Tips for Pianists no. 10: Tankard exercises

I thought I'd talk today briefly about one of my favourite books of technical exercises. There are many collections of technical exercises out there as well as the normal scales and arpeggios pianists are expected to practise. Warming up is an important part of the practise routine. Not only does it give you time to work at specific technical difficulties you might encounter in pieces, but it also warms the fingers and hands up ready for playing pieces. The nice thing with the Tankard book I find is that some of the exercises are very straight forward and some are quite challenging so they can be used for pianists of all abilities. They also cover a wide range of technical difficulties from five-finger exercises to arpeggios, trills, tremolos and much more. You can also transpose the exercises into different keys, play them at different dynamic levels, try with different rhythms and use different articulation.