Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph
Hoffman. Today we're learning about piano
posture. Posture is a word that means the
shape of your body for doing a certain
task. For example, let's pretend I'm going
to eat a bowl of cereal. Would this be a
good posture? Nah. How about this? probably not.
How about this?
Yeah, that would be a comfortable, good
posture.
Well, it's the same with piano. There are
some good ways and bad ways you can
shape your body for playing piano, and if
you learn the right posture your
playing will be more comfortable and
we'll be able to progress faster and
play better.
Please remember that the whole point of
good posture is to be comfortable and
play better.
It should feel good. So today let's learn
the four steps for awesome piano posture.
Number one is bench position. It's more
important than you might realize. You see
it's very common for new students to sit
too close to the piano. Maybe they don't
realize that it's okay to move the bench.
Sometimes I have a student come in and
try to squeeze in. Looks really awkward.
If you sit too close to the piano
you're going to have what I call
Tyrannosaurus Rex arms. Your elbows
should not be jammed up against your
body. That will limit your arm motion as
you play and add tension. On the other
hand if your bench is too far away from
your piano then you're going to have
Frankenstein arms. You want the bench to
be positioned just right, and you want to
sit about right smack in the middle,
not all the way back and not on the
front edge where you might fall into the
piano pit of doom.
Waaaaow! Help, please?
If you've got the bench just right, your
elbows will be slightly but comfortably
in front of your torso when your fingers
rest on the keys. Then we need to deal
with bench height.
The most common problem is having a
bench or chair which is too low. In fact,
a regular chair is almost always going
to be too low,
Which is why I recommend using an actual
piano bench. For most students I
recommend a bench height of about twenty
or twenty-one inches.
You'll know if you're too low because
your elbow to wrist, which is called your
forearm, will be sloped like this. That's
bad because it can add tension to your wrist.
It's also bad to be too high. That will
cause a slope the other way, also adding
tension to your wrist. The perfect bench
height is one that causes your forearm
to knuckles to align with the floor and
just in a flat smooth shape. Once
you're at the right height, if you find
that your feet are dangling in the air,
which is pretty much always going to
happen for young students, you'll want to
solve that problem with either a
footstool of some kind or even a stack
of old college textbooks. So please take
a moment and assess your own bench
situation where you play the piano. Is
your bench too close to the keys or just right?
Are you at the right height? If your
bench is too low and it's not the
adjustable kind you can raise yourself
up by folding some blankets or towels to
sit on. Cushions could work too but they
can be a little bit wobbly. Pause the
video if you need to and figure out how
to get your bench set up so you can have
awesome piano posture every time you sit
down to play.
Ok, step two for awesome piano posture is tall back.
This is sometimes a hard one for me
because I slouch. I'm trying to break that
habit though. There's so many benefits to
having a tall, flexible back.
It's not supposed to be tall and stiff
like a soldier but tall and flexible. The
problem with slouching is it puts your
torso out of alignment, which can add
tension to your neck and shoulders to
feel a tall back try this with me and
reach way up high like you want to grab
something off the ceiling.
Come on, try it with me. Reach, then let
your arms and shoulders relax
while your back stays tall. Remember tall
back doesn't mean tall shoulders.
Shoulders should comfortably drop. Go
ahead and lift your shoulders with me,
hold, then drop. Tall back but relaxed
shoulders.
Great, now on to step three. Arm weight.
Good pianists use the natural weight of
their arm to help them play. Basically
the concept is that instead of relying
purely on finger motion to play each key
you're letting gravity help.
It's a very important concept to get in
touch with the natural weight of your
arm.
I want you to pretend your arms are
heavy but also floppy like big floppy
octopus legs, but only two of them. Try
this with me and just kind of wobble
your arms around really loosely, very
relaxed. Now this next part works best if
you have a friend or a parent who can
help you,
so just pause the video if you need to
get someone. Now let your arm be
completely floppy and dead and then have
your friend or you can do it yourself too,
like I'm doing, pick up one of your arms.
Let your arm be completely lifeless and
floppy, whatever your friend wants to do
with it, wherever they want to move it
you just follow along. Let them control
it, not you. Then to test if your arm is
really relaxed and floppy your friend
without warning is just going to drop
your arm and your arm will fall
naturally on your lap or to your side,
and they can pick up your arm and try it
again. Now what you don't want to see is
when they let go
it's stuck there. That tells me you're
holding some tension in your shoulder
or your arm. You want to just completely
give it over to them like a puppet, but
when they let go it falls.
Okay go ahead and pause the video and
just briefly practice this a few times
with a friend or you can do it yourself
and just get that feeling of gravity
taking over and your arm is falling
loosely to your lap. then press play when
you're ready to go on.
