Good Warm-up

[Barbosa-piano]

       Hello everyone, I was just wondering if anyone knows a warm-up book or anything of the kind that could get me started as easily as coffee in the morning! It's just a dumb question, but the problem is that it takes me too long some days to get started. I just sit there for about an hour and a half hammering Czerny, or other Studies by Heller. Well, some days I start with Prelude in C# minor by Rachmaninoff, and the results are painful.  If you know anything better than this, I would be thankful for your help.
                                               Thanks,
                                          Mario Barbosa.   

[Phillip]

Try the Handel Chaconne in G Major with 62 variations (HWV447).  This 13-page piece is both good music and an excellent workout for both hands.

Phillip

[thalbergmad]

Rachmaninoff used to use Schlozer's Etude in A Flat. If you PM me your e mail i will send it to you. It is a superb warm up.

[minimozart007]

any Bach is a good warm up, and musically superior to any Hanon or Czerny excercises.

[Barbosa-piano]

    Thank you for your attention, I will look for the scores and play one of them each day, and I also have the Warner Bros collection of Bach's music and other books of his music, I will just add that to my warm up.
           
                                  Again, thank you very much for your attention,
 
                                                  Sincerely,
                                            Mario Barbosa.   

[musicman]

any Bach is a good warm up, and musically superior to any Hanon or Czerny excercises.

When Rachmaninov 'warmed up' (2 hours a day), he especially paid attention to The Virtuoso Pianist (Hanon) and Czerny's Opus 740 (The Art of Finger Dexterity).

Yes, these studies are musically dry, but I find them indispensable. For Hanon I play studies 21 to 30, in sixths where the hands aren't running into one another,  to at least partially make them more 'musical' (if that's possible), and the Czerny ones, I play with varied rhythms (2 from Op. 740). Either set takes me 30 minutes which should be enough.

By all means play Bach if you know them well enough, however if Hanon and Czerny were good enough for Rachmaninov, they are good enough for me...he probably did both of those and Bach anyway.
 

[thalbergmad]

I am glad to see someone else uses Hanon. I have not been on this forum very long but have seen a lot of anti Hanon remarks.

Perhaps i am from the old school. I had to play it when i was young, i had no choice.

After 37 years of playing (with a few gaps) i still use it.

[Goldberg]

Well I think certain things work for certain people. At one point, not long ago, I warmed up by playing the entire book of Liszt exercises, minus *maybe* 4 or 5 singled-out exercises, a process which could take well over 5 hours depending on how long I took on each one and, by that point, I was virtually done with the practice session because I had homework or...whatever. I experimented with it for about a month and a half, and generally completed the same thing every single day during that time. I think it helped, but not *tremendously*, and I stopped doing it not necessarily because I was bored but to see if, in fact, anything else worked equally well or better. It was sort of a first hand experimentation to explore the results of endless bickering back and forth on the forums (though, specifically, I have never gone anywhere near Hanon or Czerny).

Again, I think that depending on the pianist, it's possible to gain a vast amount of knowledge and experience from such exercises alone. And, yes, they make good warm ups.

Nowadays, however, since I am considerably more confident in my technique, I normally start out with an enormous improvisation session that could span 10-15 short pieces, all strung together, and last from between 5 and 30 minutes. In such a session, I try as many technical things as I can, for instance thirds, sixths, octaves, tremelos, and indeed try every day to come up with something new musically, which is not very easy sometimes! In my warm up improvisations, I always use the full length of the keyboard all the time, trying to imitate the relatively standard "3+-hand effect" which usually means playing a melody or two, a bass line or two, and a virtuosic voice by itself flying through everything up and down, thereby giving me the technical benefits (I try and invent new and challenging "run" patterns while at it, but then again I'm not always the most original guy!). It works pretty well!

If I'm not up to doing that, though...well, usually it just means that I shouldn't practice at all because I'm not in the mood, but otherwise I'll just dive into the repertoire and try my best to come up with a few things before I simply walk away out of boredom. On GOOD days, though, I hardly ever have to worry about that and go from improv to repertoire to improv to another repertoire piece, etc...

[jbmajor]

I must be missing something.  I don't understand how anyone could need more than a half hour (at most) for "warming up."  I think that even after 10 minutes one would be in the playing mood and their hands and fingers should be limber and prepared enough for anything they will play.  Anything longer and it's a mental thing that you're stuck calling a "warm up", but you're actually practicing normally. 

[solange]

I must be missing something.  I don't understand how anyone could need more than a half hour (at most) for "warming up."  I think that even after 10 minutes one would be in the playing mood and their hands and fingers should be limber and prepared enough for anything they will play.  Anything longer and it's a mental thing that you're stuck calling a "warm up", but you're actually practicing normally. 

