How to improve finger technique when practicing piano every day?

[viasenator]

Hello everyone

I am learning piano and want to improve my finger technique to play classical pieces more smoothly, especially fast finger runs. I practice Hanon pieces and some basic finger exercises but feel that my progress is quite slow. Can anyone share any effective methods or exercises to make my fingers more flexible and control the force better? Also, are there any tips to avoid hand strain when practicing for a long time?

Thank you very much!

[klavieronin]

Standard approaches include playing forte-staccato and doing various combinations of long and short notes. These will help if you practice them correctly but there is no shortcut. It will take time no matter what technique or method you use. Learning to play the piano well take years! Learning to play piano really well takes decades. So the best thing you can do is to simply practice everyday consistently, deliberately, and conscientiously, and to not give up even when it seems like you aren't making progress. Expect to have good and bad days but don't let that interfere with your persistence. That's my advice, anyway.

[jonslaughter]

The solution: Stop having expectations. It is your exaggerated expectations that are telling you that you should be progressing faster than you are. This is natural in some sense but it is also detrimental.

If you want to be better practice more, if less practice less. That is all that is under your control. That is, time is all you have under your control. Implicitly though there is the "quality" of practice because not all practice is equal(pretending to practice, for example, is not practice).

Hence you also have the ability to practice efficiently. The problem is that it is not something that can really be taught. It is something that is learned(just as the concept of what practice is in the first place).

What it boils down to is that ultimately you have to figure it out. I know asking questions seems like the obvious thing and that is part of learning but eventually you learn that the questions typically are hurdles that slow you down.

It's very hard for non-experts to understand how to be an expert which is why it generally takes many years unless you are a child(because the child does not question as much when told to do something as long as they are motivated/excited).

As long as you are practicing and doing relevant things you will figure it out with enough time. If you want it faster you should practice more.

The fastest and best I ever was was when I decided to practice 16 hours a day(without any breaks) for about 3 months straight with almost no breaks. I made a tremendous amount of progress that I could not have realized when I started. My practice was not very efficient but because it was 16 hours a day it was about 100x more effective than 1 hour. This is because when you practice for such long periods, as long as you are not just going through the motions but attentive, there is a synergistic effect that takes place as things compound(you remember things better, you forget things less, etc).

What that experience taught me is essentially how to teach myself. Afterwards my shorter practices became more focused and I still retained a lot of the benefits I learned.

You will get where you want to be. It is only a matter of time. How quickly do you want it. In the process of doing it you will learn how to do it better. If you want it faster you have to do it faster.

Now, I will give you what I think are important factors that I learned. They may be completely wrong or useless to you. Everyone is different. Maybe they mean nothing now but will mean something later. It is things I had to figure out for myself or which I heard from others and it stuck and worked.

1. It is just as much mental as it is physical if not more so. Not knowing what you are doing slows you down. Hence the more you know the faster you can do it. Technique is speed.  You can play very slow and technique but it is fast.  This is because "playing fast" requires thinking fast and/ore efficiently and this will still carry over when playing slow(it's as if you have more time to do it accurately(but you may not be aware of it until you are)). Technique is also coordination and conditioning. Just more practice.

You have to know what you are doing. That is the main key. If you don't you will never play fast(cause you don't know what you are doing). If you know it particularly then the things that you don't know will cause you problems.

2. It is very helpful to soak your hands in hot water and flex/stretch them in various ways including the forearms. It can make a huge difference in both stamina an technique. (it may seem minor but it accumulates over time faster) It matters more the longer your sessions are.

3. Play with a metronome as much as possible and play for accuracy. Get some drums.

4. Fingering - Fingerings are extremely important. They are typically ignored(at least I did for a long time). But engraving them in your mind really helps. You want your fingerings to be as integral as the notes. Many times it doesn't mater. You also want to practice using any finger available. But you want to connect the fingerings with your fingers with your brain. There are many times where certain fingerings are required for smooth/fast execution and if you don't use them you won't be able to play it well/fast. Also, over time you will naturally develop this sense because you have trained it correctly.

5. Learn hard pieces. They are hard for a reason. Even if you don't learn it all, learn some parts. It gets you thinking in a different way.

6. Don't stick to just one exercise or type of exercises. Do as much as you can(hence the time issues).

7. Don't expect fast changes. It can take months to years to make sufficient progress where you look back and realize the changes(it's sorta like aging).

8. If you reduce your expectations(we all want to be the best now) you will put less pressure on yourself and you will actually learn faster(because you are not burning/wasting cycles on unnecessary things).

9. Work for efficiency. This amplifies your time. E.g., if I can get 2x out of an hour session then that is a 2x fold increase. Hence finding all the  ways to make practice sessions is effective. It may waste time at first but once you figure it out(and no one really can figure it out for you) then it will pay off in the long run(specially if you are young).

