Perhaps this might occasionally be successful with a natural-born genius, but it would be an exceptionally gifted being who would govery far without any method or school, as we call it, to start with. For the human mind needs, at the outset, the guidance and direction in all the arts of certain elementary rules, born of the amassed experience of the best teachers and thinkers; and the complete assimilation of these rules are the best aids and helps to the attainment of a more perfect self-expression, when the time comes for the individuality of a great talent to assert itself. Read more

The first thing, then, that presents itself is the position of the body when seated at the instrument. With regard to this, the pupil should be seated with his chair exactly at the middle of the keyboard, and at a medium distance, that is to say, neither too near nor too far, but so that his fingers reach and fall easily and naturally upon the white notes when he is sitting upright on the front half of the chair.

On no account should the pupil be allowed to lean back, but always be seated on the forward portion of his seat. The seat should be sufficiently raised so that the pupil’s elbows at their natural angle will be almost on a level with the keyboard, if anything just a little below it as shown in Fig. I.

FIG. 2. Showing cup-like position of the hand.

Elbows | fingers positions upon a piano keyboard

The elbows should be held closely to the body, and the wrist dropped slightly below the keys. Being thus seated, the next matter we come to is settling the position of the hand itself. This should be as follows :

• The fingers should fall arched upon the keys, the knuckles raised, the wrist just below the keyboard, and the palm of the hand forming a sort of cup as shown on this page (Fig. 2).It is a very good plan with a beginner, to make him take an apple or a ball of similar size in the palm of the hand, hold it lightly with the fingers spread out round it, and then drop it out of the palm as the hand descends upon the keyboard.
• The hand will then retain the cup-like position with the fingers spread upon the keys.(See Fig. 2.)

Perfect position of the hand upon the piano keyboard : exercises

Having thus described what I consider the perfect position of the hand, I will now proceed to explain how to exercise the fingers in order to retain that position, and make it become a habit. This will be arrived at by practicing in the following manner:

• Press the fingers down well arched on to five consecutive white notes, and hold them down altogether.
• Then lift each finger in turn, holding the others down meanwhile, and strike the key with the lifted finger, taking great care all the time that the hand is perfectly supple and relaxed, and that nothing is stiffed

This exercise, done every day for five minutes by each hand separately, will soon give the fingers and hands a perfectly easy and natural position upon the keyboard, and preserve the cup shape of the palm of the hand.

To recapitulate the whole matter and condense it, the principle set up is that all control on the keyboard should be established by the fingers, the hand and the forearm, the wrist remaining entirely supple. This, in my opinion, applies to all finger technique, and is essential for arriving at a completely successful issue. Care must also be taken not to allow any beating of time by the head or foot, as this may easily degenerate into a nervous trick, and certainly tends to encourage jerky and rigid movements of the body.

How to lift the hand off the keys

It is a good plan to make the beginner, after each exercise that he does, lift the hand off the keys and Read more

We must pass on from five finger exercises to the technique of extended positions of the hand, such as are to be found in scales, arpeggi, chords, thirds and octaves. I propose here to speak of scales and arpeggi only, and shall first say a word or two about scales, for which the five-finger exercises I have just been discussing are, of course, merely a preparation.

Five finger exercises | how to pass th thumb in piano scales

But the great difficulty of scale playing, which consists in learning how to pass the thumb successfully under the other fingers, without causing a break in the continuity of the sound, is absent in five finger exercises, though through them the student learns the right way of holding the hand on the keyboard, so that it is always ready to do its work when called upon in the scales, and also the fingers are trained to exert the necessary pressure on the key.

Piano scales finger.
In order to obtain this smooth passage of the thumb in scales, I advise that the wrist always be kept absolutely loose, and that in slow practice, when the thumb is ready to pass, the wrist be raised temporarily from its usually low position to a higher one; also the finger which strikes the last note before the thumb has to pass (in scales it is always the 3rd or 4th finger), should be slightly inclined towards the direction in which the hand is going to travel. Taking the ascending scale of C major, in the right hand, for example, and illustrating what I want to point out by a diagram thus :

Ascending right hand.

How to pass the thumb : fingers | hands in scales

It will be seen that upon the E, which is struck by the 3rd finger, the line underneath is raised and inclined towards the direction the hand has to go, so as to represent the lifting up of the wrist, and the inclining of the finger. The thumb then passes easily underneath the fingers on to the next note F, without any awkwardness. The same movement is repeated further up the scale after the 4th finger, and so on through all the octaves in ascending scales for the right hand. For descending scales, the process is reversed. The wrist is raised when the thumb falls, and the finger which follows it is inclined downwards in the direction the hand has to go.

Descending right hand.

Thumb passage | wrist in piano scales

In the left hand exactly the same process is used as in the right, only the order is reversed, that is to say, the wrist is raised at the thumb, in the ascending scale, and at the 3rd or 4th finger, in the descending one, the inclining position of the fingers being correspondingly observed. In all scales in every tonality, this action of the wrist and fingers should be similar, and the principle of lifting the wrist at the finger before the thumb passes, and inclining the finger in the direction the hand is to travel, greatly facilitates this passage of the thumb, and ensures smoothness and freedom of motion. In fast scales this movement practically disappears, as exaggerated actions only impede swiftness and look ungainly, but a smooth and undulating motion remains, which is elegant and imparts an elastic and supple articulation, and also gives character to the various passages.