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Yes, my student became addicted to finding out where to place her hands by the notation at the top of the page like C position or G position. She's so stuck to her ways that it's immensely difficult to have her move her hands on her own when the notes move. She knows where different positions are but I think that has made her too lazy to realize that herself when she practices the pieces. She knows all the notes but it's too much work for her to count the lines and spaces to name them AND place her hands there so she just continues to play using the same hand position.
Please advise!

I think that's there has been a shift in the method books away from "hand-position" approaches in the beginning. Thinking of what position you are in can be helpful at times, and obviously helps the student make more demonstrable progress in the earliest lessons. But from the very beginning they should be playing pieces that explore the whole range of the keyboard. That's why you have pieces such as "Two Black Ants" and "Three Little Kittens" ( http://pianoadventures.com/guide/13_three_little_kittens.html ) at the beginning of the Faber Primer book. I know some teacher's skip over these pages because they don't consider them to be real pieces. But the teaching point is really not about them reading the notes in this case. It's about getting them to have a balanced piano posture that allows them to move smoothly and easily across the entire range of the piano.

Maybe teaching some of these very elementary pieces by rote could help in this case. If she is overwhelmed with having to figure out notes and move her hands to find them at the same time, allow her to work on each of these skills independently. Teach some simple rote pieces that involve moving the hand around the keyboard, and bump up the sight-reading and flashcard drills to improve on pattern recognition and note naming. Divide and conquer is sometimes the best strategy!

You do have your students play scales, right?

I am a bit confused as to how a child would not be comfortable moving their hands if they are used to playing scales ... ?

Dump the 5-finger hand position pieces ASAP.

Unfortunately, these books have been focusing on those 5 finger "scales" (I never saw them as scales but the books call them that). She has not reached the full scale level yet, which starts in the next book of this series. Does that sound like this is a major reason for her problem?

I recently took a pedagogy course, and when discussing piano method books, the problem you described is one of the reasons that the 5-finger position is not considered a great pedagogical approach (ie. Students learning to play by finger number/position instead of learning the notes they are playing).

It may be a good idea to try a different method book at her level that covers the whole scale earlier.

What method book are you currently using?

Gisele, the 5 finger positions are fine in my opinion , but you NEED to have your student start to play their full scales no later than their 2nd lesson.

All the child has to do is slide their hand to their thumb or their 3rd finger / 4th finger

How long have you been teaching? This question you asked really is one of the most basic and fundamental issues that can be solved quite easily.

Student can't move their hands. Stuck in 5 finger pattern.

Remedy: Teach student to move their hands.

Method: Scales, Playing 5 finger positions in different keys and jumping octaves up and down the keyboard

Hi Gisele,

With my students I have an experience, that if the student does not want to do something, there is no hope to push or press. So I always try to make them want to do these things by themselves.

So quick ideas:

Me: "Do you want to play the piano and do you want to enjoy playing the pieces that you like?"
Student: Probably answers :"Yes."
Me: "Do you know how to do it, for example in this piece?"
Student: "yes, I know"
Me: "Ok, this is magnificent, please show me"

The student tries to show how to play well, and he/she is already more motivated and does it because of himself/herself.
Student makes some mistakes and there are things that can be improved.

Me: "Yes, you did it really well. There are even some easy and interesting tricks that I can teach you so you can even do it better."
Student: "Show me."

And so on. This kind of approach works the best by my experience. The student starts to want it for himself/herself and some kind of chain of interest is triggered on.

Just my subjective experiences.
Hope you got some ideas.

GL
Jaak

1. Start new music that does not use predictable hand positions.

2. Be very patient during the change, but do not go back to the hand-position music. Take her old book away if necessary.

I think one octave scales are a good thing to try.

But switching to a different method book may be necessary as well.

You need to make sure she is actually fluent reading her notes. The "paralysis" is often caused by not actually being certain what notes she is reading.

I like Bastien's "A Line A Day" sight-reading series for working on note-reading. Try not to use "Every good boy..." and "FACE". Because these don't actually relate to understanding the staff in relation to the keyboard.

Instead, this is what I do:
Start at Middle C, since it is in both clefs. Write this on blank staff paper. Try treble clef first. Move outward by only steps or skips, meandering as you go (in and out, but overall out). Write the note first, then find the piano key. Try bass clef next.

Try the opposite next time: find the piano key, then write it on the staff.

It's about making connections between the piano and the staff. And avoiding using mnemonic devices that don't actually solidify note-reading.

