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I thought it would be interesting to see what other people teachers recommend. I did scale and arpeggios when I was a child for piano exams. I had one teacher that gave me czery exercises after about 8 years lesson. I remember only doing a couple a week.

My current teacher gave me two exercises from czery book I used as a kid. He looked through them all to find two that would help. I have been practicing them in different ways. Today he said most where not specific enough so he gave me a technical exercise to work agility in 3rd, 4th and 5th.

I found that I can’t spend more than about 5 mins a day on these. The one I started with now he said don’t need to practice. I was a little confused as people said they were spending long amounts on practice technical exercises. Not sure how this is possible.

I was just wondering what others do. Cheers x

I do RCM technical requirements (scales, chords, triads) and etudes for grade 1, which is my current level. I do not do these every practice and no more than 10 or 20 minutes when I do do them.

I don’t do any technical exercises. I’m a beginner so maybe I don’t know what I’m missing. My teacher prefers to use actual pieces of repertoire to improve technical issues. I’m glad she feels that way because I don’t think I would have the patience to spend much time on pure technical exercises. I’d rather devote that energy to pieces that offer greater musical value.

I do spend 15 minutes every day working on sight reading though.

I do scales at the start of every session: parallel, contrary, thirds, sixths, tenths and double octaves. Plus arpeggios and dominant seventh arpeggios.

But only for ten minutes or so. Then Burgmueller or similar - these are pieces as well as technical exercises.

I also use the more tricky parts of pieces I am learning to make exercises.

I can’t stand Hanon or Czerny or such like exercises: their ideas of strengthening the fingers etc. are wrong (and based on lighter keyboards).

WeakLeftHand, in RCM, in additional to the "technical tests," we also have to do some additional studies, which are really exercises. These are called an 'étude', which is just French for 'study.' In fact, in the RCM études book, the specific skill being called out and trained by each étude is identified.

Yes, I did mention etudes too.

I have never done Hanon exercises. I only have one czery exercise book so not an expert. I did find working on simple exercises you can concentrate on different aspects of playing. I have my reasons for doing this as some faster pieces I have struggled with so in the end I decided I need to work a bit on technique. Like hand position. My teacher said wrist lower, fingers flatter on the whites, more curled on the blacks. It was quite easy to do with a simple exercise. I have one pressing firmly and slowly without with collapsing knuckles. Another one is finger collection on diminished 7th in different positions. Two exercises maybe 5 mins a day. I don’t think exercises are for strengthening fingers as I was taught to focus on something specific and do them a short time. I would be interested if some people play these exercises differently as people have said they play long amount of time on these.

Aha! You had it outside of the parenthesis! How embarrassing LOL.

I do scales, a Couple of Hanon, or as noted above, harder passages from something I’m learning. I just try to mix them up daily and play soft/loud, fast/slow, staccato, etc. I’ve seen the “should or shouldn’t” argument about exercises since day 1 of learning music and it helps me to warm up a bit before moving to whatever I’m learning.

Around ten minutes, morning and night, exercises of my own devising on a silent Virgil Practice Clavier. Once at the piano all is music. I do not waste consciousness and instrument with mindless exercises.

I'm in a LTR with Edna Mae Burnam,

Not that I'm to do EMB exercises, but I'm curious how does one do them and how would one know when to move on? Does one just repeat a given exercise every day for a week, for example, and then move on, never to return to it again?

I know my routine sounds like a lot, but I spent a lot of time learning the $#%&! scales and arpeggios, and I don't ever want to forget them. I've gotten pretty efficient at it, so it takes less than 15 minutes.

On even calendar days I do 4 note arpeggios.
On odd days, scales.

Right now I am doing the 1-2-3-4 exercise to try to develop speed.
Set the metronome.
1 - do one octave, 1 note per beat
2 - do 2 octaves, 2 notes per beat
3 - do 3 octaves, 3 notes per beat
4 - do 4 octaves, 4 notes per beat.

Right now I can do arpeggios at 80, scales at 132.

