https://archive.org/details/masterschoolofmo01jonaAlberto Jonas Master School of Playing and Virtuosity
Hello, I was wondering what finger exercises I can practice other than Hanon? I've been doing these exercises for about 9 weeks now, and I'm honestly getting bored with them. I want to move on to some other exercises. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks in advance.
When you exercise, the common accepted logic is that you are exercising a muscle. There are no muscles in your fingers, period! Go ahead and find me one physiologist/doctor who can.Therefore, according to this and other websites, our ancestors are going to access a piano related website in "Star Date ?" ...
Does one still do "finger" exercises at all?
That is due to fact that one should never question or correct their piano teacher.
Muscles are needed to initiate movement , however people call them finger excises and they are a bit of a misnomer, the digital structure does contain some minor muscular tissue, however mainly to aid with flexing of the 2nd to last and last joints most lateral to the body's mid-line.the motion we would most associate with depressing keys louispodesta is somewhat correct , muscular structures more medial are primary movers, but the assisting muscles are vital to helping shape of the finger (think helping curl or flatten finger which we manipulate for tone in some instances).what "finger" exercises are primarily doing is usually 3 main things1. Strengthening muscles and assisting muscles [ie in hand, forearm etc and to less degree some in small part of upper digit area]2 Stretch connective tissue to aid flexibility and reduce static or residual strain and tension throughout various structures3 probably the biggest impact i see is training of motor patterns and ingraining fine patterns and responses by training the nervous system. At high speed and fine detailed coordination a different part of the brain is involved, usually cerebellar area. Some patterns are so quick one really would not consciously try ro coordinate them but drill them via "finger exercises" or more appropriate technique patterns like scales and arpeggios. But some finger exercises can be helpful in improving Independence or ingraining weak motor patterns for more effective activation. Of sluggish fingers.louise podesta is somewhat correct in stating they are not exercises like we think with gross motor patterns like hip extension, arm abduction, knee flexion or wrist adduction, but they are more like fine agility drills which can be helpful.however like special tools, they really and should be utilized by a coach or teacher for specific tasks i addressing a defined issue to be most effective. That's where the statement of mindless czerny or endless hannon are not terribly useful when not utilized more specifically.so generally they are more like wire strippers or needle nose pliers than a big hammer or std screwdriver or adjustable wrench Those more widely applicable tools w broad benefits are more analogous to scales, arpeggios, broken chords and their variants.one reason the Jonas volumes are. Cool is that they are organized by topic or area they address which helps in selecting appropriate exercises, but i think more correct is to call them drills.
-If you must do finger exercises, I would suggest Brahms exercises https://imslp.org/wiki/51_Exercises,_WoO_6_(Brahms,_Johannes)If you want something more musically, try WTC , or something like this:
here's a neat one that can help with general strength and endurance (note i didn't say 'for the fingers') just general conditioning for physical structures involved in playing. Also the act of transposing can help w those weaker in theory and chord structure modulations. big fan of Robert and he does a nice job of explaining it, his students i hear tend to do pretty well when auditioning and competingVideo TranscriptionHi, I'm Robert Estrin. Welcome to virtualsheetmusic.com. Today is the best exercise to develop strength in your piano playing. This is a really tough exercise to go through. If you go through this entire exercise, I guarantee you, you will gain strength, if you do it once a day, will be plenty on this one.To explain what it is, it's basically broken 7th chords. I'm going to explain the theory behind it so you can easily figure it out for yourself. It starts with a Major 7th chord then the dominant, so the 7th goes down a half step. Then a Minor 7th chord, the 3rd goes down a half step. And then finally, half diminished with 5th goes down a half step. And then, the 7th goes down a half step. So once again, Major, dominant, Minor, half diminished, diminished. But that's just the beginning of what we're doing here because you're playing in both hands, broken chords, so those are all the notes you're gonna play. But you only play every other note and then you skip. See, I'm just playing this chord but now I just played the C and the G. And in the left hand, you do exactly the opposite. You just play from the bottom, skipping the middle note. Then you play hands together in contrary motion, the Major 7th chord, then the dominant 7th chord, the Minor.Here, you'll see how it works.And is that the end? No, that's just the beginning because you're gonna through all 12 keys. You go right up to the half step higher doing the same exact chords transposed half step by half step. So now, we do the same thing on D-flat. And you can see, I just went right through to D. If you go through all 12 keys like that, it is an incredible workout. Now, you can start off slowly because you might have difficulty. It's a very hard exercise to do. It's particularly hard for small hands, by the way. But it's a great strength builder for you. So I hope that this has been helpful for you. I have exercises you can check out as well. Thanks once again for joining me. Robert Estrin, here at virtualsheetmusic.com.