How Is Your Piano Posture?

Here is a transcript of the video in case you would like to follow along:

Piano posture: When you first saw the title to this video, you probably said, “Wow, what a stupid title that is, how to sit at the piano. Everybody knows how to sit at the piano.” Well, the fact is, they don’t know how to sit at the piano and I’d like to share with you some principals that I have learned over a long career of teaching music.

The most obvious thing, I think, is the piano has 88 keys from right to left and so you should sit towards the middle of the keyboard and the middle of the keyboard is defined as this note right there. It’s called middle C for that reason. You can identify it because it’s straight down from the start of whatever your brand is, Steinway or Yamaha or whatever it is. That divides the treble from the bass clef. The treble clefs up here, the bass clefs down there as you probably know. Point your belly button right at middle C. That way you’re sitting right in the middle of the keyboard.

I’ve seen some kids, they’re small, and their parents don’t realize they need to sit on something higher, so they’re reaching up. I call it the mountain climber position, kind of hanging on to the keyboard. You can’t learn how to play that way. You have to be higher so that you can look down at the keyboard and so your fingers can be curved.

The great jazz pianist Earl Garner who wrote “Misty” and lots of stuff, he was just a little guy and he always took a Chicago telephone book around with him and sat on it when he played concerts. I saw him years ago at the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento and it was kind of fun to see a guy sitting on a phone book because he couldn’t count on the fact that each place that he played would have benches high enough for him to sit on, so he carried his own solution. You’ve got to sit high enough so that your fingers can come straight out from your body or a little downward slant and your fingers can be curved.

That’s the next thing. You can’t play with flat fingers, just like you can’t run with stiff knees. Stiffen your knees and try to run. It doesn’t work, does it? You have to have curved fingers and curved knees to do anything when it comes to motion. Make sure you curve your fingers. I call it parachute position. If you jump out of a plane and come down gently on the keys, your in parachute position.

You’re in the middle of the keyboard, you’re high enough and your fingers are curved. Then, you want to make sure that you’re using all five fingers. You have five fingers on each hand, you probably know, and I’ve seen some beginners try to play like this, with their little finger or even their fourth and middle finger tucked under. You can’t do that. You’ve got five fingers, you might as well use all of them.

There’s basically eight notes that you have to deal with in a scale and you have five fingers so that means if you’re playing a scale, you’ve got to use some fingers twice. The best way to do that is to pass your thumb under your third finger and go up like that, and when you come back down, cross over.

When you play a black key, then you want to use a long finger because your thumb is short. Use your thumb on white keys whenever possible and your long fingers on black keys. Now when you have two white keys in a row, use your thumb and second finger, then third, thumb, third, thumb, third, thumb, second and so on. You see the logic there? It’s just kind of a built in logic to hand position and fingering.

If you don’t have any experience in piano playing, you don’t know that. Keep that in mind. Sit in the middle of the keyboard, make sure you’re high enough, make sure your fingers are curved comfortably. You don’t need to curl them up like that, but just comfortably curved and then use fingering that makes sense. Use all five fingers.

Somebody’s going to say, “Yeah, but I saw Billy Joel playing this this.” Billy Joel can play however he wants and Van Cliburn can play however he wants. The great pianists of the world can do whatever they want because they’re the great pianists in the world, right? Just because Michael Jordan can do things with a basketball doesn’t mean that I can. We’ll let Michael be Michael and I’ll be me.

If you want to get a headstart on the piano, then observe those rules. They’re for your own good. Okay, thanks. If you enjoy these kinds of tips, come on over to PlayPiano.com and sign up for our free newsletter, which goes out most everyday and I’ll think you’ll like it. We’ll see you there. Bye bye for now.

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrPtStRFrXM&feature=youtu.be