Is there any way to practice dynamics in a foundational way as opposed to...

[Soul Power]

Piece by Piece?
Being in school as a music major has forced me to take up piano and adapt to the entirely classical-baroque- TONAL harmonic music and stress things completely different from what I'm used to, which is keep the time PERFECT, and groove like a mother******.
So I am somewhat familiar to working on dynamics, but I'm at the point where I have to play a piece A LOT before I can start really using dynamics.
The Universe must be telling me that dynamics are what I must work on right now, because in addition to school
I'm playing my second broadway production, and unlike the first one----this one is ALL about dynamics. False crescendos, stressed notes, you name it.
I'd like to dig into dynamics MUCH deeper than just listen to everybody and feel it from everybody else as well. We're playing consistently great shows, but my dynamics need work.
What are some exercises to really concentrate and work on control of dynamics?
Is it a matter of creating a mind that has several different ..."settings" when it comes to the way you pluck, and playing for long enough to know how it feels to perform those different settings without even touching the bass? I'm a bit of a nerd with music so...I never stop thinking about stuff like this. I'm addicted to it, so it won't take too long. Do I have the right idea?

[Russell L]

Heh, heh, if you're addicted, no prob, you'll be figuring all this out soon. Otherwise, I don't remember really doing any particular excercizes for dynamics. I just remember trying to really pay attention to the sheet music and not miss a marking. However, there are many places where there are no markings. At that point you must understand certain "unspoken" rules. Stuff like, ascending lines get louder and vice versa---although that's not always the way it needs to go. You really have to be familiar with the music and be able to interpret it then. How do you learn that? Duh, well, I guess by playing and listening A LOT!

Just as important as dynamics is---ARTICULATION.

[TripleDouble]

There are 8 "settings" to learn from ppp to fff, which is the bulk of the standard range of dynamics. Find the loudest way in which you can play a note, and the quietest, and divide the available range of note volume into the 8 playable settings. Practice and record yourself playing the same note from quietest to loudest, then back again, while saying what each dynamic level is. Then, with the exact same recording setup, test yourself by attempting to play a random dynamic value of the note and record it, and compare it to the reference recording...

Once you have the the hang of this and internalize it, forget all this and trust your ears and intuition and just react to the music and give it what it needs.