In this lesson I'll show you a simple but yet very efficient method to become both fast and steady on the piano. The method is quite silly actually but nevertheless it has really helped me out to gain a much better piano technique. In the start you might laugh quite a bit and that's totally ok but if you have a little patience with me we'll find out later on in this lesson that this quite silly method has so many great aspects. And doing it right, and I'll show you how, I think this is the best practical way to become both very fast and very steady in a rhythmic sense. Improvising Music is all about playing with a nice solid and cool rhythmic feeling. If we can obtain that I'll claim that we are 99% on our way to improvising Music. Because having a strong rhythmic self-confidence we can play just any note and the audience will still believe in us. Now let me try and demonstrate. On the bass we just do a simple 4 meter in C... and look, we can actually play every single key in the right hand if we just do it steadily with a strong rhythmic self-confidence so I'll try my best now... Ok, but to obtain a strong rhythmic self-confidence we need to exercise our fingers a lot. And my problem is that I do actually not sit by my piano very often. Many times I have to do other stuff. And I must also admit sitting by the piano too long I just tend to get a little bored. Well, I don't know if you share this feeling with me? But the question is; how do we exercise our fingers on a regular basis when we cannot sit by our piano 8 hours a day? Well, we just have to get ourselves a silly and annoying habit. So, here comes my secret method; we simply just go around tapping with our fingers. I know this sounds really crazy. But plz hang on and hear me out on this. Because in this lesson I'll show you how we can do this right in a way so the tapping becomes very beneficial to you. Furthermore we'll later on create specific beneficial exercises and we'll actually transfer them directly to the piano keys improvising Music. And by the way. By the very end of this lesson I'll take a big risk and I'll try to show off a little bit. How fast can a regular guy like me, not practicing the piano very often, play, just by having a tapping habit? We'll see how that goes. So pzl hang on. This is a NewJazz lesson by the way and my name is Oliver Prehn. Now before investigating the techniques about how to tap the right and most beneficial way let me tell you about how great tapping is. The main idea is that we can tap almost everywhere at every time. Often I do it on a book this is my scrap book by the way for writing down crazy ideas. But we can also do it on a table… on the wall… or discreetly on the leg… on our thumb… waiting for the bus… in the bus… or just walking in the forest… So by tapping we can increase our practice time a lot. And by doing the tapping the right way as I'll show you in just a minute we can really improve our rhythmic steadiness and speed. By tapping we build up a strong connection between fingers and brain so to speak. But don't stress about it. Do the tapping only when you feel for it. Tapping just a little bit every day can also help you a lot. You keep your fingers moving so to speak. So try it out. Now let's talk tapping techniques. The thing is that we have to tap in the right way to really benefit from our silly habit. Firstly, what's very very important when tapping is to do it steadily... Make the tapping sound good. Do it slowly. It's so much better and beneficial to tap slowly but steadily than to tap fast and unsteadily. When you feel ready speed up but if you get unsteady in the slightest - slow down again. Don't rush anything. Secondly, if you feel any tension in your arm or hand, stop immediately. Just for a few seconds, until all your muscles are once more relaxed… and then continue your tapping... Don't ever keep on if you have any tensions… So we just do as many small breaks as we need. It's a sort of reflex we build up; tension stop... relaxed start... tension stop... relaxed start... In that way we educate our brain so to speak to always do everything relaxed, cool and easy… If we wanna learn to play really fast that's the only way forward. Thirdly. It's a good idea on a regular basis to check out that you have no unwanted twitches. You can for example do that by placing all your fingers on the tapping plate simultaneously. Now try to tap one finger at a time… and look at the other fingers they are not allowed to move at all. The 4th ring finger is the hardest one I think... Do this very slowly until you are able to control every single finger independently. And remember to keep on doing this twitch checkout on a regular basis. By the way this checkout is very silent and therefore very suitable when we have to be discreet like at the library or at the dinner table if your husband or wife gets too annoyed about the constant tapping. Ok, now it's time for