I agree with you here. Here is how I go about a warm up:

1) run my hands under hot, then cold, then hot, then cold, then hot (this is because my hands are always cold and i have a poor circulation which i need to get going before I play)

2) do some left and right hand thirds

3) a coupla glissandos (sometimes just straightforward ones do)

4) an arpeggio or two followed by a quick virtuoso run up/down the keyboard)

And that is it. Seriously, i don't think anymore can be required to be honest. Sometimes I don't even bother.... I just wake up....or go out and see a piano....just sit down and play.

[Barbosa-piano]

Thanks for all the replies, I am looking for those pieces... I was looking through my books and found Passacaile by Handel a very good warm up too.

And that is it. Seriously, i don't think anymore can be required to be honest. Sometimes I don't even bother.... I just wake up....or go out and see a piano....just sit down and play.

On the mornings my hands usually feel weak, and not so flexible... My awareness is also bad on the mornings. I like to wake up and go strait to the piano, but I just feel as if I have lost my ability to play, and after breakfast everything is back to normal. 

[Phillip]

It is tempting to use improvisation for warmups - but the danger with that is that you only play patterns that suit you, and you may not get any worthwhile exercise.  I think it is best to do something that you find awkward and that literally stretches you.

Phillip

[solange]

Thanks for all the replies, I am looking for those pieces... I was looking through my books and found Passacaile by Handel a very good warm up too.

On the mornings my hands usually feel weak, and not so flexible... My awareness is also bad on the mornings. I like to wake up and go strait to the piano, but I just feel as if I have lost my ability to play, and after breakfast everything is back to normal. 

It is the opposite for me. When I have just woken up, my hands are warmer than during the rest of the day, so I can play better as they are very lose....... plus it is clinically proven that most people's minds are at their most active and "absorbant" first thing in the morning.

[FranzLiszt369]

I warm up with some Hanon exercises to improve technique and a Chopin etude.  Not a fast one, though...

[Brian Healey]

Not to go off track here, but I don't think the Hanon exercises themselves are outdated so much as the method is. If you follow Hanon's method as it is presented, you'll probably get little in return for your efforts (and maybe an injury). However if you play the exercises with good wrist movement and flowing motions (almost the opposite of what Hanon says), then there's no problem with them. Perhaps the biggest mistake people make with Hanon is not transposing the exercises to all keys, or at least a few other keys. You only get a small portion of the benefit of these exercises if you always play them in the written key of C.

Back to the subject, I like any scale-based exercises to warm up with. I don't do Hanon, but I sometimes warm up with scales in a Hanon-type fashion. My favorite thing to do is to just freely improvise with my right hand, just playing whatever and not thinking about it. After 5 minutes or so, I do the same with my left hand, then eventually put both hands together playing in unison. After 15-20 minutes of that I'm good to go.

I saw that Philip doesn't think this is the way to go, but the warm up is just that: a warm-up. The warm up is just something easy and light to get the blood going before the real exercise. I don't think there's much of a need to give yourself a workout during the warm up.


Peace,
Bri

[nick]

I must be missing something.  I don't understand how anyone could need more than a half hour (at most) for "warming up."  I think that even after 10 minutes one would be in the playing mood and their hands and fingers should be limber and prepared enough for anything they will play.  Anything longer and it's a mental thing that you're stuck calling a "warm up", but you're actually practicing normally. 

Why assume you are missing something. Couldn't it be the person warming up for 5 hours is? Playing lightly at first the music I am working on fairly fast, then adding more weight after about 10 minutes works for me.

Nick

[tocca]

I always play a piece first thing i do. A piece i know by heart, partly to see if i can manage to play it cold and partly to practise playing it cold. If nothing else, i will learn what pieces i can play should i happen in the situation where i "need" to play something without having warmed up.

In Chang's Piano practise book he says this:

"Many pianists use Hanon routinely as warm-up exercises. This conditions the hands so that you become unable to just sit down and play "cold", something any accomplished pianist must be able to do, within reasonable limits. Since the hands are cold for at most 10 to 20 minutes, "warming up" robs the student of this precious, tiny, window of opportunity to practice playing cold."

I agree!
Exercises should be used to learn new technique, or to better it, not limbering up the hands... in my opinion that is.

[jhon]

Let's just make it more general.  A good practice constitutes the following:

warm-up (1/3 of the practice time)
review (old and to-be-performed pieces)
learn (new pieces)

Also, a good pratice follows the chronology of musical periods...

1. (Technique/Warm-up/Studies) - no particular periods as along it's an etude/study (I even play Chopin and Liszt Etudes here!)
2. Baroque (Bach, Handel, Clementi, Rameau, Scarlatti)
3. Classical (Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert - mostly sonatas) 
4. Romantic
5. 20th Century/Modern
6. Miscellaneous - "rest pieces" (you can play Clayderman here if you want!)