10. Learn your chords and scales. This includes all the alt chords, jazz chords, modes, non-scale scales(things that might not be listed as scales but do exist such as harmonic phrygian). This involves a lot of practice since it is a lot of material but all music uses it and it all builds on itself. It is fundamental to everything.

It's a lot of work. If you see it as a life long thing rather than competition with other humans then you will get far more out of it and it will become part of your existence.  The issues you have won't be issues because you are on your own journey doing your own thing at your own pace which will be the right pace. It is exactly like running a marathon in that you can't teleport to the end and it can be quite difficult but the reward is not a plastic trophy or the accolades of a bunch of people but your own sense of understanding the world a bit better than you did and how you fit into it. These things are not something one can explain and another can understand through that explanation. It is something felt and that feeling only turns into understanding after many years of it. The more one resists it the longer it takes(and I was one of those who resisted the most).

My only suggestion to you is that you try to make some time to practice 16 hours a day or whatever maximum you can for at least 1 day or preferably 2 days(on the week end). You should notice a difference even half way through or so. It may be a small feeling but that feeling is what grows when you practice. Practice is water to the seed. (but in this case the more you water it the better... well, assuming all you have is piano life which is not the case and hence there is a larger picture that has to be balanced)

So to reiterate: Just practice more. This irks a lot of people because they say "But I'm practicing 1.5 hours a day and that is a lot". They do not want to hear that they need to practice more. But, in fact, if they want to be better quicker then they do. It is the only way. Reading, asking questions, etc is   part of that because one has to learn what works and what does. But when you know you are on the right track is when you know all you have to do is practice more. Every question is answered at the correct time in the correct way with the correct practice. Once you actually understand that then it's actually a very simple issue rather than as complex as we love to make things as humans.

[transitional]

+1 to jonslaughter's post. Just playing and enjoying music already builds technique, as long as you have the fundamentals down. Make sure you're playing somewhat technically demanding pieces that are still reasonably within your skill level. Good sightreading is also complementary and you might benefit from reading some simple pieces with different demanding techniques.

[jonslaughter]

Yes, sight reading and many things are important. What most people don't realize is the sheer complexity. I try to explain it to people as if it is building a pyramid(lots of work at the start, in terms of layers, and gets(or feels) easier and easier but also just constant work). I'm not sure most people get it. Again, these things are not something that can be explained. You either know what it's like or you don't. E.g., if you have never been swimming or anything related it will be impossible for you to actually know what it is like. What the water feels like on your body, your emotions, the muscle involvement, etc.

Experience cannot be communicated except meaninglessly or through analogies. The analogies only work because there are deeper relationships that do exist. E.g., if you have been in the rain or taken a bath you will have some overlap with swimming and so that can be used to help one understand what swimming might be like. Language is very deceptive in that it only communicates as one already has in experience. E.g, if it were mathematics. a*0 = 0.  You cannot amplify something that doesn't exist. There has to be something there to work with. E.g., typing on a computer keyboard, like I am doing now, is related to playing a piano keyboard in some ways. It is also different. But the similarities could be understood and amplified to help relate the two as the differences can also be amplified to understand how they are truly different. But these things cannot really be explained unless you want to spend many years in a classroom and even then it will be all "theory". It is something that one should internally develop to understand and learning music is very powerful in this regard because it forces you to delve into your own being and figure these things out. This is true of all things but Music is a particularly unique thing in it's own right because of it's blend of intellect and emotion. Unlike, say, math with is "pure" intellect and, say, sex which is "pure" emotion. Music requires a unique balance of the intellect and the emotion to progress fast. Because it is a real time art this can make it very difficult, as say, compared to painting.

It is work and it is experience and either one wants it bad enough and will put in the effort or they won't. I'll I can really say about it is just do it and don't stop. Eventually, if you are able to put in enough time you will get what you want. Things I thought mattered in the past(with anything but in this case Music) are relatively "meaningless" now. This is not to say they are not relevant but they have receded into my unconscious. They were likely important at that point as a stepping stone and necessary for progress or a path that led me down a dead end(which may still have been useful in other ways, only a dead end in the sense of not directly useful for making progress in Music or in Piano or not relevant at that point in my learning).

Probably the best thing one can do is "Trust the process". With a little luck things will work out and you almost can't fail as long as you keep moving. "All roads lead to Rome(or maybe better Roam)". As long as you keep walking you will get there or die trying and you are going to die anyways so all you can do is decide how fast you want to get there. Some people decide not to walk at all and others decide to run as fast as they can with most people being somewhere in between. It may sound abstract and possibly obtuse or useless but it really is that simple. What I'm trying to convey is that if you want to "run faster" you should focus more on "running". In the case of skills it means to practice more. Most people don't know what to practice which is part of the problem. Or they practice specific things people tell them to do. All that is practice but real practice is when you understand practicing and how it works. To get there(a destination) you do have to practice stuff(which most people do) but with time you will practice so many things(hopefully) that you understand what it is all about. This is known as generalization and today, with the massive amount of information online, it is easier than ever as long as you don't waste too much time looking for it all. It's better to practice a bunch of things "poorly" than it is to practice one thing "perfectly" as long as by "poorly" one means sufficiently. Knowing what sufficient means is the entire point of learning how to practice. Knowing when you have "mastered" what you are working on enough(which may mean you don't even play it well but it is sufficient to move to the next step/stage/goal) to move on to "master" something else(sufficiently). 

