Alright folks – check THIS out.

Watch how in this video, we turn stiff wrists into loose wrists, we turn flying fingers into controlled fingers, and we achieve a nice “bridge” shape in my student’s hand – all with one simple exercise. I was absolutely FLOORED when we hit upon this solution, I barely caught it on tape as he was trying it for only the second time.

This is PART THREE of my series on posts regarding teaching good hand position to your piano students. Its in response to some great questions from my post “ask me a question about teaching piano“. Thanks again everyone for the thoughtful questions.

My student is working on Alla Turca by Mozart, which is a little challenging for his age.

WEEK ONE
- He has some technique issues; stiff wrists, collapsing bridge, and most piano teachers favorite – flying fingers.

WEEK TWO
- What would YOU do to help fix these issues? After some trial and error, you’ll see what I did.

—-> Don’t forget to comment – what would YOU have done? What do think about taking the approach that I did?

I think the main point here is that piano playing is comprised of many MIRCO-movements, that have their roots in MACRO-movements. I like this point so much, I’ll say it again in case you missed it.

Piano playing is really large movements that are condensed down into small movements. If your student does not grasp these movements on a MACRO level, they will not get them on a MICRO level.

For example, his wrists were totally stiff (in the first clip). Having him raise his hand and fingers up high to attack the keys, gives his wrist no choice but to loosen up. It gave his knuckle joints no choice but to firm up and support the weight of his hand. And it got him to do a downward motion on the downbeats.

Exaggerate Small Movements Into Big Movements

When your student is having trouble with technique, try exaggerating an aspect of movement. In this case, I had him raise his hand unrealistically high. I had him do this once every four notes (every beat). This is part of experimenting and playing around. In a way, I had NO idea how much this would help. But I had a feeling that if we did something to get him out of his habits and amplify some aspect of the movement, it would lead to a solution.

Also, as he throws his hand downward, it releases excess tension.

As an aside, I didn’t plan on shooting these videos to demonstrate how to teach piano technique. We recorded the first clip of him and then me at the first lesson, so he could watch both and see the difference. I used slow motion after the lesson to try and get a better idea of what his technical challenges were. By slowing it down I could see that his wrists were not coming up and down at the right moments. It was like he was fighting against himself. And further, its how I could see that he was not properly thinking of the joints behind his knuckles as the “keystone” of the bridge. So I went into the lesson (where we found a solution) having a strong idea of what the cause of the problem was – and then working together with him we attempted to play with ways to fix it.

What Do YOU Think

Please COMMENT on and SHARE this article – I appreciate your feedback and help. The more piano teachers I can reach, the more I can help.

Teaching piano is a fascinating, exciting and rewarding profession. I want everyone to feel welcome – this is definitely a “no judgement zone”! Teaching and learning is a lifelong process and we’re all working on improving our craft!

I’d like to take a quick minute to answer one of TAMI’S questions about hand position more directly. In my post where I asked you to ask me questions on how to teach piano, Tami asks;

“When do you personally focus on making sure the student’s hand shape/ posture/ etc. is ALWAYS correct? I assume that this is usually goes case to case according to age, learning style/ type, and level?”

You’re very right – teaching piano is SUCH a personal, case-by-case field. But this is how I’ve approached things in general.

Find the CAUSE of Poor Technique

I view technique as a SYMPTOM which comes from a deeper CAUSE. Search for what is causing poor technique. In my last post, where I help a student play with better technique, we found that moving his arms outward to the outer octaves of the piano instantly improved his “flying fingers”. In the future we will work towards capturing that same feeling while bring his arms more in front of him.

Some possible causes of poor hand position / technique;

- Lack of interest in music, song
- Stress about getting all the notes and rhythms right
- Slight mis-alignments in sitting position, including distance from piano, bench-height
- You can’t “see” the sound. Try opening up the piano so they can see the hammers and how they work, and how what they’re doing on the keys relates to how the sound is produced.
- Trying to play too loud
- They feel judged
- Lack of “free-play” time at the piano, especially in younger students

I Don’t Address Technique Until I’ve Tried Everything Else

Believing that technique is a SYMPTOM, I actually rarely address technique directly. If I do, my plan of attack is like this;

Ages 5-14
- The first time I address technique directly, it’s for no longer than 10 minutes during a lesson.
- I make sure they are at least aware of what we’re doing, even if no improvement is achieved.
- In subsequent lessons, I only address it with subtle reminders, not in depth explanations.
- Maybe 4-6 months later we do a more in depth review.
- I find that inability to help a student with technique, comes from a mis-diagnosis on my part. REALLY watch closely to their every movement – macro and micro. I’ll even do a quick video of them to review after the lessons, when I can really try and observe how they are moving wrong.

Ages 15-Adult
- In this case because of age and maturity, I tend to address technical issues more right away.
- We’ll spend sometimes a good 20 minutes on technique. Most of this time is a “play” back and forth between myself and the student where we are both working together towards improvement. It’s all about discovery!
- I address technique much more often and in depth with teenagers and adults. Every other lesson at times.

Prevention Is the Best Cure

I know this is beginning to sound like a “personal health” post, but it is all very similar. Technique is a RESULT of a variety of other factors. If you try to solve it like its the cause, it will never work over the long term.

Good preventions?

- With the youngest students, play “copying” games with them right away. Games where you play a short series of notes and they have to imitate it back. Ask them to not only copy the notes, but the sound, fingers and hand position.
- Address good POSTURE and SITTING POSITION from day one. (There’s some fun games I’m going to share on this later!)
- Feed your students with a balance of music they LOVE with material they learn from.
- Have a non-judgmental approach. The little things MATTER – the way in which you tell them a note is incorrect, eye contact, energy.
- For the little ones, allow them to “play” on the keys during the lesson (as so many of them do). Its very important to the way in which they get physically acquainted with the instrument.
- When you play something for them as a demonstration EXEMPLIFY the good technique you hope for your students to have.

So THANKS again to Tami for the questions – I will be answering more of them specifically soon! Don’t forget to sign up for EMAIL LIST over there to the right ——–>

A few weeks ago, I asked you to submit questions about teaching piano to the blog.

Two people submitted questions on the blog, and one via email – and to my surprise, they ALL had something to do with correcting bad hand position on the piano. (Thanks Tami, Lynn and Renee for the questions!)

So I am going to do a series of posts all about helping to correct student’s hand position on the piano.

While doing these posts, I’m also just going to be playing around with different ways of sharing these tips. For this clip;

• The footage of the student happened spontaneously during his lesson (recorded on my iPhone).
• The next day (today) I quickly scatched out a simple script/commentary to describe what was happening during the lesson. (You may want to catch the ending)
• I had fun reading the script from a few different angles directly into my MacBook
• I quickly edited it with iMovie, and uploaded it to YouTube

So here it is, hope you enjoy it and I hope it helps! Stayed tuned for more ideas on helping with hand position!! And thanks for those questions!!!

Please feel free to leave a comment, let me know if this is helpful or if this is something you’ve also tried before.

Thanks!!

Transcription of the script:

HI FOLKS

The following video is a very simple exercise for piano with a powerful effect. All you do is play all the C’s up and down the piano. You could even hit wrong notes – it’s more about the movement then the notes. But you have to do it with an awareness of any unessential body movement. This exercise should be played with the upper body remaining still, and only arm movement to get to the extreme ends of the piano. I use this for students that seem to feel uncomfortable physically at the piano to literally help center them. There’s a lot more you could do to add to this exercise, but hope this helps as a starting point.