1-2 Finger Skip

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman. Today we're going to be learning a simple yet effective finger power exercise that was originally developed over a hundred years ago teacher named Charles-Louis Hanon. Hanon wanted his students to have fast, agile, and strong fingers so they could play the best most advanced pieces. In order to help his students, he created a series of 60 finger exercises that were so simple yet effective, that now his exercises have been used by thousands, very possibly over a million piano students around the world over the past 100 years. Now, so you can also develop strong, agile fingers, I'm going to teach you "Hanon's Finger Exercise Number One." Let's come to the piano to check it out. Hanon didn't give names to his exercises, he just called them one, two, three for each exercise. But I like to call this exercise number one a "1-2 Finger Skip." The reason for that is every time we're going up and we get to finger 1 to 2, we're actually going to skip over a note. So instead of playing DO RE MI FA SO, we're actually going DO MI, so no finger is going to be on D, we're just skipping right over it. DO MI, and then we just keep stepping up from there. The tricky thing is, as we get back down, now our finger 1 moves up to D, and we start the same pattern over again where we play a D, and then we skip every time we go from finger 1 to 2, we skip up. So now we're like this: And then we step back down, and now finger 1's going to land on E. We skip up again 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 now finger 1 is on F. We skip up, 2 3 4 5 4 3 2, now finger 1 is where? That's right it's on G, skip up again 3 4 5 4 3 2 now we're on A, skip up 3 4 5 4 3, finger 1 on B, skip up to 2, 3 4 5 4 3 2 1. And finger 1 when it makes it from C down here to C up here. Middle C to treble C. That's where we're going to stop. So we'll travel up one octave. Now I'd like you to press pause and try that once yourself with your right hand traveling from C to C. You'll notice because when we are going up, we do this skip, but when we go down we only step. That kind of makes us travel up the piano one key at a time. If you get confused and lost, just rewind and watch me do it again. Keep trying it until you can make it from C to C, then press play to go on and I'll show you some tips for doing it with the left hand, because the left hand is going to go down. Press pause to practice on your own, and play to continue. All right, now because our left hand is designed as a mirror image of the right hand, we'll start with finger 1, always your thumb and try going down the piano, also skipping between finger 1 and 2 every time going down, and then as we step back up, we'll do only steps no skips, and that will help us travel down the piano like this. I'll show you once. So we have 1, skip down, 3 4 5 4 3 2 now 1 is on B, skip down, and then when we're coming up only steps. We're on A, skip down, back to G, skip down, and as we come up only stepping, F skip down, E skip down. D skip down. and when finger 1 makes it to C, we're done. So just like the right hand we traveled from middle C, all the way to the next C in this case for the left hand, base C going down. Let me give you a few suggestions about piano posture before you try this on your own. Make sure your fingers always are comfortably curved and relaxed as you play. Just resting on the keys. Then also as you play, let your wrist drop slightly as you play, then float back up before you play the next note. That will help you use the natural falling motion of gravity to help you play the notes. One last thing, when you play your pinky, make sure it's not playing flat, but that it's playing near its tip and that will keep you in good posture. Notice how your hand collapses hand collapses when your pinky plays flat. Keep it more near the tip like this. Now press pause and try your left hand going from C down to C, then press play when you're ready to go on. Great, now you've tried right hand and left hand doing the "1-2 Finger Skip." Once you feel comfortable with it, it will be time to try it with metronome. I suggest we start with the metronome at about 80 beats per minute. If you feel ready, you can try this along with me. Let's try the right hand playing with the metronome at 80 beats per minute. Playing one note per click. Remember your great piano posture. If you want to just watch, that's fine or you can try it along with me. We're going to go from C to C, starting with finger 1 on middle C. 1, 2, ready go: Good, one more tip about piano posture I'd like to share, and that is to be careful as you play not to let your fingers make this shape which I call hula fingers like this See how they're kind of doing the hula? When that happens, it's going to not develop the correct kind of finger shape and strength that we want. I always encourage you to keep your fingers relaxed, but even while being relaxed they have to be firm enough to keep this shape as they play. And that will give you more strength in your tone. If this happens, then you lose a little bit of strength. So be careful as you play this to keep them from doing the hula. Okay, now we're going to try the left hand with the metronome. Once again you can just watch, or ...