Sit in front of it. Don't do anything yet. Just sit. Take a couple deep breaths, and just stare straight ahead. Rest your hands on the keys. Just put them anywhere. Don't care about hand position or posture or any of those things yet. Just sit and take it all in. Breathe in, breathe out. Good.
Now. Sit up straight. Don't sit so straight that your back hurts, but at the same time, make sure that you're not hunched over. Your neck shouldn't be arched and your shoulders should be relaxed. Take some more breaths, and just get used to it. Your eye level should hit right about where your music sheets would be, if you have any. If your seat has you sitting too high for that, or too low, consider getting a different chair.
Reach your hands out in front of you. Your tips should be touching the music stand thing. Adjust the placement of your chair until your fingertips are doing the thing. Don't worry if you think you're wrong. Correct posture takes time, and nobody gets it right on the first try. Also, as a beginner pianist, it's not terribly important yet, so you're fine for a while until you get to harder music. If you're truly concerned about your posture, you can look up some images on Google and see what you're doing wrong.
Okay, now the hard part. Hand position. We're going to put your hands into position for a C Major Scale. You don't need to know what that is, yet, but you will eventually. If you already know, great.
Find the white key in the middle of the keyboard that looks like the one highlighted in the picture below. Put your right thumb (or 1) on it. This key is called Middle C. Put the rest of your right hand fingers on the four keys following to the right of it. All your fingers should be on only white keys right now.
Now, for the left hand. Count down eight keys, starting with the highlighted key as 1. You should have counted to a key that looks pretty much identical in location to Middle C. You just counted down an octave. Put your left pinky (or 5) on the key. Place all the rest of your left hand fingers on the keys following to the right of it. All your fingers should be on only white keys right now. Check below to see if you got it right!
Very good. Now for the hard part. Curve your fingers. This is the part that I still have trouble with, to this day. It's the absolute worst. But it's a necessary component of good piano playing. It's almost impossible to play piano without curving your fingers. So that's why it's very important to start with curving your fingers at the very start of your piano training. Make it a habit. Just do it.
How do you curve your fingers? I wish I could say it's easy. And it is. Sort of. But it's just something that needs to happen all the time, and that you can't just forget about. You need to concentrate on it forever until it becomes a habit, and even afterwards, you need to check up on it from time to time to make sure you've still got it. So let's get started!
Take your hands off the piano, and find something like a baseball. Or just pretend that you have one in your hand. Hold it (or 'hold' it, if you don't actually have one). Notice how your fingers curve around to hold it. That's the position you're going to want when you play.
Put your hands back on the piano, same position as before. You can check back up at the pictures to make sure you've still got it right. This time, curve your fingers. Your palms should definitely not be resting on the edge of the keyboard. They should be up in the air. Not way up, but up. The back of your hand should make a straight line with your fore arm. It doesn't have to be perfect right now. Again, correct hand positioning takes time and practice.
Now, time for the third and final positioning challenge of the lesson - feet positioning! If you have a keyboard, and no pedal attachment (yes, you can buy those, and I definitely urge you to do so eventually), you can just skip this part. As for those of you with pedals, it's time. Leggo. Put your right foot on the rightmost pedal. Your heel should rest on the floor. Don't press the pedal down. Just let your foot rest on it. And there you go. You're done. It wasn't that hard, was it?
There you have it. Posture, hand position, and pedals. You can try these things out over and over, if you want, as they are very important. But if you're ready for some actual piano playing - check out Lesson 2: Playing Your First Scale.
No comments:
Post a Comment