Exercises — build real technique

Technique & practice: Drills · Exercises · Training routines

Once your hands are awake (the Drills), these longer exercises build finger strength, evenness, and — most importantly — the coordination to play both hands together. They're the daily gym for pianists.

Golden rules: (1) Slow first — only speed up when it's clean. (2) Metronome on — start ~60 BPM. (3) Hands separately, then together. (4) Stay relaxed — shake out any tension; never play through pain.

Exercise lab

Pick an exercise, tick L / R / both, and choose any of the 12 keys major or minor. Press Play to watch and listen; Play along needs a USB MIDI keyboard or your piano’s microphone (single-note lines). Warm-up patterns in C live on drills.html. Tempo follows the metronome bar.

Right + left hand syncing

Getting two hands to cooperate is the biggest early hurdle. Build it in this order — each step is an exercise in the lab above:

  1. Unison, same direction — both hands play the same shape an octave apart. Listen for one sound, not two — if you hear a flam, they're not together.
  2. Contrary motion — hands mirror each other with the same finger numbers. The symmetry makes it feel natural fast.
  3. One-octave scale — same direction but the thumbs cross at different spots. Go painfully slow and watch the fingering.
  4. Two-against-one — one hand moves twice as fast. Count out loud (“1-and-2-and”) and let the fast hand ride on top of the slow one.

Practice tip: master each hand alone first, then put them together at half the speed. Whisper the counts; keep the metronome on.

Left-hand chords under a right-hand scale

This is the bridge from "hands alone" to actually playing music: the left hand holds the harmony while the right hand carries the line. Almost every song works this way, so it is worth drilling on its own. Pick a combination below, press Play to watch each hand light up (R / L), then play along on your own piano. Tempo follows the metronome bar.

Glowing = play these keys Right hand = gold · left hand = blue Number under the note = finger

Two ways to practise it

  1. Block chords under a scale (independence). The right hand runs the C-major scale in eighth-notes; the left hand drops a triad on every beat, moving C → F → G → C (I–IV–V–I). The hands move at different speeds — that is the whole point. Count "1-and 2-and": chords land on the numbers, scale notes on numbers and ands.
  2. Harmonized scale (parallel). Under each scale note the left hand plays the triad built on that degree — C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, B°, C. This is the "chords come from the scale" idea made physical: you hear how every melody note rests on its own chord. See the chord cheat-sheet to take it to other keys.

How to build it: learn each hand alone first, then put them together at half the tempo. Keep the left-hand chords soft so the melody sings on top, and make sure each chord lands exactly with its beat — not rolled or late. Speed up only when it is clean.

Hanon — The Virtuoso Pianist

Charles-Louis Hanon's The Virtuoso Pianist (1873) is the classic set of 60 finger exercises built to make all five fingers "equally well trained" — especially the weak 4th and 5th — and to bring the left hand up to the level of the right. All twenty Part I exercises are transcribed to notation you can read and hear — pick a number, watch the grand staff, and follow the keyboard — on the Hanon Part I page. The full library, with free sheet music & audio in every key, lives at hanon-online.com.

Read & play all 20 on the Hanon page
How Hanon says to practise: lift each finger firmly and play with an even, strong tone; keep the wrist loose; play hands together, two octaves up and down; begin with the metronome at 60 and only push the tempo (toward ~108) once every note is clean; practise daily. Once mastered, the whole book runs in about an hour.

The 60 exercises, in three parts

  • Part I — Nos. 1–20 (preparatory): finger independence & strength.
  • Part II — Nos. 21–43 (transcendent): scales, arpeggios, broken chords.
  • Part III — Nos. 44–60 (virtuoso): trills, octaves, tremolos, wrists.

Open a preparatory exercise — each page has the sheet music and a play-along recording, transposed to all keys:

No. 1 No. 2 No. 3 No. 4 No. 5 No. 6 No. 7 No. 8 No. 9 No. 10 No. 11 No. 12 No. 13 No. 14 No. 15 No. 16 No. 17 No. 18 No. 19 No. 20

More: Part I index · Hanon's introduction · downloads & free online metronome. Exercises are public domain; sheet music, audio & transcriptions courtesy of hanon-online.com.

A 10-minute daily routine

  1. 2 min — wake-up: the five-finger & trill drills.
  2. 2 min — Hanon No. 1: slow, even, hands together.
  3. 2 min — five-finger climb: move it up through several keys.
  4. 2 min — a scale: hands together, then contrary motion.
  5. 2 min — coordination: two-against-one, then left-hand chords under a right-hand scale.

Finish by playing something you enjoy — a song — so technique turns into music.