Piano posture has always been one of the first things I talk about with my students when they begin piano lessons. Within the first five years of teaching piano, I’d bought the wood for my first studio foot blocks and had gotten my father to cut them to size, to sand and prime them.
My goal was to encourage good posture at the piano for every student. Depending on the student’s size, wooden blocks could be added or taken away to raise or lower the “floor”, to offer a sturdy resting place for their feet.
Adjacent to my piano I also had a mirror on the wall so that each student could check their own sitting posture.
I explained good posture to parents from the outset of lessons and even provided a print page in my DIY dictation Handbook explaining all of the ideal angles and distances for optimal posture. With my blocks, mirror and reminders, I’d set up my students to have good posture.
Or, so I thought.
Online lessons revealed posture at home
Despite my best efforts to teach good posture and my hope that some of it would translate to the home environment, online lessons revealed a different truth. In online lessons I noticed that most (if not all) of my students had less-than-ideal posture at home.
I realized that this didn’t just indicate posture during the online lessons alone, but gave me a window into the practice world of my students. This was the posture they had every moment that they played the piano except for the short time each week that they spent with me.
In the image above, you may notice the entire domino effect that is caused by a bench that is too low and pulled in too close to the keyboard. Because the bench is too low, the elbows are pointing downwards, and the wrists are overcompensating, pointing up. Because the bench is too close, the student is compensating by leaning back.
And you can’t see the student’s feet, but it’s nearly guaranteed that small students at home can barely reach the floor with their toes, or that their entire posture adjusts poorly to allow them to touch the floor.
These arm and hand angles can indicate tension and lead to performance injury over time. The good news is that these awkward playing angles can all be solved by improving the sitting position.
I came to the realization that it was up to me to help create an ideal practice environment at home, starting with the foundation of good posture, the feet.
For the student above, can you spot the issues caused by a low and cramped sitting position? Pianos are designed for adults, not children. Without adjustments, it is nearly impossible for small children to develop healthy technique or even to play comfortably at a regular adult-sized piano.
DIY foot blocks for students at home
I believe that good habits hinge on what happens at home. So, I decided to manufacture wooden blocks for the purpose of lending them to my small and growing students to use at home. In this section I explain the steps of this DIY project in case you might want to do the same.
Step 1. I ordered wood from a local woodlot owner and had the boards planed and cut to size. They were delivered the size and shape you see in the photos. After delivery, my husband sanded them further.
Length 46 cm / Width 18 cm / Height 3 1/2 cm (Length 18″ / Width 7″ / Height 1 1/2″ approx.)
Step 2. My husband and I primed and painted the blocks. The brightly-coloured paint came from Michaels, an arts and crafts supply store. The large bottles are normally purchased by school teachers. The cashier gave me the educator’s discount! This stage takes time as paint needs to dry between coats.
Step 3. I added velcro to each block, fuzzy side up (so socks don’t catch) and scratchy side on the underneath. From experience, you only need a small square on blocks that are frequently added or removed. Velcro is very strong and if you cut the pieces too big it can be difficult to separate the blocks. (I’d cut the pieces even smaller than you see in the photos.)
Step 4. I asked my students to trace their feet on paper so that I could stencil some feet on the blocks. The idea was to give students targets where to place their feet. As the size of most feet overshot the width of the blocks, I ended up approximating the design of the foot I used for the stencil. Before painting feet on, you’ll want to test several real students and where their feet comfortably land on the blocks.
The next step was to ask students to choose their favourite colours. I tried (as much as possible) to give them what they asked for. With siblings, I considered both requests so they could share blocks.
At-home lesson sets up practice posture
Once the blocks were ready to deliver, I contacted each piano family by email to explain that I was hoping to have one ‘at-home’ lesson for each student.
In the email I explained that the purpose of the visit would be to:
- Set up their children with good posture, starting with foot blocks.
- Help with the placement of the bench.
In this family, the older brother uses two foot blocks, green and red. One more, blue, is stored to the side for little sister. Each piano is different, as is each child. Being able to help the child fit the size of their own piano in person turned out to be an invaluable exercise.
Little sister uses three foot blocks. Notice that I added two lines of painter’s tape to the floor to help guide the distance of the bench from the piano. The tape closer to the piano is for little sister.
