Lund Music Studio

What is a piano teacher’s biggest burden? Tension, tension, tension……
For some reason, what comes naturally to us when we approach the piano is the idea that if we just grip and seize up enough, the notes will just come out. This could not be farther from the truth. What is really needed when one approaches the piano is total relaxation. I would even encourage students to start with some relaxing exercises before they approach the piano. In a previous post, I suggested doing either yoga or tai chi. This is excellent if you are dedicated enough and have time enough to learn and pursue these exercises. However, for the rest of us, here are some basic exercises we can do before approaching the piano:

1. Forward bend: Pretend there is a magnet in the tip-top of your head, and it is pulling you toward the ground. Bend over slowly, vertebrae by vertebrae, until you are hinged at the waist, and your arms are dangling as close to the ground as possible. Once you are bent over, consciously think about releasing the tension in your head, your neck, chest, arms, hands, fingers….wiggle around, shimmy your shoulders, swing your arms, and then slowly, without adding any tension back in, rise up as you came down, one vertebrae at a time.
2. Do a few slow head rolls to release tension in your neck. Go one way first, and then the other.
3. Swing your arms in circles, backward and forward.
4. Shake your hands as fast as you can. Make them really loose and floppy. Make sure not to tense up in your upper arms to accomplish this.
5. Open and close your hands rapidly. This gets the muscles in the palm working and starts to activate the fingers.
6. Wiggle your fingers. Once again, be aware of your whole body as you do this, and make sure you are not tensing up in your upper arms, especially around the shoulder joint. If you find that you have, shake out whatever feels tense again, until you regain that loose and floppy feeling. You should approach the piano feeling almost like a puppet, completely loose, and controlled by invisible strings attached to the elbow.
7. Something to remember: Your hands should never act independently. Just because it is your fingers doing the work, does not mean they should act alone. Fingers are connected to hands which are connected through the wrist to the forearms, which are connected by that loose, floppy elbow joint to the upper arms. The upper arms do not end at what we perceive as our shoulder, but rather at the shoulder bones, which are located in the middle of the back (those two big protrusions in your upper back). Therefore, in order to make your fingers play the piano, you should be thinking about one long, loose, relaxed line that extends all the way from your upper back, through your arms and hands to your fingers. If you are ever at the piano and lose that feeling, give yourself a good shake.
8. Finally, close your eyes and take some big deep breaths, thinking about filling your stomach up with air and releasing it slowly. Think about what you have to do for the day, and consciously think about being relaxed while you do it.

These exercises should lead to an easier, more enjoyable piano experience, and I would recommend starting every day’s practice with these or something similar.

I would first like to cover more of a topic I hinted on yesterday: how to effectively use method books. Some piano teachers swear by “Hanon.” I do not. I think it serves its purpose, but that purpose to me is to work out obvious tension issues and strengthen the fourth and fifth fingers. For those unfamiliar with Hanon, it features pages upon pages of sixteenth note exercises that focus on strengthening different fingers and finger patterns. This can be especially helpful for the student who struggles with fluidity and has a lot of tension developing in their arms. However, we as teachers must be extremely careful in how we assign and use finger strengtheners like Hanon, because if we do not coach ease and relaxation, these exercises will only cause more tension and frustration, not less. I would also not use these books for very beginning students. These are to be used once a student has a firm foundation in music, can read notes with ease, and understands and has the ability to play sixteenth notes. Until this point, these books will only cause great frustration.

This is why I am such a big fan of the “Dozen a Day” series by Edna Mae Burnam. It begins with what is called the “Mini Book” and proceeds up to a “Preparatory Book” followed by Books 1-4. This ensures that any student at any level can start with these books. They should be used as a warm-up to the day’s practice each day. They can be assigned a dozen at a time, as the book suggests, but I prefer to assign three or four at once and really focus in on the skills taught in these.
I also like these books more than Hanon because they cover such a broad range of subjects, including:
Quarter, Eighth, Triplet and Sixteenth Note Patterns
Legato and Staccato Lines
Contrary Motion
Chords
Basic Scale Fingering
Chromatic Scale Fingering
Octave Reaches and Jumps
Crossing of the Hands
Strenthening of the Fourth and Fifth Fingers (just like Hanon, only accessible and fun)
Etc…….
And these books do all of this in a very approachable manner, using the metaphor of bodily exercises to describe the finger exercises. My students tend to find it fun and interesting to try to decide why the writer chose to call a certain exercise something in particular. Also, though it begins at a level accessible even to the most beginning student, it reaches a high level of difficulty (I studied piano with a private teacher for 11 years before college, and we never even got to book four!)

I encourage anyone to pick up this series and try it out. I realize this has been largely an advertisement for “Dozen a Day” but this is because I really do find it a phenomenal series with great benefits for pianists of all ages. I think it is accessible enough to teach yourself, if you are working on your own, and does not necessarily need the guidance of a teacher. So for all of those self taught musicians out there, this is one that is worth the buy! Enjoy!