When teaching young children, piano teachers are exposed to a staggering variety of technique issues. Sometimes what should be a simple fix seems to take weeks (or even months) to correct and you may be left wondering “What else can I do?!”
We’re here to help!
The next time your piano students do something wonky you’ll know where to turn. Be sure to pin this post, because we’ve put together The Ultimate Collection of Piano Technique Fixes so you can find everything you need to get your students back on track.
No more searching for hours; just check out the categories below and head on over to the corresponding blog post for the assistance you’re looking for!
Everything Fingers and Hands
- Student With a Stiff Pinky Finger? Here are 3 simple exercises (and some fun imagery) you can use to get that 5th finger nice and curved.
- Student With Stiff Wrists? Check out this post where we share simple 2 ways to loosen wrists.
- Crazy Fingering Happening? Here’s our solution to that wonky and invented fingering.
- Looking to Fix Hand Position? Here’s a great way to get your kiddos fingers curved nicely on the keys with a beautiful hand position (and we bet you’ve never heard of this one before!).
- Collapsing Finger Joints? Here’s an amazingly simple yet effective DIY tool you can make to strengthen and correct collapsing joints.
- Need Fun Finger Warm Ups to Build Strength and Dexterity in young students?
- Uncoordinated or clumsy student who has trouble with (seemingly) everything?
- Students who struggle with scales, triads and arpeggios? Here’s our fun fixes!
Body and Posture
- Lots of troubles stem from bench position/height. Here’s a piano teacher’s guide to the bench.
- Poor Posture? Here are 3 steps to correcting piano student posture that are lots of fun and impossible to ignore!
- Wanting to stop students from sliding across the bench to reach high or low keys? Here are 4 ways to stop the “Piano Student Scooch”
Tone and Expression
- This inventive way of teaching legato will have your students playing beautifully.
- Even young children can play with a beautiful tone! Find out how here.
- Piano students who play too fast all the time? Control the jackrabbits.
- Piano students who play too loud all the time? Help is here for heavy-handed piano kids.
- Want your students to add more expression to their playing? We have 5 great strategies.
- Stuck for new ways to teach the concept of phrasing? Check out this post.
- Need your students to develop “dual vision” so they can see their hands AND their music? Here are some fun games to hone this ability.
Check Back In When You Need Us!
We’ll be updating this post as we continue to blog with inventive and useful ways to fix piano student technique, so be sure to check back in whenever you need assistance!
How about rhythm issues, particularly students who can’t seem to match their playing up with a metronome?
We have one of those too Doug! You can find the post on metronome use here (and if you’re a PianoBookClub member The Beatbox Manifesto was published to address this very issue 🙂 It will be re-released in coming months to PBC members) https://www.teachpianotoday.com/2013/12/02/tips-for-ticks-how-to-teach-piano-kids-to-use-a-metronome/
AMAZING!! Simply amazing! Thank you so much!!
You’re so welcome Muriel! We hope you find it really useful 🙂
Is there a way to download all of it at one time? It will be great reference material!
Is there a way to download all of this at one time? I would love to have this great reference at my fingertips in printed form!!!
Hi JoLynn – not at the moment, but it is an ebook we are looking at for the future 🙂
That would be awesome!
You guys can’t know how much you’ve helped me! I have 5 piano teachers and I’m going to send this to each one. You are LIFE savers!! OK, that might be over the top, but SANITY savers, for sure.
Hi Kelly – Great to hear…. we love saving sanity (and when you own a large studio we know that that “sanity” teeters on the edge frequently LOL!) Cheers.
I need to bookmark this so I can come back to it. Maybe this would be a good “checklist” to use this summer for something different. I feel that teaching technique is a weakness of mine, so I will be reading those with great interest. Thanks again for sharing your ideas with us!
Thank you, this is awesome!
This is gold! Thank you for all you do!
Great post–thank you! I want to focus more on certain technique issues, esp with scales, and having all your articles listed in one place is fabulous!
Wonderful, thank you! Would you have a tip on how to master the tricky Animato in Schumann’s Andante and Variations for Two Pianos?
Would appreciate very much