🎵 JJ's Piano Playing 🎹

Documenting the journey rediscovering my piano hobby.

Project maintained by jjvanzon Hosted on GitHub Pages — Theme by mattgraham

Methods

JJ van Zon, 2021

Piano Technique Preferences

Some personal preferences for piano technique. It is all still a bit of guesswork here. The focus appears to be general posture for now.

Posture

Trying to find a posture, to play with more freedom, adapted to my body type.

Body Type

My body type is:

Shorter
More hunched.
Shoulders hunched forward
Back hunched or straight
Back not curved inward.

Rather than bad posture, maybe accept this as my body type. Even a physical therapist had to conclude, that my back is just not curved that way. It’s been that way since late childhood. It may not affect my piano playing positively. I try to compensate my posture, at the same time accepting my body as it is.

Lower Arm

Quite a bit slanted downward.

Upper Arm

At a bit of a forward-down diagonal.

Back

Straight
Slightly tilted backwards.

This way, as the fingers rest on the keyboard,
they seem to want to fall closer to the body.
This seems to make the weight on the fingers come from the torso more passively,
instead of actively from the (lower) arms and wrist.

Shoulders

The general suggestion seems to be to let the shoulders hang down.
I appear to have not much problem with that.
Mine hang down forward.
That appears to be my body type.

Seating

To help maintain this position:
Bench at quite a high setting.
Wearing shoes, so I still reach the floor naturally.
At moderate distance from piano.
Using the closer half of the seat.

Arms

Depending on the situation, somewhere in between:
Lower arm forward / elbow outward OR
Lower arm forward-sideward / elbow inward.

Torso

This posture may make force come from the torso.
Swaying torso for support.
Positioning at average distance between the keys pressed.

Fingers & Wrist

Motion may be desired from the fingers and wrist for control.
They might move more freely and independent with this posture.
Labor might be diverted to the fingers or the wrist arbitrarily or alternatingly.

Melodic Passages

The above may work for melodic passages.

Chords / Jumps

For chords I may sit slightly more tilted forward.
Force might need to come from the arms a bit more.
With more lifting of the wrist and lower arm.

Experiment

I might experiment deviating from these suggestions,
to make weight/force come from different parts of the body,
to start actively feeling this,
and getting a musical effect from it.
Perhaps regard any variation on distribution of weight as welcome,
as well as the playing style that results from it.

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