The Best Piano Exercises for Beginners
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There are lots of different exercises in this page (Inspired by the Hanon Exercises. Learning to play the piano smoothly is easy with these exercises.
Those of you who have followed the complete beginning piano lessons course of our piano action guide know that I recommend playing an E.D exercise (every day) for the first five minutes of each practice.
These piano exercises won't cost too mcuh of your time. They will help you to improve a few elements of your piano playing such as:
Improving the independence of each of your fingers.
Acquiring different dexterities that will allow you to switch fingers smoothy.
Getting to know the geography of the piano (by playing on different scales and places on the piano).
Learning to sit well while you play the piano and play smoothly without causing stress and pain in your muscles.
Fine-tuning your rhythmic sense and your ability to express different types of hand and body movements on the piano.
You got the picture.Let's practice!
Five Fingers Piano Exercises
These kind of exercises are called the "five finger exercises".
They consist short musical phrases that repeat all through the scale, and after ascending through a whole octave the pattern is reversed when descending back to the starting point (notice that both hands are continually executing the same difficulties in this kind of exercises. This allows the left hand to become as skilful as the right hand!)
The full C position will be our starting point as a default unless something else is mentioned.
How to Practice these Piano Exercises?
PlayLegato.
Play slowly at first; You can gradually play faster when you feel that your hands are moving smoothly and in a loose manner.
Use a Metronome in order to conrol your rhythm as you gradually play faster.
Control your dynamics. Notice what sound you're producing.
Make sure you have conrol and that you're aware of your sound at all times and that you keep unity in the volume when moving from one key to the other
(So that the strongest fingers and the weaker ones (fourth and fifth) should be producing the same volume and level of attack.
Work in steps: Practice the RIGHT HAND first, then the Left Hand and combine BOTH HANDS only afterwards.
Example:
You should
Play Legato between the first and fifth fingers as you shift the hand position one key up at a time.
As you completed the shifting process, shifting from middle C to the higher C reverse the formule to 5-4-3-2-1 and descend all the way back to middle C.
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Practicing Steps Piano Exercises
These next few piano exercise focuse on ascending and descending stepwise like.
The step is the most basic elements in creating progress in music.
| The Pattern | Pdf File | Mp3 File | Video File |
| 1-2-3-4-5 | Download | See Video Above | |
| 1-2-3-4-5-4-5 | Download | Play | |
| 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-4 | Download | Play | |
| 1-2-3-2-3-4-5-4 | Download | Play | |
| 1-2-3, 2-3-4, 3-4-5 | Download | Play |
Practicing Skips Piano Exercises
Skips are the second common element in musical melodies. A skip paves the way to a musical climax.
The skip can suggest an emphesis on an harmonic moment. You can preform skips in different intervals going up and down.
| The Pattern | Pdf File | Mp3 File | Video File |
| 1-3-5 | Download | Play | |
| 1-5-3 | Download | Play | |
| 1-3-5-3 | Download | Play | |
| 1-5-3-5 | Download | Play | |
| 1-3-1-5 | Download | Play |
Practising Skips and Steps Piano Exercises
The combination of Skips and steps creates various melodic lines. The art is to know how to combine it beautifully.
| The Pattern | Pdf File | Mp3 File | Video File |
| 1-2-3-5 | Download | Play | |
| 1-3-4-5 | Download | Play | |
| 1-3-5-4-3-4 | Download | Play | |
| 1-5-3-1-2-3-4-5 | Download | Play | |
| 1-2-3-4-5-1-3-5 | Download | Play |
Practicing Intervals Piano Exercises
| The Pattern | Pdf File | Mp3 File | Video File |
| 1-2-1-2-3-4-3-4 | Download | Play | |
| 1-2-3-4-5-4-5-4 | Download | Play | |
| 1-3-2-4-3-5 | Download | Play | |
| 1-3-5-3-2-4-2-4 | Download | Play | |
| 1-4-2-5 | Download | Play | |
| 1-4-5-2-1-2-3-4 | Download | Play | |
| 1-5-1-5-2-3 | Download | Play | |
| 1-3-5-1-5-1-2-3 | Download | Play | |
| 1-2-1-3-1-4-1-5 | Download | Play | |
| 1-5-4-5-3-5-2-5 | Download | Play |
Legato and Staccato Piano Exercises
When you play Legato there should be no silence when moving from one note to the next.