You may notice my Green bin in many of the photos. I used it to cart all of my usual teaching paraphernalia to students’ homes. Also notice that a small mat came in handy so that the blocks wouldn’t scratch hardwood floors. This student needed a book on the bench to help his sitting position. I found it helpful to explain to parents that the extra book wasn’t just for the lesson while I was there, but was to be be used during practices as well.
The at-home lesson was a big hit! Students were so excited to welcome me into their own practice spaces. The lesson pictured left happened the same night as our Nutcracker dress rehearsal, so I arrived in costume. The family offered me tea and it was wonderful to experience their music in their world.
Both parents were involved in this at-home lesson. I was able to explain posture to them, as well as some beginner technical goals. They were so excited to invite me into their home that they prepared a small reception with lemonade and an amazing blueberry dessert (they even sent me home with some in a container!).
Even students who are nearly grown needed the extra block to encourage good posture. This student needed only one block. Then several months later she shot up, didn’t need it anymore and returned it.
Having an at-home lesson was also an excellent opportunity to meet pets I’d heard so much about.
More pets! It was so special for students to introduce me to the toys and animals dear to their hearts. This personal connection helped me to understand them not just as students of music, but as individuals.
At-home lessons were such a success that I plan to make them a regular thing with my growing students, likely planning one at-home lesson per student at the beginning of each lesson year.
Scheduling at-home lessons
If you are already an itinerant teacher, this kind of at-home lesson might be easier for you to manage.
However, if you normally teach a full schedule of back-to-back lessons in your home studio, you may wonder how one might organize at-home lessons. I took it slowly, spreading these special lessons over a five month period. As opportunities arose I scheduled students either outside my regular schedule (sometimes just one student per week, with the rest of my schedule untouched) or with an adjusted schedule to allow for driving between homes if back-to-back students lived in the same house or in close proximity to one another.
Contract and damage deposit
Considering the time investment involved in making the blocks, I highly recommend having a damage deposit complete with a signed contract.
It’s not that you don’t trust your piano parents to return them, it’s because money motivates people. A deposit is money they’ll get back. The damage deposit simply ensures that the “borrowing” is only borrowing.
Furthermore, a deposit is more than a guarantee of return, it’s a little compensation if people don’t return the blocks. So for each block, for the money for the wood, for the paint, for the time it takes to sand, prime and paint each block…what is it worth to get that block back and not have to do all of that work again? That is the amount that the deposit should be.
For my studio, I contacted the parents and asked what they would be comfortable paying as a deposit. Together we came up with $20 per block, to a maximum of $50.
Uses for blocks
The most obvious use of the coloured blocks is for posture in the piano studio and possibly also for kids practicing at home.
This project encouraged me to finally finish painting the original foot blocks I had made in my first years of teaching.
I have five blocks in my studio painted in a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green and blue. Now that they are painted I can’t believe I waited this long to add colour! I no longer ask students how many blocks they need, I just ask what colour they need. I always keep them stacked in the same rainbow order. It’s so much easier for them to remember their colour! And that tells me how many to remove so we have that colour on the top.
Another good use I’ve found for the foot blocks in the piano lesson is for Rhythm Cups (by Wendy Stevens). The surface allows for a nice percussive sound and allows students to sit side-by-side without the need for a table.
The blocks are portable and may be taken to performance venues. Here my student plays in the Stars of the Festival concert and the blocks set him up to play comfortably at the piano and with good posture.
Thank-you for visiting my blog! Have you had any struggles or successes with piano posture, either in your studio or with student home practice? Please share your thoughts in the comments. Your ideas are a valued part of the conversation!
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Video of the Week
Flat Pop Blues (Early Elementary) piano solo with optional teacher duet. Normally piano beginners don’t get to play the blues because the swing rhythm is too tricky to play. But this Early Elementary piece cleverly gets around that by doing everything the blues does best EXCEPT the swing. It has the blues scale! It has ‘blue’ notes! It has a slow tempo and fun syncopated rhythm! The duet part has the barrel house blues bass pattern! And if you get the print music, you’ll get the lyrics that are all about having the blues! Check out the Flat Pop Blues eSheet!
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