doing some specific and very beneficial tapping exercises. Having done that I'll show you how we can easily transfer the tapping exercises to the piano keys and use the exercises directly to improvise Music. Finally I'll try to show off, and we'll see how that goes. So please stay tuned. Now, the next step is to create some specific tapping patterns that we can do. We need to create ourselves a little toolbox of exercises so to speak. And I recommend that you create pattern exercises with different degrees of difficulty. Because it happens that in some situations it's best to do very simple exercises and in other situations we can do more advanced exercises. For example when watching a movie and we actually wanna keep up with the storyline. Then it's probably best to do a very simple exercise. We can for example tap our fingers just in a row like this… Or we may just exercise 2 fingers like this… by the way make sure that the other 3 fingers are relaxed and not pointing out in the air like this... so this is better... Now if we can't fall asleep at night I think that there is nothing better than to practice something more advanced. Actually these tapping exercises can really make me calm down. Tapping really clears my head. It's pure meditation. And often I fall asleep shortly after. So, at night, I may do a 4 meter in the left hand like this… and then for example play 16th notes in the right hand but with only a 3 taps long pattern like this… this is fun… or maybe in the right hand a 7 tap long pattern like this… Well, the possibilities for making our own specific exercises are endless… And before transferring our tapping exercises to the keys playing Music let's also do a totally free exercise… Just improvise with your right hand fingers... This is probably the most important exercise we can do actually... Now let's transfer our exercises to the piano and make our tapping into Music. Imagine we have been sitting in the bus on our way home practicing our tapping exercise I. Now we finally have the opportunity to visit our lovely piano. So what sound can we make out of our tapping exercises? Well, we have a lot of options. But what about playing a pentatonic hand grip and try this out… at different positions… yes, I can really feel how my tapping practice has improved my piano skills a lot already. Now, let's also do some breaks and play our exercise more loosely… Just play around have fun with this... Now what about also transferring our tapping exercise II to the piano still using the pentatonic hand grip… now, loosen up a little... Now what about our tapping exercise III we have been practicing hopefully not all night... This is a little harder; a 3 note long pattern played on a 4th subdivision rhythm… and let's loosen up... Our tapping exercise IV is even more advanced; a 7th note long pattern played on a 4th subdivision rhythm… let's loosen up… And let's just do tapping exercise V... It's when translating our tapping exercises to the piano keys that we can really feel how much we have actually gained from our quite silly tapping habit. It's now our hard work pays off... Ok, now try out to create and add your own tapping exercises to your toolbox. Just use your great imagination. It could be anything you like. Now, very soon I'll do a really crazy experiment just for fun taking the risk and trying to play quite fast. It may just go terribly wrong. But before I do that let me just give you all a big thank you for all the likes, nice comments and the voluntary donations that keep me going. You know, all NewJazz stuff is free, public and for everybody, money or no money. I have no paywalls. But if you feel for it you are of course so much welcome to make a small voluntary donation to help keep me going. Now here by the end of this lesson we should have some meaningless fun. So if you are up to it please stay tuned. Now, for approximately half a year I have practiced the tapping exercise I a great deal. So let's hear out how fast I can do it on the keys. This makes no sense at all I know I just feel like showing to you that being the lucky owner of a silly tapping habit has actually been very beneficial to a silly guy like me. And we should also just have some meaningless fun now and then, don't you think so? By now it's also only about 5% of the audience that is left - the hardcore audience - so I guess it's ok at this point to take the risk and just fail completely. Let's start the metronome at 100 bpm playing 16th notes in the right hand… Ok, that's easy, 120… 130… 140… Ok, not any faster or I'll suddenly fail completely. Now I feel a little tension in my right hand so I just take a short break... you know, as we have learned earlier. And when I'm totally sure that every muscle is 100% relaxed, I continue… And let's loosen up and just have some fun… Well, this is it. See you girls and guys in about a month from now. The best and warm regards from Oliver Prehn…