Practice makes perfect. It's that simple. But clearly it is very complex. If you were a mathematician we could say lim t→∞ Practice = Perfect. It's true and simple but it's not simple until it is.

[dizzyfingers]

+1 to jonslaughter's post.
Just playing and enjoying music already builds technique, as long as you have the fundamentals down. Make sure you're playing somewhat technically demanding pieces that are still reasonably within your skill level. Good sightreading is also complementary and you might benefit from reading some simple pieces with different demanding techniques.

+1 to transitional's post

[ted]

If you are lucky enough to find one, you might try a Virgil Practice Clavier to develop and maintain purely finger technique. I have used mine for a few minutes a day for fifty-six years and I doubt I'd be playing at all at seventy-seven without it. They are disparaged by academics these days for all sorts of reasons and most piano teachers I have met don't even know what one is. But as a previous reply states, actual personal experience is all that counts in the end and it has certainly worked wonders for me.

[jonslaughter]

Another thing that I forgot to mention(I think):

IMPROVISATION

This is, IMO, likely the best way(but not the only way) to develop technique.

This may not be something that is easy at first and it requires a certain type of skill that is not something that typically comes natural because it requires many other skills.


But if you can sit down at the piano(or any instrument) and pick a key. Any key means you have reached a certain level and this comes from practicing all keys scales and chords and learning songs in each key and then improvising in each to get used to them. Likely if you only know C major you can still practice improvising but you will be limited because it would be like seeing in grayscale... better than nothing but not as good as full color.

Improvising will come more naturally as you learn. It is not something that just happens(although it might in certain types when there is a burst of emotion and you have reached a certain skill).

Everything you learn goes into it such as sight reading, scale and chord practice, song memorization, keyboard knowledge(intervals, chord voicing, fingerings, etc), etc.

Just remember that skills are not something that can be communicated through language but are things that one can do and are derived from practice. Communication can both hinder that process and/or accelerate it. It's hard to know until after the fact. Even a very bad teacher, for example, can, in the long run, turn out to have a great thing.

But no matter what is said, the more you practice the better. In fact, it is not just practicing the thing you want to be good at but ALL things. Do you know about topology? Or combinatorics analysis? Or the powerset? These things are other ideas that come into play that actually work to help you practice music better. Everything is related. It is not something that can be explained easily and explaining things can slow things down or temporarily slow them down or speed them up. Ultimately what you are doing with is life and piano is just one facet of life(a very interesting and useful one IMO) as is math(probably the most useful and interesting) along with painting, farming/gardening,  life experiences, love, etc. Everything gets mixed into the pot to produce what you are and those unique combinations that are you give a unique result(a unique vector in a vector space). Even worrying and having "problems" produces a unique you. E.g., if you have tremendous stage fright and eventually overcome it with enough work then it can turn from a "net negative" into a "net positive". Same with anything.

So the real key is just to do and not worry. Don't worry if you are good enough(either you are or not and there is only one way to change it) or whatever. But do understand that if you want something you have to go get it to have it. We learn this innately as a baby and that is why we learn to walk and then run. But in a more complex world we tend to forget this(and in many ways our society tries to stop us or allow us to only have certain things) because of psychological and social issues. E.g. "I'm not good enough" (you are as good as you are and what is good anyways? Even the best are not good in the grand scheme of existence) or "Will they like it" (either they will or won't, the question is do you like it? If you're goal is to get them to like it then, well, that is also a skill to learn and part of that is to find out if they like it(which requires practice)), etc.

Everything is so very complex but yet is so simple too. The go is to know how to navigate between the two extremes efficiently... and as you might guess, it is practice. Just know what you are today shapes what you will become tomorrow and you will be that thing tomorrow when the "sun" rises. You are also the only thing that gets to dictate if you are good enough because you decide how good you want to be. Many people decide they are good enough at almost everything before they have any skills... that is their choice and theirs alone. It is not a competition no matter how much it seems. It never was a competition and never will be and people that tend to want to make something a competition are people who like competing. In no way am I saying competition is bad, I'm simply saying that it is not a part of practice. If it motives you to practice harder and faster and that is what you want then that is a useful facet to have.

Trial an error is not just a useful skill to have, it is all there is. [What do you think practice is?]