If you're a piano teacher trying to get a child's book.com" title="hand">hand to assume the classic "flat" position, you'll have noticed by now that most children have some difficulty achieving that "correct" position.
In fact, children's book.com" title="hand">hands adopt a variety of strange positions when put on the piano, almost all of them painfully awkward and comic.
I've learned this because I do not teach book.com" title="hand">hand position at first, and thus have had an opportunity to witness perhaps every variation in book.com" title="hand">hand position that kids can naturally come up with.
There is the classic position I call the "bug crusher," in which the two thumbs play a key each, but the rest of the hand droops below the plane of the keys.
Or the most popular and natural position, which I call the "pointer," in which the two index fingers are poised, at the ready, in position to take a jab at the keys from various angles.
Strangely enough, the piano keyboard was designed with human hand in mind, perhaps more than any device ever created by the mind of man, except perhaps the glove.
You can achieve a perfect hand position with any child just by playing the following game I call "Hobbita-Jobbita."
Sit or stand and have the child shake their hands vigorously, loose at the wrists, just letting the hand fly around free.
I like to have them say, "Hobbita-Jobbita" while we do it, a nonsensical sound which seems to go with the rather silly act of shaking your hands at arms length.
In the middle of shaking, stop suddenly, and very gently grab the child's wrist and say, "Look!" You will see for a split second the human hand in absolute relaxation, and what you are trying to do is to get the child to observe what their hand looks like as a result of this silly game.
Remember, what's important is that the child observe their hand in that perfect relaxed position, even if only for a second. Get them to acknowledge it.
Suddenly, something will happen: the child will tense their hand, and the fingers, limp a moment ago, are now as stiff as breadsticks.
In fact, we play the game several times, and I try to get them to leave their fingers like "wet noodles," rather than like "breadsticks."
I'll tell you right now that kids love to stiffen their hands into "breadsticks," just to see the piano teacher cringe. Laugh. It's a game.
The second stage of the game is this: we play "Hobbita-Jobbita," until they are seriously able to keep their fingers limp.
Then, and this is the crucial step, guide their loose hand to the piano keyboard, quickly, before it loses the relaxed shape, and put it in C position (C position is where the right hand thumb is on Middle C.)
It will take hundreds of times, perhaps, of playing this game for most children to get the idea, and they will joke and suddenly tense their hands many, many times, just to be impish. Laugh. It's a game.
But eventually, happily as well, children will find a relaxed hand position by themselves using this method, and here is the magical part: every child I have taught this game plays habitually and without reminding in a perfect hand position, because they have been led, through games, to see that it is the best position.
Be warned, your patience will be tried, but you will be rewarded with that perfect hand position that many teachers slave to foster in their students. In fact, many teachers alienate the student on this issue alone, with constant reminders and browbeating.
There's not a problem in beginning piano that can't be solved with a creative piano game.
By John Aschenbrenner Copyright 2000 Walden Pond Press. Visit http://www.pianoiseasy.com to see the fun PIANO BY NUMBER method for kids.
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