Fundamentals of Piano Technique Course

Why do most people fail at comfortable piano playing?

In working with hundreds of piano students over two decades, I have been fascinated by piano technique. Why do some students seem to approach playing so naturally while others stumble at every turn?

The explanation lies in the movement patterns each student brings to the piano.

Some students are lucky to be physically gifted. But most are not. Even extremely talented and advanced students often have a range of bad habits.

How do I know this? Because many of them come to me asking for help! A substantial number of pianists who have come to me for technical advice - many of them with advanced degrees in music - have never been guided systematically through an understanding of their own physical habits!

If I have learned anything from teaching, it is that there are no shortcuts to real piano technique. To be successful and comfortable at the piano, we must learn the fundamental movement patterns that underlie great playing.

Whether you are just starting to play, or have played for many years, the key to a great technique is to build a solid foundation.

A Course for Beginners as Well as Long-Time Students

This course is designed to help you explore and refine your movement patterns at the piano regardless of your current level. If you are just starting lessons or self-study you will find it complements your progress perfectly, as you can work through each stage slowly to gain a deeper understanding of your own technique as you advance.

If you have studied for a short time or even many years, you can use the information here to examine your own playing habits from the ground up.

No matter where you are in your piano studies, you need a step-by-step method of thinking about your own movement patterns at the piano, and that is what I aim to provide you in Fundamentals of Piano Technique.

You get the same step-by-step discussion of technical principles that I offer my private students in a compact, logical, systematic presentation. Each lesson builds on the last to teach principles of movement, sound production, and thinking that can be used at any stage of learning the piano.

You also have the luxury of watching these videos as many times as you like and moving at the pace of your own comfort and goals, and without the artificial pressure of a piano lesson!

My Technical Approach

This approach to teaching technique was not always natural for me. In fact it took me many years of trial and error to arrive at.

I begin with the basics of posture, hand structure, and sound production. My goal in these first units is to give you a refined sense of how your body operates and a heightened sensitivity to the feel of the piano key.

Most students make a huge mistake by never building this sound foundation of posture, basic movements, and key sensitivity.

Only after you have mastered these fundamental movements and concepts, do we continue with more complex movements. These include rotation, two-note slurs (or "twosies" as I call them) and the wrist glide or "sweep".

Building on this, we examine the 5-finger pattern in depth. Including the use of fingers 3-4-5, which almost universally create weakness and tension! We discuss the scale and arpeggio, included the commonly misunderstood concepts of crossing the thumb under, horizontal movement, integration of larger movements, and many other crucial concepts!

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points is The Straight Line

The great pianist-pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus wrote about piano that "the greatest distance between two points is the straight line." The most rapid progress in music is when you know the right path to get you from point A to point B.

This is my goal in this course, to give you the surest path to piano technique.