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The Warm Up:

Warm-ups: What is it? What is the purpose? Benefits? Examples for your instrument?

Warming up is a way to bring yourself into a state that is ready to receive new information and making yourself "warm" for playing. It allows for less mistakes while playing as well as less tension while playing. Also, it creates a routine that make it so that every practice session start with the same thing. This alone greatly improves the effectiveness of practice.

1. What fundamental //**exercises**// are prescribed for your instrument?

There are several different types of exercises that one must do in order to improve in piano. Some improve your finger strength, while others improve your virtuosity, dexterity, and independence.

With piano, one of the greatest battles in improving the finger strength in the 4th and 5th fingers. This is often accomplished through exercises that target these fingers. With enough repetition and practice, the fourth and fifth fingers will eventually become stronger. This allows them to be much more independent.

Exercises that improve your dexterity focus on having your fingers do something very fast. This could be as simple as going up and down a scale, or it could be more complicated such as doing the scale in thirds or fourths, or simply a more complicated pattern. Finger dexterity is essentially how quickly one can play notes, and it is critical to mastering more difficult pieces.

Finger independence is another vastly important aspect of playing piano. The hand's natural inclination is to have certain fingers go with each other. The fifth often falls as you play a note with your fourth. Finger independence is making it so that every finger is equal and separate, and that every note played is a purposeful, intentional action. For instance, one exercise that stresses finger independence is trilling from 1 and 3 to 2 and 4 back and forth on C & E and D & F. This is an excellent example of finger independence.

Virtuosity is essentially a combination of finger independence and dexterity. An eProxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 oxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 oxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 oxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 rcise that practices virtuosProxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 y will be very fast, have a complicated pattern, and will have each finger doing something very unique, and even have each hand doing very different patterns. Exercises that practice virtuosity are the most difficult by far, but also the most rewarding, as when they are mastered the greatly improve your skill as a pianist.

2. Begin the Creation of a **"Workbook"** for you to use during your Practice Session.

It will eventually be divided into sections based on a proper practice routine
 * Warm Up Sessions
 * Repertoire Study
 * Sight Reading