Every hand is different…
There are hands smaller and bigger, more or less flexible, narrower or broader, with proportionally longer or shorter fingers. So how can we say, ‘let’s hold the hand one correct way’? Well, we can’t but there are some general guidelines that will help us make piano playing the most efficient. Some other tips we can test for ourselves and pick the best solution to suit our individual hand shape.
In a nutshell:
1. Find a correct posture at the piano (you can read my post about it HERE)
2. Roll up your sleeves so you can see your wrists
3. Keep your fingernails short. If you point and touch a flat surface (table, piano key) with your tip, and hear your nail clicking, that’s too long
4. Keep your fingers round
5. Keep all fingers on the keys to be able to reach both white and black keys
6. Keep your wrist flexible and soft
But there is more to it…
1. Find a correct posture at the piano (you can read my post about it HERE).
Having a correct body posture at the piano is the first step to finding a great hand shape. Remember, most of all we want to avoid.
2. Roll up your sleeves so you can see your wrists.
This is super important especially when we first start learning the piano. The sleeves limit our movements and make things clumsy. With sleeves hanging around our wrists we subconsciously move hands in an unnatural way to avoid the sleeves catching the keys, or worse, we tense the wrists to stop the sleeves falling further. So first, roll up your sleeves.
3. Keep your fingernails short.
If you point and touch a flat surface (table, piano key) with your fingertip, and hear your nail clicking, that’s too long. A good analogy is getting ready for a netball game. There are very strict rules to keep fingernails short in netball, and the same applies to piano playing. If a nail is too long, we naturally avoid a nice heavy drop on the fingertip, so it limits our ability to play. It also makes our finger collapse in the first knuckle, the DIP joint, which leads to soft and weak fingers. Imagine having a lot of suspension on your bike on a flat road. Nonsense, it will only slow you down, same as having floppy fingers. Keep them relaxed but firm.
4. Keep your fingers round.
Imagine the situation where your fingers are lying flat on the piano. How would you move them to different white keys every time you want to play a different key? Lift over the black keys? That’s quite a limiting approach to piano playing, don’t you think… We want to make sure that our fingers are all round (banana shape) to enable them to move from one position to another. It is especially important for the pinky, that it doesn’t lie flat on the keys, but rather takes the same round shape as the other fingers. Thumb should be slightly lifted off the keys and we play with the side of the tip.
A good way to check the natural round hand position is to softly place your palms over your knees and see how your fingers naturally curve around your knees. Try to carry your hand over to the piano keeping that nice, natural round hand shape.
Image credit: Pexels.com
5. Keep all fingers on the keys to be able to reach both white and black keys.
Once you find that natural curve of your fingers, make sure that all your fingers are rested on the white keys. None of that thumb and pinky hanging off the keyboard. Our fingers are of different lengths and our job is to make sure that all five rest on the white keys, and can reach to the black keys if needed.
6. Keep your wrist flexible and soft.
Now it’s time to check our wrists. Go ahead and place your hands on the keyboard in the way we described above and try to feel your wrists. Check if they gently bend as you press the keys, facilitating all the moves between your arms and shoulders and your fingers. I always think about the wrists as trampolines, we want to allow them to bounce gently if needed.
Try this exercise: on a tabletop place your fingertips without touching with the wrists. Now try to rotate the wrists, move them up and down, right and left, and circle around. Remember this feeling to be able to bring it back when you’re playing the piano.
Now you know it all!
Here is where the fun starts for you. Go ahead and check out these tips during your next piano practice. But remember, everybody’s hands are different, and the most important thing in piano playing is to do it in a comfortable way, to prevent any potential injuries. Practicing the piano requires long hours of repetitive minute movements, so certain parts of our hands and bodies get strained if we do it incorrectly for too long. So, make sure that nothing is tense, or sore, and happy practicing!
I hope this helped, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or comments, I’m looking forward to hearing from you ?
See you in the next post!
