Firstly, sorry to bombard you with information, but this is the only answer that leads to durable results. Unless you're already doing most of the right movements (and there's no way I'd know), there is no quick fix, so I'll sum up some (but far from all) key ones.
Even though I shouldn't be, I'm still rather surprised by the lack of explanation of, and straight up wrong advice about actual muscle usage. Luckily I've had a year of university physiology courses and four years of conservatory Alexander technique that literally catapulted my piano playing over a year so allow me to explain.
[Much of the following is also based on and used in research-based (piano) schools like Ortmann, Matthay, Taubman, Lister-Sink, Deahl and Wristen and more]
Why your fingers don't workRelative to the initial piano key tension and its weight, our finger muscles are weak. And they will be weak because they have very limited capacity for strength because of your small hand bones. Therefore, any exercise that is not in itself a musical piece (like Chopin's and most of Liszt's are), are only useful to isolate and practice specific movements. NOT to strengthen (or worse, isolate) the fingers. Save yourself tremendous amounts of pain and wasted time!
Using only fingers to play over- and or misuses their weak muscles, which will lead to fatigue and slowness.
On the other hand, fully relaxing your fingers also leads to slowness because it takes more time and effort for a relaxed muscle to jump to action.
There's a middle here that is quite similar to standing: standing is not relaxing - you'd collapse to the floor - but doesn't feel like tension/action either. This is the same for your wrist ("relaxed wrist" is an often heard and dangerous advice, as bad as or worse than a tense wrist). You can think Stephanie Brown's "natural", "neutral", I believe Dorothy Taubman uses "lively".
The fine muscles of the fingers are most suited for fine adjustments of the key press (like in speed for tone color) - they simply, physiologically, cannot be the main force.
But if not mainly by fingers, how does one press keys? You use the weight, movement and strength of the hand and forearm to support your fingers.
When muscles work against each otherEven if your fingers were capable of delivering the strength necessary, if you don't move the hand and forearm in the same direction they would start pulling on your fingers in the opposite direction of playing (dual muscular pull). This happens every time your fingers move
before the hand and forearm do (isolation), leading to slowness and possibly fatigue, so every movement should be instigated (put in motion) by your forearm.
Your wrist also won't exactly be happy to instigate motions - like the fingers it should follow the forearm.
The forearm moves by rotation (like playing a tambourine) because your fingers need to move downwards and because, like your fingers, it can move incredibly quickly this way.
Isolation also happens when you raise a finger by itself before playing (extension, which is slow, tense and heavy), or when the other fingers don't follow the downward movement of playing to a certain point.
During any movement toward a key and to the keybed,
nothing should be holding up or away from that movement. Additionally, moving from the forearm allows gravity to help you.
If done well, to me it feels like my playing fingers are doing... nothing. Which, again, is
not relaxing. They just follow the movement initiated by the forearm, which ensures they do not do more or less than they can. (It works similar for the upper arm, but in this case rather because the upper arm is big, slow and imprecise: moving it from the forearm moves it in just the right amount).
Note: the rotational basis for all movements described is almost or completely invisible. There are videos on YouTube that show how to practice and subsequently minimize rotation. What you
see in virtuoso pianists is finger movement - looks are deceiving!
Curling, keybedding, playing too fastCurling your fingers too much (pulling in the fingertips) tightly pulls very long and slow muscles, that go all the way to your forearm, over your wrist, limiting the freedom and speed of both your fingers and your wrist.
So you should try to keep your last joint (connecting the fingertip to the middle phalanx of the finger)
mostly straight, like a bridge, as if the last two phalanxes are one piece (no excessive bulging out, absolutely no caving in). As a reference, the optimal finger curve is your hand's natural curve when you relaxedly drop it to your side.
These are just some headlines of the musculature involved, there's much more but I'll spare you for now.
Additional common problems are:
- Aiming for the keybed instead of aiming your energy to the point of sound and simply following through to the keybed from there (too much unnecessary muscle, slow, hits your fingers back with the excessive force)
- Pushing on the keybed: once the key is down, it can't go further down so don't waste energy there. Once you're there you're "resting", "standing" on the keys (no relaxing, no holding up!).
- Moving your fingers "too fast": fast playing should never
feel fast; you have to "slow down into the key" with forearm rotation.
Playing louder is of course relatively faster, but probably slower than you think it should be. Some people prefer to think of adding more weight instead of moving faster to play loud - and your fingers shouldn't be doing anything more than when playing softly.
[Personally, this was one of the biggest and most eye-opening things to me. At my stage of integrating all these movements, this was the single thing that brought everything together. It ensures your fingers aren't ahead and isolate, the surface tension doesn't hit you (you go along with the key), you don't overshoot. And how absolutely
controlled it feels... It's literally the best feeling in the world, like the piano is working with me instead of against me.
- Allow the rebound of a piano key to help you lift up again.
And then there's the thumb.... I'm going to stop here because I might as well start writing a dissertation now. You can look up research and methods by most if not all aforementioned schools.
Depending on how used you are to these or wrong movements, learning to play correctly (smoothly, quickly, painlessly, with full control) can be VERY INTENSE. My first 2 months especially were absolute hell because I was both a curler and an isolator and I'd almost given up on multiple occasions. Now I can only thank the Gods (myself, really) that I didn't.
So questions are always welcome
Topic: Finger Exercises