Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Problem with posture:

Hello all-thanks for reading.

Been playing for about a year now (am 46 yrs old) and have started to develop some hand pain.
This prompted me to watch some youtube videos on posture and I realize that my wrist is dipping below my knuckles and my shoulders are raising up a bit to my ears.

It seems like my chair is too low and my keyboard stand is too high...yet I have taken the caps off the feet of the stand/table to bring it down a bit and have raised the stool to its highest position yet I still appear to be a be bit low. This forces my shoulders to raise a bit unnaturally and my wrists are dipping down.

Should I just buy an adjustable round stool to get some more height?
Does my wrist need to be straight at all times or is it ok that it dips below the level of my knuckles?

Lastly, Ive noticed when watching others play that their elbows are higher than the wrists. With my they are about the same level.
The only way for me to get that nice slope down from the shoulder, down through the elbow and then down lower to the wrists/hands, is to get the chair up to a much higher position then what appears to be intended...

Typically it is a good idea to buy a piano adjustable bench. In a natural position, the forearm must be more or less horizontal and the elbow at the level of the keyboard. Now this is not mathematical, each person has a different height and body shape, so this guidelines can be adjusted based on your own sense of comfort.

The wrist position is not meaningfull as it moves all the time. In a rest situation, its position is determined by the forearm/elbow position. As you know a straight line is fully determined by 2 points. Your curved hand being on the keys, the elbow position, ie the seating height, will determine where your wrist will be.

This is a challenge for me too, in my case because I’m short-waisted but have very long arms (& legs, but I don’t think that affects my piano posture). So I have to keep my piano bench pretty high for someone who’s only 5’ 6” (~168 cm).

Originally I had an X-stand, but I couldn’t sit high enough for decent ergonomics, so when I bought my next DP, I got the stand for it too (& a more adjustable bench), and now everything works out much better.

So it might simply be a challenge because of how you’re built.

I think you hit the nail on the head here.
I have long arms relative to my mid-section.

Ive lowered my stand as much as it will go so I guess I need a more adjustable bench as my current X-bench/chair is not tall enough.

I also have long relatively arms, adjustable bench is worth it especially if you have gesture problems. I strongly recommend tutorials from my piano teacher on proper gesture and use of arm weight. If you want to practice, her wrist circle on Hanon #1 is very useful. We are even using that practice for voicing and dynamics now.

I also just realized that my white keys are exactly 30.5 inches from the floor which seems high as ive been reading 28.5-29 is the norm, so maybe this is part of the problem?

As a stopgap before getting an adjustable bench, you can put a cushion or two on your current bench, which will raise you up a little.

On my grand piano the top of the white keys are 74 cm from the floor and on my digital piano they are 73.5 cm from the floor, which is about 29 inches. So indeed 30.5 inches (77.5 cm) seems a bit too high.

Yes, that’s precisely why I had to nix the x-stand, which are really designed for playing while standing on stage, and get the normal-piano-height stand that was designed for my DP.

My digital piano keys are also 73.5cm heigh with the built in stand so I guess that’s the standard. It won’t go lower but I suppose you could make it higher with blocks.

My stool is 45cm heigh plus cushion around 2cm (it squashes down). The stool doesn’t adjust so I’m lucky it’s just right.

I’m a little taller than you kwitel at 174cm but my arms are just average length (judging by the clothes I occasionally buy). Sitting down I doubt it makes much of a difference.

The above setup has my hands just below my elbows so I haven’t had any physical problems with playing.

I couldn’t play like Glen Gould (in any sense).

You could saw off the bottom of the legs of the stand. Depending on how it' s built, that might be the cheapest and simplest way to lower the keys.

As stopgap maybe you could set your chair on 4 decks of cards. It's a 2 cm boost.

Can't let this pass. She fails to have her wrist relaxed as she descends. The correct attitude will have the hand hanging from the wrist. As for how high the elbows should be, you see all manner of highs and lows. I wouldn't worry.

I wouldn't say that's true. The wrist should be loose but generally you shouldn't raise it so high that your hand is hanging down. I often see demonstrations where teachers have the hand hanging down like that to demonstrate the looseness of the wrist but when playing it should be straight while maintaining the same looseness.

Often in playing it's hanging down. If you have the time do it.