1-2 Each hand plays legato separately in the first two piano exercises .
Imagine each hand is a different singer so it has to be very independent.
3-4 In the next two piano exercises, both hands are playing Legato at the same time.
5-6 The next exercises focus on playing Staccato. with each hand separately.
The notes should be played with a bouncing touch. Make sure that the notes are short and detached.
7-8 In the next piano exercises, both hands are playing staccato together. Make sure that both hands are playing short notes (Imagine you are jumping on both legs).
9 Mixing Staccato and Legato - In these exercises you're supposed to play legato with the one hand and staccato with the other. Each hand plays seperetaly
10 In these exercises both hands are switching between playing legato and staccato at the same time, .
11 Advanced: In these exercises - one hand plays Legato while the other one plays Staccato. (It will help you to develop the independence of each hand!).
| The Exercise | Pdf File | Mp3 File | Video File |
| 1. Legato- Each Hand Plays Separately | Download | Play | |
| 2. Legatto- Each Hand Plays Seperetaly | Download | Play | |
| 3. Legatto - Both Hands Play at the Same Time | Download | Play | |
| 4. Legatto - Both Hands Play at the Same Time | Download | Play | |
| 5.Staccato- Each Hand Plays Separately | Download | Play | |
| 6.Staccato- Each Hand Plays Separately | Download | Play | |
| 7. Staccato - Both Hands Play at the Same Time | Download | Play | |
| 8. Staccato - Both Hands Play at the Same Time | Download | Play | |
| 9. Mixing Legato and Staccato - Each Hand Plays Apart | Download | Play | |
| 10. Mixing Legato and Staccato - Both Hands Play at the Same Time | Download | Play | |
| 11. Mixing Legato and Staccato - For Advanced Players | Download | Play |
Coordination Piano Exercises
These next piano exercises deal with coordination. Until now we practiced each hand apart first, later we combined both hands together while each hand plays one note at the same time.
In these next exercises (Arranged according to level of difficulty) you will play one long note in the left hand and four, three or two notes in the right hand and vice versa. (Starting from four notes and going to two notes.)
The idea is to learn to combine between what your eyes read and how fast your hands react to it.
Both hands should play legato in these exercises. It's easier to play legato with the right hand but you should keep in mind that the left hand should play connected as well.
| The Exercise | Pdf File | Mp3 File | Video File |
| 1. Four Notes in the Right Hand - One in the Left Hand | Download | Play | |
| 2. Four Notes in the Left Hand - One in the Right Hand | Download | Play | |
| 3. Three Notes in the Right Hand - One in the Left Hand | Download | Play | |
| 4. Three Notes in the Left Hand - One in the Right Hand | Download | Play | |
| 5.Two Notes in the Right Hand - One in the Left Hand | Download | Play | |
| 6.Two Notes in the Left Hand - one in the Right Hand | Download | Play |
Two notes and Three Notes Phrases
We already discussed how Legato should be played in the previous piano lessons.
However, in this exercises another element of Legato appears. The first should be slightly accented and the last one should be slightly softer (fading away).
Read the instruction carefully and work with your wrist.
Each of the tones of the two-note phrase is treated differently: The wrist is lowered when we play the first tone (Which makes it accented),and when we play the second tone we raise our wrist (In order to produce a softer tone).
Three note phrases should be played the same as two note phrases except the middle note should be connected to the first and the last note.
| The Exercise | Pdf File | Mp3 File | Video File |
| 1. Two Notes Phrase - Hand play apart | Download | Play | |
| 2. Two Notes Phrase - Hand play together | Download | Play | |
| 3. Three Notes Phrase - Hand play apart | Download | Play | |
| 4. Three Notes Phrase - Hand Play Together | Download | Play |
What you can do is invent your own piano exercises as well. We'll be adding more piano exercises in the future, so stay tuned.
The problem is that you have to play all these exercises smoothly while keeping the independence, coordination of your fingers while gaining each times a faster finger speed. To learn to this you must check out the Hannon Finger Exercises Piano Course.
In this DVD, the exercises are demonstrated by an accomplished jazz instructor, James Wrubel, and broken down step-by-step in VIDEO format so that anyone with a dvd player or computer and 1 hour to spare can start using them right away.
I highly recommend you check out a sample of the first exercise on their website. Just that one sample exercise can dramatically improve your speed and precision. Click here to check out the Hannon Finger Exercises Piano Course Now!
