1st Prelude from Bach WTC#1.
Go over my latest pieces and then start to practice my new stuff I am working on

[bernhard]

Let us stir the pot, shall we?

Is warm-up necessary at all? And if it is how should one go about it?

The idea of warming up was borrowed originally from sport and more recently  from fitness activities.

Why do people warm up before embarking on a sport/workout?

1.      If you are in a resting state most of your blood will be in your middle (your internal organs are far more important than your extremities). So one of the purposes of “warming up is to get the blood to the muscles that will be used in the sport/workout.

2.      To prevent a heart attack. Heart attacks in physical activities occur predominantly when your heart rate goes up very fast (or goes down very fast). The purpose of a warm up is to bring your heart rate up slowly to the level it will be when you are exercising. This means that the warm up is activitiy specific. If you go jogging your heart rate will be around 120. If you go running fast it will go 150, if you skip rope it can get to 170. So a warm up that bring your heart rate to 100 is fine for jogging but is not enough for fast skipping. On the other hand if you are cycling at a comfortable speed your heart rate will barely reach 80. Therefore you do not need to warm up to jump into your bicycle and go to town. Juggling (unless you are using heavy objects or switched-on chainsaws) barely raise your heart rate at all. Again no need for a warm up as far as preventing heart attacks is concerned. One thing that everyone seems to forget is that if you are worried about a heart attack, cooling down is exactly as important as warming up (that is, bringing your heart rate down to normal gradually and slowly). Stop skipping rope suddenly and fall onto a heap in front of the Tv and you are courting disaster.

3.      Warming up avoid injuries up to a point. A cold bloodless muscle is far more prone to an injury than a warmed up one. But what really avoids injuries is regular stretching.

So if you are into physical exercise, that is how you must go about it:

1.      Decide the exercise you are going to do (running, skipping, boxing, weight lifting). Figure out what is the likely heart rate at the most strenuous bit of your workout.

2.      Start by warming up very gently. What you do during the warm up should be an easy version of what you will be doing during the workout. If you are going to run, warm up by walking, progress to jogging and finally run (use a heart rate monitor so you know that you are increasing your hear-rate gradually). If you are boxing, shadow spar gently.

3.      Before the workout and after the warm up stretch. Not passive stretch (yoga like) because this will cool you down and destroy motor co-ordination, but dynamic stretching (e.g. lifting your legs high but slowly – using muscle not momentum). Stretching will really protect you against injuries, so always stretch more than the activity you are about to do requires. If you intend to kick someone in the belly (e.g. in kickboxing), make sure you swing your leg gently up to head level before going into real sparring. The beautiful thing about dynamic stretching (that is, stretching in movement) is that it doubles as a warm-up.

4.      Do your work out.

5.      Cool down by repeating the workout moves slower and less energetically (so if you just finished running, jog and then walk).

6.      Finish the cool down by passive stretches (yoga like).

As you can see, this is like baking a cake: you must have the ingredients, but it is just as important to do it in the correct sequence.

Now how does this applies to piano practice? Mostly it doesn’t.

1.      When playing the piano the heart rate barely alters (if you don’t believe me use a heart monitor and check it out). Piano as a physical activity is rated right there with chess playing in terms of physical effort. Piano playing is feat of co-ordination, not of strength or stamina.

2.      Injuries in piano playing are not related to a lack of warmup or of stretching. They are the result of unreasonable repetition incorrectly done. Warming up (or stretching) is unlikely to prevent this sort of injury. You may have heard of athletes who needed surgery of one kind or another (knee and hips with runners). Do you think this could have been prevented by warming up? Believe me, these guys warm up and stretch regularly. Their injuries are the result of running ten marathons every year for ten years with the wrong technique.

3.      Bringing blood to the fingers can be far more efficiently done by circling your arms fast for a couple of minutes or by dipping your hands in warm water.

Therefore what lessons can we transfer from sports to piano playing?

1.      Warmup for the conventional reasons is not necessary. It may be a good idea if you intend to work on virtuoso/athletic pieces.

2.      If you do want to warm up, decide what piece you are going to practise/play and warm up by doing a gentler version. So never ever warm up with a Chopin study or an Alkan piece. This is your workout. This is what you will be warming up for. Instead play it at half speed and exaggerate the movements (this will be the equivalent of dynamic stretching). Or work gradually on the technical difficulties (if your workout is Chopin Op. 10 no.1 play arpeggios, or the Cortot variation where you only play the top and bottom not of each arpeggio – this will both warm up and dynamically stretch the fingers). Warming up with scales is a waste of time, unless the piece you decided to work on has scales in it. In short, there is no general warm up piece. If you want a general warm up that covers everything, then baroque pieces are the best (Bach/Scarlatti) since they usually have most basic patterns equally distributed amongst the hands.

3.      Remember to cool down by playing at slow (very slow) speed the piece you worked on. This will have the added bonus of making sure your memory is not simply hand memory (necessary, but unreliable if not backed up by other memories).

