What is worth doing is worth doing well.

Warm-Up Thoughts

I think that of all musical instruments the piano proves to be the most difficult in regards to warming up.  What constitutes a good warm-up to one pianist can be entirely different to another.  I also think too many pianists neglect the opportunity for a good warm-up.  Say, for instance, you have a round of accompanying to do.  Many pianists, myself included, simply brush aside a serious warm-up routine in favor of hurdling right into the music.  After all, it’s only accompanying, right?  I mean it’s not like we’re going to be doing anything heavy-duty that will require a meaningful warm-up, and since it’s not as important as our solo music, then   WRONG.  I’ve learned this the hard way.  Often times accompaniments are awkward and very technically demanding, and when we plunge right into them we risk hurting our wrists, arms, shoulders, everything.  I’ve hurt myself many times for this very reason. 

So, the question remains, who has the time to employ an effective warm-up routine while still maintaining all your gigs and not neglecting the opportunity to pick up some extra dough?  There is no single answer, unfortunately.  Of course, we aren’t going to approach the piano with 60 minutes of rigorous scales and arpeggios in all the 12 tonal centers if we’re only lined up to do a round of 2-hour accompanying for that day.  On the flip side, if we are going into the recording studio, or entering a long day of competitions or auditions, then we know that we must warm up to our fullest capacity or else our work is rendered useless. 

A few approaches I have been known to take:

1. For accompanying, warm up with chords, softly and slowly.  Reach as many key areas as possible with several inversions.  Most piano parts are chordal, and there are few spots where the root of the chord falls on the bass note, except for major cadences.  Tricky single-note melodies can startle us, because they often appear and disappear.  I never “try” to get these ingrained, rather I use lots of wrist rotation to save my fingers from working too hard.  Usually once I get those patterns down, they will be fine the next times around.
2. For solo practice, I have a few personal regimens that seem to work well.

• Hanon #1-20 in all the twelve keys.  Especially useful for the practice of Etudes and Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn…music with a lot of complex scalar patterns and “notey” figurations.
• Dohnanyi Essential Finger Exercises.  If you don’t have this already, run- don’t walk, to the nearest bookstore or Amazon.  These exercises, in my opinion, are great for obtaining endurance with heavy chordal and octave-ridden works.  Great for Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Liszt, Ravel, anything that has lots of thick chords or rapid octave passages- these are best.