Do you struggle with your fingers not being strong and independent enough to play
the notes clearly and have beautiful sound? Stay right here! I'm gonna show you how
you can strengthen your fingers right now! Hi thanks for tuning in today! I'm Dr. Yuking
Chou Brandenburgh. I deal with this finger and sound problem with my students every single day.
If you saw last week's video about hand stretches, you may have spent some time this week thinking
about our primary tools, hands and fingers, and about how you really need to train
them in order to use them to the fullest. I will leave the link to that video below,
so you can watch it after this one. If you haven't already. Hey, if you like anything piano
or music related, please join my youtube family by hitting the subscribe button and the bell,
so you will be notified about my future videos Okay, so hopefully we all know that having
strong fingers is very important for a pianist. Lots of people when they hear the words
"strong fingers" think that means to be able to play loudly and only loudly.
But that is not at all what it means. Having strong fingers means that the fingers
are independent, dynamic and 100 percent under control, so that you can play loudly, or softly,
or in between, in pieces of all different tempos, with all kinds of different techniques,
and you can demand that any finger do whatever you want, at any given moment. So if
your fingers are weak and floppy to begin with, you need to strengthen your fingers first! It's
just like a new power tool, you need to unbox it, make sure it's set up properly and the
battery is charged so you can use it. Okay If you know what I'm talking about please smash
that thumbs up! Or tell us in the comments, what kinds of struggles you encounter
with your fingers when you play the piano. Okay there are so many dimensions to
this topic that we can't possibly cover everything in one video. So today I'm
going to show you a very basic trick that you can do every day, to strengthen your
fingers, and improve your finger independence. Now this is really important. If your fingers are
weak and flat, and you can hear that you don't have a clear sound, one of the most common
reactions is to tense up your arms, thinking that might help but that will only achieve
the opposite. Your arms will tire quickly, and that will make your fingers even weaker. So
not only do you need to strengthen your fingers, you also need to be very intentional
about keeping your arm muscles relaxed. This exercise will help you accomplish both. I want you to massage your forearm with all
five fingers just like this. Use a strong grip, and really dig into the muscle tissue.
You want to feel a real massage. In a minute, you will see that you will
have an effect on the sound of your playing. Now we are going to work on each
finger individually to make them more independent. Use your first and second
finger like this, lift all your other fingers. Now use fingers one and three, not too fast and sloppy. It should
feel like you are pinching your arm. If you are like most people, your fourth and
fifth fingers are your weakest. They often want to go together, but when we play piano, we need
for them to be independent. So let's really put some extra effort into those fingers. First one
and four, lift your pinky and other two fingers, and then one and five, lifting
the rest of your fingers. When you finish the first hand, repeat
the exercises with the other hand. When you finish working out both hands, let's
relax them for a moment. I like to shake them out. Let's play those single fingers on the keys. You want to hear a clear, rich sound. Remember in my last video, we did a big C chord.
Let's try that. Let's massage that chord on the arm. First a four note C major chord is C E G C
with one two three five. Try massaging that chord on your arm, one two three five, and
lift the four. Grab! Grab! And grab! Now let's play that chord on the keys, and you
want to hear a clear rich sound. Grab, grab, grab! If you continue to work out
your fingers on your arms, you will be able to play much
stronger and clearer on the piano. You might remember that I talked a little bit
about Beethoven last week. Well, Beethoven had a piano student, named Carl Czerny, who went on
to become a famous composer and teacher. One of his students was Franz Liszt who many consider the
greatest pianist of all time. Just think about it, Czerny was the student of the greatest composer,
and the teacher of the greatest pianist. But today, he's remembered as one of the
fathers of modern piano technique. He wrote hundreds of finger exercises the
pianists all over the world study. If you are serious about increasing finger strength
and dexterity, the best thing you could do is spend some time exploring the
incredible world of Carl Czerny. As i said before, piano technique is a huge
topic. Today we just scratched the surface. Please let me know in the comment section
what topic you'd like me to talk about. I really hope that you enjoyed this video.
If you did, please give me a thumbs up, and don't forget to subscribe. I
hope to see you in my next one! Bye!
