Sometimes a student crosses your path who helps you think a little deeper, who helps you rethink your approach.
This happened to me about ten years ago when a young girl and her adult mother were each studying piano with me.
One day the mom mentioned that her daughter was developing a lot of tension in her back because of the way I was teaching her.
This made me sit up and listen, because this mom was no ordinary student, she was (and is) a practicing osteopath.
1. How we were taught
The most conscientious piano teachers oversee good posture and good technique at the piano. Both go hand-in-hand.
With poor posture, it is very difficult to have a good technical approach to the piano. I’m not referring to ‘technique’ as scales and arpeggios, I’m talking about how the body is used to create beautiful sounds. Technique is the how of music.
I had good teachers who addressed body alignment and bench placement. Maybe you did, too. As a piano teacher, I strive to do the same for my students. Maybe you do, too.
In reading Reginald Gerig’s book Famous Pianists & Their Technique, I’m amazed by how many of our current-day approaches to piano posture began at the harpsichord several hundred years ago.
“Palm, wrist and elbow must form one straight line — they must be exactly on the same level.” — The Principles of the Harpsichord, Michel de Saint Lambert, Paris, 1702.
If you know the foundations of good posture, you’ll already understand that the above hand-arm alignments are only made possible by a bench that is the proper height for the child and the correct distance from the piano.
Because everyone is a different size, the bench must be adjusted and moved for each student so that the palm, wrist and elbow can form a straight line.
With an improperly-sized or positioned bench, the child will end up with arms that have a slope, either up or down from the keys.
Or, if the bench is too close (which is the usual problem), their arms will look like T-Rex arms (tiny little bent things) or kangaroo arms. This alignment will also cause an upward bend in the wrists, which makes them too high.
You may ask, “What does the bench have to do with the arms?” Well, normally if the legs have enough room, the arms will also have enough room to play the piano comfortably.
This angle may cause stress in the soft tissues of her hands and eventual performance injury.
“In playing the fingers should be arched, and the muscles relaxed. … Those who play with flat, extended fingers suffer….” — Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments), C.P.E. Bach, 1753, 1762.
One of the most important things to do early in piano lessons is to help a child achieve a natural hand and “swimmy” floaty wrist, one that is not locked up. Sometimes in the pursuit of curved fingers, students will force their hands to look like the fingers are curved or arched (so we might think they’re doing okay), but in reality there’s a lot of tension in their hand and wrist.
The above quote from Bach comes with a lot of ‘insider knowledge’ on how to achieve the curved fingers and fluid hand. Teachers who have been well-taught know how to pass this knowledge along, and it must be taught person to person, in person. This is one reason I’m a little skeptical of online lessons. How can one possibly know just by looking whether the wrist is swimmy or locked up? As yet, I haven’t found a way to tell just by looking.
Great care has been taken to learn and teach the best technical approaches for the fingers, hands, wrists and arms. The key is to develop a technique that is sustainable and that does not cause performance injury. It’s interesting that Bach’s quotation above says that those who play with “…flat, extended fingers suffer” –he is already pointing out that poor technique leads to injury.
In reading essays by the early great keyboardists who played harpsichord, clavichord and organ, we find the foundations of today’s current piano method. These original principles have been passed down through countless generations of teachers and pedagogues.
But how are we doing with the other parts of the body?
With the feet and the backbone?
2. Osteopath’s word on aligning the feet
As a student, the moment I sat at a new teacher’s piano, one of the first things covered was a review on how to sit at the piano. I was instructed to place my feet slightly apart for balance.
The sitting weight was shared between the body’s frame on the bench and the two feet, which gave the torso a bit of a forward lean. The feet would support the body, feeling like a swimmer leaning and preparing to dive into a pool. It was the feeling of forward anticipation.
The right foot was placed slightly forward near the damper pedal, to keep it ready to use the pedal. Conversely, the left foot was placed further back.
In this sitting model, a diagram of the body’s trunk and feet shows a scalene triangle, with no two sides the same length.
Image (c) Maxner
You know there’s a “but” coming, right?
For years, I asked my students to do the same. In fact, this seems to be a universal sitting position at the piano. Even concert pianists, like Lang Lang above, seem to default to this ‘scalene triangle’ foot position when not using the una corda (soft) pedal.
However, according to my osteopath student, this skewed foot alignment is not conducive to a healthy body frame.
Musculoskeletal alignment contributes to a person’s overall wellness.