As for rlefbvre’s questions:

Do you warm up at all.

Yes, as explained above: either with baroque pieces, or by playing a gentler version of what I intend to work on later if it is a demanding piece.

Has you warm up changed with time.

Very much so, as I learned more about physical activities and incorporated this knowledge into my practice.

Does it really depend on your repertoire or are there things you do no matter what.

For easy, not physically demanding piece it does not matter. In fact easy non-demanding pieces will themselves serve as a general warmup. For physically challenging pieces warming-up and what exactly you do as a warmup will be very important. As I said, just do a gentler version of what you intend to be doing later on.

Do u use your repertoire are warm up.

Yes. But it depends. Some repertory is gentle enough to serve as a warm up. Other repertory requires a warm up.

Scales, Hanon, certain pieces.

Depending on the ferocity you intend to do your scales, they may need a warmup. Otherwise I would use scales as a warmup only if they are a prevalent feature of the piece I will be concentrating my practice session later on.

I never use Hanon.

Undemanding Baroque pieces for general warmup. (e.g. Bach 2 voice inventions)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[ted]

With me everything relates to everything else. My mind seems to need "warming up" as much as my body. Therefore, since I always end up improvising, I begin by improvising using simple movements and simple thoughts. The mental and physical "warming" takes place simultaneously and seamlessly.

One day is never the same as another in this regard. The only exercises I do per se are done on my practice clavier, usually at the very end of the day and only for a few minutes. Again, these vary in content. When I do play scales (hardly ever in the usual way) or set figures I prefer alternating (1,3,2,4,3,5 etc) ones and double note ones because they treat fingers more or less equally.

But beyond a healthy discipline I don't like any sort of regimen, and admittedly sometimes I do start with a hard piece if I'm in the mood. It might be just me but in the first half hour or so of playing I find pauses of a couple of minutes between each piece or improvisational episode are very beneficial - might put on a cup of tea, read a bit of the paper or look out the window -  I wish I had woken up to this trick years ago instead of just going flat out.

Aside from the connection with "warming up", I have to say that this idea of everything relating to everything else, of "bringing it all together" is very much what I am after in music nowadays. In general I am getting further away from separations - this is practice, this is performance, this is technique, this is classical, this is jazz, this is composition, this is improvisation...

In recent years I have come to view classification as destructive to my musical purpose. For a young person perhaps not, I really don't know. Maybe analysis is a necessary method of youth and synthesis a natural consequence of middle age.

[IllBeBach]

For a long time I practiced Hanon, the entire first book at various tempos, then scales, then Bach WTC, but recently I have discovered that I feel "warmed-up" faster as well as more relaxed if I begin be improvising a sort of prelude to practice, using scale passages, chords, arpeggios, trills, etc.  Sometimes I begin in one key and then gradually modulate toward the key of a piece i want to work on--usually a Bach prelude and fugue, but sometimes something else such as the Grieg concerto.  I find when I do this that my scales and other technical work sounds more alive than when I drill through things like Hanon; I guess maybe it is thinking of scales, etc. in the context of a musical line that makes the difference.  I also think that this sort of improvised "technical prelude" allows me to emphasize specific aspects of technique that i want to focus on that day.  
    As Ted said earlier, my mind needs warming up as much if not more than my fingers, and improvisation forces me to keep my mind active, and not go into neutral (like Hanon will result in).    

[Sark1]

I do not claim to be an expert at this, and i am new to this website but i think i can answer.  i personally play all the scales and some hanon, depnding on what certain peices i am playing at the time.  i do this everyday.  i think that scales are essential, especially for the beggining student but, that truth is this.  

i have read some of the entries on this site and it is interesting, but you cannot ask questions like this.  ths truth is everyone is different.  you need to try all the options and see what works best for you.  Richter never played scales in his life, but at the same time Gilels would play scales for hours.  it depends on the player. that is all.

[rhapsody in orange]

Personally, I think that some warm-up would be good before actual practise, especially if you're practising early in the morning when your hand is feeling a bit stiff. I tend to be able to play through long passages without my fingers getting stuck. Some not-so-technically demanding piece can well be used as a warm up.. but when I have no time and have only the time to focus on my repertoire, I'll warm up with my repertoire. Pick out a few passages and play through them with reduced speed, arpeggios etc can be used as finger exercises too. They improve you technique and can make future practises less tedious. that's just my two cents' worth

[piano_learner]

My fingers feel far more supple and I play my pieces better if I warm up first with scales, arpeggios and broken chords. It's also good practice for my Exam.

[teresa_b]

If I have time, I literally warm up by doing at least a half-hour of vigorous exercise--I have an elliptical trainer that I like--But anything that's aerobic will work.. You will be amazed how much more limber your hands and fingers are right from the moment you begin your piano "warm-up."

All the best, Teresa