Try a method book that doesn't use specific hand positions. For this, Bastien is one of the worst. Hal Leonard is better for this. Or The Music Tree. Or Celebrate Piano! Or Piano Discoveries. Some people like the Alfred Premier Piano Series. (I'm sure the other teachers will correct me if I'm wrong on any of these.)

I'm just returning after some time off teaching due to major surgery, but I've spent the time learning everything I could about pedagogical approaches, and this seems to be one of the most important issues out there right now. And it represents a fairly recent change from the older methods.

Hope this is helpful to you.

Best of luck!

Maybe you can have her transpose the 5-finger pieces into other keys, going around the circle of fifths. 5-finger scales are excellent for building a good hand position.

?????

How many prodigies are there?

I'm aware that it was the title of the post in the first place, but this is not an accurate assessment of what's going on. Moving the hands is not the problem. Being able to (and willing to rely exclusively on) reading any note with any finger number on it is what's required.

Real remedy: Pieces that begin with different notes and different fingers, specifically music that never teaches (even by implication) that certain notes might be even slightly associated with certain fingers.

Good example: An imaginary beginner book. One piece very early in the book starts with finger 2 on a G, the next piece starts with finger 3 on the same G, the piece after that starts with finger 5 on A, etc etc. That exact sequence might not literally be in any book, but you get the point. The highly paranoid author would make sure no two pieces started with the same combination of note and finger.

Bad example: Contrast the above with several books from the 1980's where the first six hundred or so pieces start with thumb on C or thumb on G.

Many "hand-position-dependent" students have no trouble at all getting around the keyboard, as long as it's thumbs on C and G all the way.

It doesn't take a prodigy to learn to play a one octave C major scale hands separate?

Ok, sorry, what I meant to say is to teach them to play a full octave scale , and get them away from the 5 finger position where they feel like their fingers aren't supposed to move.

I have never had this problem of paralysis that the original poster is speaking of.

Another great trick is to give them simple finger pattenrs that they can do all the way up the piano and down.

Such as:

123 (right hand) on ABC , then 123 on DEF, 123 on EFG

These are just so simple that you could probably teach any monkey to do it.

You make a fantastic point. I however, believe, that if you have the student sing the song with the finger numbers early on, they will develop a strong connection to being able to associate a note to a finger.

I also teach the scales G D A E before they reach the pieces which use those scales. So then they are used to different fingers touching different keys.

If you're main argument is something to do with associating a different finger to the actual note on the page, then I think my method corrects this early on.

I would like to see one of those books that you suggest hah ... would be interesting.

What you describe continues to happen and is happening right now as I type. Sad.

Have you all never looked at Music Tree or Music Pathways? I've never had a student that couldn't move around the staff quite easily because of the approach to reading developed in both of these series.

I use the Music Tree most of the time. Just didn't want to sound like an advertisement.

Ity has its flaws, as does any method; but most of its general ideas are ones that I subscribe to.

Here are a couple things you could try; maybe one of them might work, or trigger another idea for you:

1. Stop referring to it as "hand position" and instead call it "starting position." Explain that prior to playing any piece she will first need to determine which hand, which note, and which finger begins. But that is only to start, and as her music gets more difficult, she will find out that she needs to continually be looking for changes. In Piano Adventures, when the hand position changes, they circle the finger number. In Premier Piano, the finger number is in red. I point this out to the student, and explain that they are "being nice" by doing this, and eventually the student will be expected to notice this without any help, so they may as well begin now.

As a corollary, teaching them how to look over the music ahead of time, and find anything that might be new to them - like having to cross hands, or change positions, will help them recognize it when they are playing.

2. Have her play one-line melodies with a single finger of your choosing. Forces her to read notes and/or intervals. For a silly game, take a one-line piece of music (Twinkle, twinkle, for example) and write in random finger numbers, and see if they can play it with the indicated finger and note and rhythm. Really challenging. I pretend to be mean and count mistakes, and it's fun.

3. Dozen a Day has a few exercises where the student must move their hands - such as, play the C-I chord with both hands, then play the C an octave lower with both hands, and then back again. I require my students to play these quickly and with perfect rhythm, so that they can get comfortable at moving their hands around.

4. FWIW, I start my students on full octave, 2 hand scales and cadences by the middle of level 1 books. We don't rush - they have to learn them perfectly and by memory. It's worked really well. Dozen a Day also has a few exercises that require simple finger crossing, which helps reinforce the idea that no note "owns" a single finger. Like 1-2-3-1-3-2-1 on C-D-E-F-E-D-C. Or 1-2-1-2 on C-B-C-D.

5. I've had good success by using a Note Speller with a couple of my students who were really stuck.

Hope something here helps. Good luck.