ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Five finger exercise

The five finger exercise is like a game that helps you practice playing musical instruments, mostly the piano.

Imagine your hand is a monster with five little fingers. Now, we are going to give them names. The thumb is the boss monster, the pointer finger is the soldier monster, the middle finger is the tallest monster, the ring finger is the sweet monster, and the pinky finger is the baby monster.

In the five finger exercise game, we start by placing our five fingers on the piano keys that are next to our thumbs. The thumb monster plays one note after the other, and then the soldier monster does the same thing. The tallest monster goes next, then the sweet monster, and finally the baby monster.

We played a whole row of notes with each of our finger monsters! Now, we move our hand one step to the right and start the game again. We do this until all our monsters have played across the piano keys.

The five finger exercise helps us to use all our fingers without getting confused. It makes our fingers stronger, faster and flexible while playing the piano. Just like with most games, practice makes perfect, so play this game as much as possible, and soon you will be a pro at playing the piano.