What is Finger Power? It’s the way you get ready to play your best!
Building Skills with Drills
Have you ever watched a sports team practice? Think about what they do. For instance, will a basketball team spend their entire practice time playing basketball with each other? Or will they take the time to build skills they need to have when playing, like dribbling, passing, and shooting? How good would you be as a basketball player if the only time you had a chance to practice making a basket was during an actual game? You certainly wouldn’t score as often as someone who had spent hours doing nothing but putting the ball through the hoop.
As you learn any complex skill, like playing basketball or playing the piano, you need to break it down into smaller skills that you can practice and master, then use in your game. This is the purpose of drills and exercises. Doing drills and exercises may not be as fun as actually playing, but if you do them, playing is going to be a lot more fun!
Putting the Power in Your Piano Playing
Finger Power exercises, like pentascales and hand-over-hand chords, build strength, agility, and coordination. Doing them every day will make a piano student more confident and comfortable at the keyboard. Several lessons in each unit teach these exercises. Once you’ve completed a Finger Power lesson, don’t just leave it behind! Use it in your daily practice. You can take any Finger Power pattern and play it in all the pentascales you know. For example, in lesson 16, I introduce hand-over-hand arpeggios with the C Major pentascale. As your piano student learns each new pentascale, they can add hand-over-hand arpeggios in this new pentascale to their daily Finger Power routine. Make Finger Power a part of piano practice every day, and your piano student will be more ready for each new song, they’ll progress faster and with more confidence, and will have a strong foundation of skills to build on as they advance in their piano studies.