Now in a moment we're going to
learn how to actually apply arm weight
when playing the piano, but first let's
finish up with step four, hand and finger
shape. Real quick will you do the dead
octopus legs with your arms one more
time. Wobble them around and get really
relaxed, then stop and just let your arms
rest heavy and relaxed. Without moving
your arm glance down at your hand and
notice what shape your hand is in. Look
at the natural shape of your hand and
fingers when they're relaxed. You'll
probably notice your thumb is loose and
straight but your other fingers have a
gentle natural curve shape. This relaxed
shape is actually just about the perfect
shape for playing the piano. As you play
you want your fingers to stay in this
relaxed, naturally curved shape with your
thumb mostly straight
and kind of floppy. You can have a
friend come and test that for you. Then
as you play you want your fingers to
stay close to the keys in that relaxed
curved shape.
Sometimes you might see your finger
stick up as you play. If you see that,
just take a moment to relax them back
down into their proper shape, just
resting on the keys. So one more time,
let's make your hands floppy and shake
them out, then rest, relax.
Look at the natural curve shape of your
fingers, then bring your hands up to the
piano keys and rest them on the keys.
Don't worry about what keys you're
touching, just laying them anywhere
comfortably on the keys, thumb loose but
straight and the other fingers naturally
curved. Remember that every hand has a
slightly different shape. My hand is
going to certainly look a little
different from yours.
The important thing is to find a resting
position that feels good to you. By the
way here's one more trick you can try to
find the right finger shape.
Go ahead and place your hands on your
thighs then let your hands slide forward.
If your fingers stay relaxed notice how
they're naturally curved around your knee
cap. That also makes a great shape for
playing piano. Now you know the four
steps to awesome piano posture so
let's play a game to test your knowledge.
I'll demonstrate piano posture, but I'm
going to do something wrong. You tell me
what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it.
Ok, how's my posture?
What's wrong with this? Yeah, if you said
I'm too close, you're right. I've got
Tyrannosaurus Rex arms right now. I need
to scoot my bench back, and you are always
in charge of where you put your bench.
I need my elbows to be slightly in front
of my body to have the best posture. Now
what's wrong with my posture? You said
that my back isn't tall. You're right,
this is my slouching posture. I need to
make my back nice and tall, flexible for
good posture.
What's wrong with my posture now? Yeah
this time it's shoulders. Shoulders always
comfortably down and what's wrong with
my posture this time? You might notice
this kind of funny shape, and this is
kind of the wrong way to curve. You don't
want your knuckles to be flat.
I don't think you'd walk around like
this. That's not a natural, relaxed
position. When you're hand's relaxed, there's
a natural curve to your knuckles and
your finger joint, so this would be a
more correct hand position. Let's take a
song we've already learned, "Hot Cross
Buns." You already should have your bench
in the right position, but just double
check that it is. Your back should be
tall with shoulders relaxed enough to
feel arm weight. I'm going to show you a
slightly different way to play it just
to train the feeling of arm weight. Take
your fingers and put them all kind of in
a cluster like this and then just let
the weight of your arm naturally fall on
the keys as we play hot cross buns.
Ok, so again, it doesn't take much arm
weight to get a key to go down. You're just
kind of gently dropping on those
notes. Can you play "Hot Cross Buns" with me,
just the first few notes? Go. Hot cross
buns. See how easy it is to make the keys
go down? We just let the weight of your arm
just naturally fall. Now take that same
feeling and now we're going to use the
three individual fingers. Remember this,
the forearm should be level to the floor
all the way up to your knuckles where
that natural curve starts. Your fingers
should rest on the keys in a curved
position, then you're just going to let
gravity let your fingers fall into the keys.
You don't have to work very hard with
your fingers when you use arm weight.
See how easy that is? One a penny. See I just
kind of let my hand and arm bounce and
drop the weight of my arm into that key.
One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns. Should feel really easy and
natural. I'd like you to press pause and
try playing "Hot Cross Buns" with a great
finger shape and a nice use of arm
weight, then press play when you're ready
to go on.
Nice work learning about piano posture
today.
You know I would love to see how you are
doing with your awesome piano posture so
try this for me. Have someone take a
picture of yourself in your very best
piano posture at the piano.
you don't have to actually be playing
something, just kind of pose with your
best posture with your fingers on the
keys like you're ready to play.
Share the picture with me on Facebook or
Instagram so I can see how you're doing.
If I can, I'll even write you a reply
back. So from now on,
now that you know about excellent piano
posture, I'd like you to go through the
piano posture checklist of those four
things every day before you play and
then continue to think about the shape
of your hand and arm weight as you play
your songs. Have lots of fun practicing.
See you next time.
Let's practice piano posture like Mr.
Hoffman said. Okay. Remember, don't put
your bench to close or you'll have
tyrannosaurus rex arms.
Did anyone say my name? AHHHH! What? I can have
good piano posture too. Watch! Hot
cross buns. See?