The apparent inability to bend one’s finger joints
Students with fused phalanges have been making piano teachers groan, fret and sigh for a long time. Those straight fingers are far from the optimal hand shape for piano students, and cause many related problems along the way, such as uneven scale passages, poor tone production and jerky legato.
The difficulty has always been that no matter how much we remind, nag and plead with students to curve their fingers during the lesson, it doesn’t always carry through to their home practice. The quandary is how to make it become an ingrained, instinctive habit.
The prescriptions below are more appealing and memorable than a verbal reminder and, therefore, more likely to be practiced. But you will still have to be persistent – it takes many iterations to make something a habit.
Symptoms
Prescriptions
Spider Safety
In lesson
This solution is not recommended for students who hate spiders; in that case you may want to pick a different creature to protect.
Close the piano lid and ask your student to make her best piano hand shape on the surface of the lid. Help to form a good round hand shape with the bridge of her hand lifted, explaining that a little spider needs to live underneath her hand. It climbs under there for safety and if she lets her hand fall the spider won’t have a home. Part of our job when playing the piano is to look after this little spider.
Open the lid up again and ask her to place her hands on the keys, ready to begin playing. She can begin playing her piece, but she needs to keep her spider house up. If it collapses she must start from the beginning again. If your student’s piece is on the longer side, do this exercise section by section so that the beginning of the piece doesn’t get over-practiced.
At home
Review the ‘Spider Safety’ technique at the end of the lesson. Assign practice with the spider’s house in place throughout. Ask your student to also practice making her spider house when she is away from the piano, for example, in the car, waiting for a bus, or any other opportunity she gets. The more practice she has in making this shape, the stronger and safer her spider’s house will become.
X Marks the Spot
In lesson
When you use ‘X Marks the Spot’ you won’t have to continue to nag about hand shape. You won’t even have to mention it at all. By taking the focus away from the shape of the hand you allow your student to get a new perspective on why we insist on this hand position, and perhaps come to “discover” the correct hand shape for herself.
Get some sticky tabs, notes or repositionable stickers (make sure they are cleanly removable without leaving a mark). If you don’t have sticky notes or stickers that are suitable, this activity is still possible – your imaginations will just have to work a little harder! Cut the sticky tabs down so that they are about 2.5 cm (1 in) squared (you can draw little Xs on each one if you really want to sell the ‘X Marks the Spot’ theme). Stick these to the keys your student needs to use in the piece she is working on, positioning them about halfway between the edges of the keys and the black keys in the “sweet spot”. If there are black keys used in the piece place those stickers just a little in from the edge of the black key, as shown in the diagram.
Ask your student to play her piece, trying to hit as many of these targets as she can, and aiming to keep her fingers roughly over the targets when they’re not playing. She may figure out for herself after a few repetitions that to do this she will have to curve her fingers.
If she doesn’t catch on to the optimal finger position for ‘X Marks the Spot’ have a discussion about how she could make all her fingers sit above the targets, and what her hand might look like. It’s best if she does some of the work to realise this herself, so don’t be too hasty to intervene and explain.
At home
Stick the “target spots” directly onto her sheet music and show her how to position them on her keys at home. You might want to make a diagram or involve a parent to help her position them correctly. Continue applying this technique in the lesson and at home and eventually you will be able to graduate to imaginary target spots.
Related Diagnoses
Floppy Finger Predicament
Fortissimo Fixation
Wrist Drowsiness