5 Awesome Piano Exercises to Help Improve your Piano/Keyboard Skills

 Okay Steemians, so since I’m a piano teacher I figured I might as well contribute something to the community utilizing my piano teaching skillz…

If there’s one thing that I get asked a lot regarding piano lessons it’s what kind of exercises are going to help improve your playing the most, and that’s why I came up with this little list, which is something I use in my piano lessons to begin with.

I figured I’d put it together and share it with you guys…

So, here’s 5 Great Exercises to Help Improve your Piano/Keyboard Skills

Number 1: Scales

Ah, yes… who can possibly forget the absolute drudgery of learning your scales? However, when it comes to understanding music, improving your dexterity and overall command of the keyboard, as well as helping your hands do different things at the same time (independence of the limbs), there's no equal to this most basic of exercises that you can keep improving upon all the way to mastery.

You need to do them properly, though. It would take me quite a while to go through each scale and show you all the proper fingerings to each one, so instead I’m simply going to refer to a you tube video that goes over the major scales and their fingerings. This is a pretty decent one to start out with. You can also purchase one of many books that go over the scales with proper fingerings.

Pay special attention to the fingers you’re using. Feel free to google more you tube videos and also go into the minor, pentatonic and blues scales as well. These are all very important and commonly used in modern music, and understanding them, or at least having a decent handle on them gives you quite an advantage as a musician.

Number 2: Hanon

One of my personal favorites, Hanon, is a series of 60 exercises written a while back by a gentlemen named none other than, Bosendorfer. …haha, no his name was Hanon. (bonus points if you know what a Bosendorfer is) 

Hanon developed these exercises with the purpose of strengthening the independence of the fingers, improving dexterity, and developing overall control and precision. They are basically a bunch of patterns that go up and back down the keyboard utilizing every finger again and again in the same pattern, but in an ascending or descending manner. I know that probably sounds confusing as hell lol… The you tube video I’ll display below will make it a bit clearer.

With these exercises, speed is not the main goal. The main goal is to play them well, clearly, and evenly, with a strong, smooth tone. I actually enjoy practicing these exercises as a warm up and can usually clearly notice the improvement of my playing immediately after going through several of them.

Here’s a decent video of the first ten Hanon exercises (there are 60 in total):

PS. – for a bonus to Hanon, try to do to the Hanon exercises in all twelve keys. And if you want an even extra challenge, do them in 10’ths instead of the traditional octave. It sounds way cool anyway!

Number 3: Chords & Inversions

When is a C chord not just a C chord?

Practically all the time.

And that’s why it’s imperative to know your chords, and how to invert them in what initially seems like million different ways. I know this sounds complicated to those out there who might not know what a chord even is, but in reality chords are pretty simple to learn, and it’s the inversions that usually confuse the crap out of most people. 

Playing a regular old C chord is pretty basic, and I’m sure a good number of you out there who are reading this can already do that. But if I tell you to play a C chord, 2nd inversion, with a C in the bass in the LH, I might lose a few of you there. However, this is more like how cords are played in modern music, so it’s very beneficial to learn them. 

There’s all kinds of different chords out there, too numerous for the scope of this post. But I can definitely say start with the major, minor, and 7th chords, and learn all of their inversions as well (which aren’t too terribly many) and to play around with them, taking out notes, putting the notes in different combinations to work the shapes of the chords into your muscle memory.

The main thing to remember is learn to play a C chord (and all the other chords) in a bunch of different ways. 

Number 4: Exercises For Independence of the Fingers, By Isidor Phillip

Somewhat along the same lines as Hanon, but less well-known and more difficult, are the exercises for the independence of the fingers. This is for a bit more of the serious pianist out there who wants to take their chops to the next level.

Less tonal (it doesn’t stay within a particular key, like Hanon stays in the key of C for quite some time, avoiding all black notes for many of the beginning exercises) than Hanon and focusing more on minor thirds, and diminished chords, these exercises work especially well for jazz and blues pianists, but will also improve your precision and clarity no matter what style of music you play.

Here’s a little taste of what they are like – 

Number 5: Jamming/Improvising

Yes, I think simply sitting down at the piano and randomly playing whatever you can make up is one of the most overlooked, yet effective, ways to improve your playing. You’ll never know what you might have come up with if you don’t sit down and try.

It’s like Yogi Berra said – you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. So what have you got to lose?

Once you’ve got a few chords and scales under your belt, maybe even a blues scale or two (hopefully), sit down at the piano every now and then just to tickle the ivories and see what kind of interesting sounds you might be able to bring into the world.

Start out with just a few basic chords, like C, F and G (in other words, a 1-4-5 progression in the key of C– but more on chord progressions later) and start messing around with the blues scale. You might be surprised how good just going up and down the blues scale in the key of C sounds while playing a couple different chords. Throw a few other notes in there, and go to town.

Make up your own melodies, chord progressions, steal other people’s chord progressions and put your own melodies on top of them, the sky’s the limit. And remember, there’s nothing wrong with listening and imitating what other people are doing on piano. That’s about the only way we’ve progressed from the primitive sound of monks chanting to the ridiculously complicated point that music has reached now. So go for it!

In the video below, the guy has taken the c chord and made a little LH riff out of it, adding another note in between and some rhythm, common to blues. If this is a bit too hard for you at first you can also just use a simple C chord and hold it down while you start making up riffs with your right hand.

It’s good to establish a beat, though, when you improvise, which is why using a little LH riff like the one in the video below is also very beneficial.

And here’s the same thing, just a bit more advanced:

Anyway, I hope this post has been of some use to at least a few people out there! Sorry I didn’t go and record all these videos myself, but it seems kind of redundant to do since there are already so many videos out there that illustrate the points. Also, if you have any requests for piano subjects, instructions/tutorials, or song requests, let me know!

Thanks and hope you enjoyed it!