Good posture and body positioning is really important whilst sitting at and playing the piano. It’s important for everyone but I think its even more important as a person gets older.
When kids start piano lessons, one of the very first things that they are taught is that they play the notes with rounded fingers as opposed to playing with flat fingers. I certainly teach this to every young student, but with adults it doesn’t seem necessary to explain this. I suppose it comes from all of us used to being able to type on a computer keyboard (whether properly or the two finger action some people have). If we used flat fingers on a computer keyboard, we wouldn’t get anywhere because we would be hitting all the wrong letters.
Even though a curved hand comes more naturally to an adult than it does a child, it still is important that everyone has the correct hand shape. If you don’t have the correct hand shape you could cause some general stiffness and soreness. You might even injure yourself over a period of time with repetitive strain injury.
Positioning your hands correctly on the piano is very important, but its not the only aspect that you need to make sure is correct. Many young people and some adults will try to play the piano with wrists that are resting on the bit of wood that sits in front of the actual piano keys. This is not a good idea. You will be putting your hands and fingers under some stress. Its important to keep your wrists as high as the back of your hands so that your hands and fingers are not being cramped. And. You are also taking advantage of gravity to get over the notes and to be able to play the notes with minimum force. This might not seem to make any difference when you are a beginner, but when you have a medium skill level or higher and you need to play something loud, you will appreciate the need to be able to get up over the notes to achieve the force that is required.
Ladies, long fingernails, whilst they look very nice, are not helpful and I would recommend that you keep your nails short so you can develop the best technique. Having said that, you can still play quite well with long-ish nails without too much hassle, however you are compromising your technique. Also the longer your nails are the less control you have.
When you are seated at a piano, it is important to sit up straight and not hunched over. If you are like me and have long legs, you would need to sit further back but lean forward from the hips, so your back is still straight. It is better for your back if you resist the temptation of rounding your shoulders forward. It might sound a little strange but it doesn’t look strange at all.
We all have different body proportions, so there is not one hard and fast rule of what distance you need to sit from the piano. A lot of it is dependant on height, some of it depends on whether you have longer or shorter legs and also whether your arms are longer or shorter than the average. What can also influence how far you sit from the piano is whether you are bigger in the chest or stomach area.
The best way to figure out what is best for you is to spend a little time working out what is the correct distance from the piano you should sit and if you have a height adjustable piano stool, work out what the correct height is as well.
Obviously when you are seated at the piano, you should be in the very centre of the keyboard in front of Middle C. To reach both ends of the piano, you don’t need to shuffle along the piano stool, but rather you lean and pivot with your hips (it is good for your core muscles too).
The last thing that needs to be discussed as far as good posture for playing the piano goes, is that your feet, when not using the pedals at all, should be comfortably flat on the floor approximately shoulder width apart. You do not want them close together because if you have to reach any higher or lower notes and have to pivot your hips, you might just tip over if your feet are together. Having your feet shoulder width apart will keep you nice and stable.
If you are using the pedals, even if its only some of the time in a particular piece of music, then your foot or feet that you are using needs to be next to the pedal when not in use. When you are using the pedal(s) the heel of your foot should stay on the ground at all times and only the ball of your foot should move up and down. By keeping your heel on the ground, you know without looking exactly where the pedals are. As result you won’t accidentally press the wrong pedal, or miss the pedal entirely or have your foot slide off the pedal and make a big clunking sound.
Whether you are a beginner or more advanced and no matter what your age is, it is very important to get your posture at the piano and your body positioning correct.