I start on F, and go up by 1/2 steps to E, so I cover every major key.

I also do the minor scales, 4 octaves, one hand legato and the other staccato, swapping hands.
And the sharp keys in the 4 octave contrary motion pattern.
And the flat scales, 4 octaves, in thirds & sixths, using a pattern that I thought up (which I am sure someone else has probably already invented, but it is easy to remember for me).

Sam

I usually do exercises in the key of the pieces I'm working on, before diving into practice. I start with scales (hands together parallel and contrary motion staccato then legato, sometimes hands separate to focus on tone), do arpeggios in all inversions, chords and octaves in scales and different patterns, thirds hands separate, sometimes do sixths. Sometimes I do basic finger exercises for my right hand, which is weaker than my left now. Since my left hand is better, I often do some self-designed exercises mostly adapted from difficult works to practice specific skills to focus on things like the 4-5 fingers, repeated notes, leaps, stretches, and double notes.

My teacher tells me what to do and I do that until he tells me to do something else.
The cool thing is that at the beginning of any exercise, I generally can't do it. After practicing it, it gets better. Or it doesn't and my teacher tells me some other way to practice and then it does. After all this time, he's on to me, and knows what will be easy and what will be problematic and gives strategies for the problematic ones.

Later something will show up in a piece and my teacher will remind me of the exercise where I practiced the same thing.

My teachers didn't really assign very many technical exercises, except for scales, which I only practiced a little bit. Then, as I started to see the need for technical exercises myself, I began seeking them out and inventing my own exercises, based on what my specific needs were.

There are no essential exercises that everyone must practice. Any piece of music can be made into an exercise.

Hanon the Virtuoso Pianist (exercise 1-60): 1 exercise piece a day on a specific Key.
Czerny The Young Pianist Op. 823: 1 piece a day on a specific Key. These are Czerny's etudes that can also serve as performance pieces.

I practise C major scales and arpeggios only most of the time. That is enough to wake up each fingers and arms, aim for buttery legato, sync left and right hands, sync fingers with arm movements, find the balance of everything (what's too much and what's not enough), then increase velocity and see how fast I can go while still maintain control but feel effortless, and then see at what speed I crash and burn. It usually takes about 10 to 15 minutes. Then I take a 5-minute break before I practise pieces.

Perhaps once in a week or two I'd practise only scales and arpeggios and explore the above with other keys and intervals. The piece I'm learning now has more than enough technical works. So I don't feel the need to deliberately practise technical works seperate to the piece.

The good thing about getting grade 8 behind you is I don't feel the pressure to deliberately practise technical works. I get to choose to practise what I need rather than what the exam requires. That said, without having gone through practising for the exam, I wouldn't have the skills that I have now to enjoy this 'freedom'.

I do some chord exercises usually some cycles of changes, doing chord exercises warms up the whole hand so I do chords first. Then some Jazz Hanon in 12 keys it helps fingers and visualizing keys, regular Hanon is only white keys so too limiting. Sometimes instead of the Jazz Hanon I will do "Oscar Beringer: Daily Technical Studies For Piano", it is a book many Jazz pianists use.

I view technical exercises as just part of warming up because the best way to learn to play music is by playing music. I also find how someone fingers doing a tech exercise is different than how they finger playing a piece of music.

I do scales and arpeggios everyday. My routine is three keys a dayin 4 octoaves - parallel scales major, minor harmonic, minor melodic, plus 3rd apart, a sixth apart, and contrary motion. For arpeggios I do tonic and major 7th in all three inversions. I finish off with chromatic scales a minor third apart. In four days I get through all of the keys. It sounds like a lot, but it really does not take more than 15 minutes depending on how my fingers are behaving. I do the scales and arpeggios both legato and staccato.

I had a teacher in the past that said that scales are like brushing your teeth. You should do them everyday. I took that to heart! I also do etudes as pieces. Currently i am adding etudes from RCM 8 to my routine, but I do not do Czerny or Hannon. I prefer to play etudes that are musically pleasing.