Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner How do you warm up when playing the piano?

Hey there, just wondering on how you are supposed to warm up when playing the piano. Do you simply play scales or some hanon/czerny or is there another method of warming up properly?

I don't know whether it's "proper" or not but scales and some Hanon seems to work for me.

Maybe I should rephrase that to ''effective''. :P

Sorry, I wasn't picking on your choice of words. I should perhaps have said "I don't know whether it's as effective as it might be" as, like you, I'm curious if there's a better method.

I usually play a few arpeggios and octaves after scales and Hanon but not always. I also tend to ease into playing/practicing so nothing too hard, too soon.

I 'warm up' by playing Mozart's K545 first movement, getting faster as I go along and my fingers loosen up . Plenty of scales and arpeggios in that for both hands, and far more interesting than Hanon exercises etc. I usually then add on thirds, sixths etc.

Occasionally, it's scales and arpeggios. But most times, I use lieder or opera repertoire - under tempo (sometimes way under tempo, heh), and a bit dynamically flat, to start. I'll choose 3 songs/arias and stay with those as warmup material for a week or so, then change selections for the next week..etc,....

It's a great way to keep parts of that rep under my fingers, and it keeps me from frantically "working" on a lot of things when I get a call to accompany a singer somewhere.....

If Jazz is my focus for a practice session, then I'll take a solo line or phrase lifted from a recording and run it through all 12 keys - with chords in LH -as a warmup.

'Warm up' for playing/performing? Or for practicing?

Respigi,
Great question!

Classical Warm Up
When I was younger and played primarily classical music

1.I would stretch first.

2.Then I would warm up w/ slow scales just to get the blood flowing and the muscles and joints warmed up. This was probably for about 5 minutes.

3. After that I did a mix of scales, arpeggios, Hanon exercises, and Czerny etudes.

4. From there I would proceed into practicing my pieces

Jazz Warm Up
Now, since I perform jazz as my main style I have a completely different warm up routine using a 3 tier system.

Rather than reposting it here and irritating all the other forum members you can check it out here if you like.

http://www.freejazzlessons.com/jazz-piano-technique/

The only "warm-up" I've done for years now is the Dmajor prelude from WTC I. There are times when I'll run through some arpeggios, but not often.

I warm up on difficult sections in the pieces I'm working on/playing. For example, last year when I learnt Haydn's last piano sonata, I made exercises out of all the runs and that way, I was warmed up on the piece and my scales!