cold hands (2 Viewers)

[tash]

well as the days are extremely cold so are my hands so when i want to do a piano practice my hands are totally frozen and won't play properly. i've tried heating them and keeping them warm before but it doesn't defrost the muscles and this has disastrous effects!

so i was wondering if any other people had some methods of keeping your hands warm so you can play properly??

 

[anti]

i do lots of scales.. sad but true. also gets my hands used to new pianos (particularly upright/grand key weight differences... argh)
if you can, practise in a warm room.. i guess that's not always practical (especially at school) but if you can, it helps. obviously.

oh, and i like playing a relatively sprightly piece to warm up, like a mozart or something.. but i play it slowly. or something baroquey but not difficult. it's more fun than scales.

 

[chip]

hey i play sax and with the cold keys and cold hands its not a good combination......

but like anti said lots of warm up scales and drills
or just let them be numb

 

[tash]

the thing with playing scales is that my hands are so frozen they can't play the scales properly in the first place and that really ruins the scales...

oh well i'll experiment with what u've all said so far. thanks heaps

 

[iambored]

i never ended up trying this but i always wanted those gloves with the fingers cut off, so i could play and keep some heat in2 my hands at he same time

 

[anti]

You don't have to play the scales *properly*
just make sure your fingers are moving

 

[chip]

haha my scales are never done properly colh hands or not hahahah

should have heard my cadenza today from like a high f above the ledger to a d hahaha

 

[tash]

yes but i need to keep my scales in good condition cos i have my exam coming up aghhhhhh. oh well i'll experiment with each of these things this week and see what works best.

 

[Weisy]

good luck.

I owned a pair of cut fingered gloves when I was a lil' one...I didn't like them because it felt as though my hands were constricted. Best thing for me is a hot water bottle for journeys to and from performance venues, warm water with a few drops of hand soap just before playing, and slow scales, then fast arpeggios if I get a chance to warm up on the piano.

I'm interested to know if instrumentalists get this cold fingers problem as badly as the piano players?

 

[chip]

well i play sax and i do get slightly affected by cold hands but not that bad as you pianists' i guess

 

[Toodulu]

instead of scales you should play hanon. it's more interesting and really helps with the difficult intervals. really good for warming up too.

 

[Toodulu]

i know, it's terrible!
but they were talking about scales.. SCALES!! i have to do anything within my power to deter people from them

 

[tash]

yeah i do hanon! i really like it, and it does work reasonably well for cold hands

 

[enak]

Originally posted by Toodulu
instead of scales you should play hanon. it's more interesting and really helps with the difficult intervals. really good for warming up too.

I play Czerny before playing, I think thats a lot more fun, but i've only learnt the first 10 studies op699 i think, well anyway, I wish I had a practice piano before my A.mus exam, fingers were shaking on the piano, and it sounded out of tune as well

 

[tash]

oh i hate it when my hands shake it's soooooo annoying. i also have a problem when using the soft pedal my left leg starts shaking- dunno why but it's really really annoying. i plan on doing a good warmup b4 our concert/assessment next week

 

[Toodulu]

Originally posted by enak
I play Czerny before playing, I think thats a lot more fun, but i've only learnt the first 10 studies op699 i think, well anyway, I wish I had a practice piano before my A.mus exam, fingers were shaking on the piano, and it sounded out of tune as well

ok. i swear i'll stop posting in this forum after this.

i played a czerny study for one of my exams! it was fun, just a whole heap of scales/arpeggios/intervals and the whole thing was in contrary motion? do you know which i'm talking about?
and how did you go with your amus?

 

[enak]

Ye, I didn't like that one, was that for 7th grade?

I failed my A.mus, I guess I didn't prepare enough like an hour a day , maybe i'll try again next year

 

[tash]

yeah how much does everyone practice every day? i do about 2-3 hrs depending on how much time i have

 

[enak]

I can't find enough time for more really, maybe I should of done hsc music but our teachers suck!

 

[tash]

yeah what i like about the fact that half my songs are for my hsc is that i can waste half my afternoon practicing and still feel like i'm doing some form of work!