practice techniques away from piano

[ponecorleone]

im gonna hav to be away from a piano for sum time, 3-5 weeks, what can i do exept mental practice and stretching?

i started doin this,

put corks or sumthin similar between ur fingaz n squeeze into a fist, it should broaden your knuckles.

ne tips??

thanks

[xvimbi]

put corks or sumthin similar between ur fingaz n squeeze into a fist, it should broaden your knuckles.

If you put water melons or sumthin similar between your fingers, it should broaden the knuckles even further

You need to primarily stretch your muscles to increase the range of motion around joints. If you want to increase your hand span, stretch the muscles that control the spread of the fingers where they attach to the wrist bones, not at the knuckles. If you want to stretch your fingers at the knuckles, you need to spread them against some resistance while engaging the muscles. Putting something between the fingers does not engage the muscles, therefore no stretching is achieved. The only thing the cork may achieve, besides giving you bruises and pinching nerves, is softening up the skin and connective tissue between the fingers. This is however more easily and better achieved by massaging the area. Essentially, you need to destroy the connective tissue between the fingers, if that is what you want. You can also simply cut it

[musicsdarkangel]

Sadly, I think the most useful thing other than mental practices would be something like Hannon excersizes on your lap.

[lostinidlewonder]

This was sorta covered here:

https://www.pianoforum.net/smf/index.php/topic,7119.msg

[dinosaurtales]

Actually, pone.., I'd be careful with "stretching" exercises like that unless you've been taught how to do it properly - you're just as likely to do damage as help. 

There is a book called "Piano Power" by Richard Prokop that addresses the away-from-the-piano problem.  While I didn't adopt everything in the book, many of the exercises worked like a champ for me when I was trying to get back into playing after a very long time off (like 20 years!)

[danyal]

Go read up on the life of Schumann before trying stupid things with the hands (corks etc) Anyway, the safe ways I've discovered for strengthening the hands are to play with stress balls. Constantly. But that doesn't help the fingers, so for them, take ones of those plastic elastic band things and wrap it around the tip of each finger, with the hand closed, as tight as possible, then try opening your hand. But when it starts hurting (the elastic, the balls, etc) PLEASE stop! You'll hurt yourself badly if you dont.

[Siberian Husky]

i practice scaling runs on my little sister's forhead while she is sleeping

[vladhorwz]

What about the exercise where you hold your hand above the edge of a table.  drop it so only your 2nd and 4th fingertips touch the end of the table and the rest of the fingers point toward the floor.  Then lift up again and do the same with 5 and 3.  So basically it is the equivalent of tapping on a table with your fingers extending so that your fingers and back of palm form a 135 degree angle (this is so easy to show and hard to describe) but only landing 2 fingers at a time on the edge of the table.  Practice this until you can easily guide the pinky and do this very quickly with both hands....


then repeat with 3,4 and 2.5
Thank make up your own rhythms