According to the osteopath, placing one foot forward and the other back creates a slight, unwanted spinal twist. Pianists who sit for any length of time on the bench over days, weeks and years, must consider the stress placed on the soft tissues of the backbone with this misaligned sitting position.
With its central position and purpose in the body, it is important to protect the spine. It is a major hub of the nervous system.
In short, when sitting at the piano, the feet should be aligned with each other, straight across.
If the pedals are not in use, both feet should be an equal distance from the trunk, further back.
If the right foot is placed forward for use of the damper pedal, both feet should be moved forward equally.
A diagram of this better sitting position shows an isosceles triangle with two equal sides, whether positioned forwards or back.
3. Osteopath’s word on stature of the torso
From a young age I was taught ‘good posture,’ mostly from my father’s childhood experience watching soldiers in the Second World War, young men who stood and sat tall and smart with their shoulders back. But also in piano lessons, I was also taught to ‘sit tall.’
Early in my piano teaching career, as I adjusted my students’ backs, I taught them to sit up and straighten their torsos.
I’d had some excellent teaching which included Alexander technique, and yet I had not updated the words I used in my own teaching to reflect that. I knew about tension, I knew it wasn’t good for students and yet the words I commonly defaulted to in lessons, “Sit tall,” were leading my students to the very thing I didn’t want.
These words were giving my students the wrong idea, and I wasn’t investing effort into finding words that encouraged a healthy posture.
So, my adult osteopath student weighed in on the negative impact of my instruction to ‘sit tall.’
Sitting too tall is unnatural and causes many problems, from unhealthy spine structure to impeded breathing. It can also lead to tension in the shoulders and neck.
Rather than instructing our students to ‘sit tall,’ which often leads to an unwanted over-straightening of the back, I’ve begun to ask them to sit using some of the following phrases:
- Sit with a lifted torso (similar to terminology used in yoga).
- Sit with a natural S-curve in your back.
How will you be able to tell the difference between a back that is forced into a straightened position and a back that has found its natural S-curve?
When the back is straightened too much, you may notice shoulders held up and suspended, a lot of tension in the neck, a head that is locked up and a chin that is pulled back. In other words, the entire position is rife with soft tissue tension.
Instead, we are aiming for a head that is free and floating and shoulders that are released, which will lead to an overall freedom of all bones and soft tissues of the upper body.
This kind of freedom of movement and stature is only possible when the spine is in its healthiest position, allowed to hold its natural S-curve.
A healthy posture will have a slight convex curve (outward curve) with the shoulder blades and a slight concave curve (inward curve) with the small of the back. Observed together, they make the letter ‘S.’
With my piano students I refer to this as ‘sitting like a seahorse’ because this gives an image of the ‘S’ shape together with a flowing, watery movement.
Notice that in my teaching I avoid the word ‘relax’ and ‘relaxed.’ Both words imply the abandonment of form and support. We are not looking for relaxation, but release of tension.
I now use words like ‘flowing,’ ‘watery’ and swimmy,’ or ‘sleepy.’ Words that help the child unlock their tension. Visualization and imagination can overwrite commands like, ‘curve your fingers,’ which are not effective, because in attempting to ‘do’ the right thing, the child cannot ‘undo’ the tension.
Also necessary as part of the process of teaching in this long line of pedagogues, passing on centuries-worth of knowledge, is physical touch. If you live in a country where teachers are not permitted to make physical contact with students, they will be bereft of the most excellent teaching. Explain your reasons for checking fingers, hands, arms, elbows and shoulders and ask the child and parent for permission to do so. Here is a blog post that explains how to protect yourself.
Our primary goal as piano teachers is to teach freedom of movement which allows for comfortable playing style as well as the beauty of the tone production.
When I heard these observations on posture from my osteopath student, her words made so much sense according to the goals with which I’d already been taught as a student.
My teaching philosophy is, “In teaching, I learn.” I simply loved learning this valuable knowledge from my student. I hope you will take these nuggets and ponder them as you observe, teach and learn from your own students.
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Video of the Week
The Lopsided Opera (Levels: US, Intermediate. AMEB, Level 3. ABRSM, 3. RCM, Level 4). If you’ve ever heard a soprano sing an opera number, you’ll know how dramatic and showy it can be. Inspired by arias by Mozart and Rossini, this parody explores scales and scalar shapes in C major, all on the piano’s white keys. Available as the studio-licensed The Lopsided Opera eSheet!
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