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I have an adult student who just recently has developed very tense hands and arms when she plays. She has only been learning a couple of months and started from absolutely nothing (she was almost scared to put her hands on the keys in the first lesson!).

The tension has started in the last week or so, since she started playing some simple chords, and is worse in her right hand.

Like most adult beginners, she is very nervous when playing in the lessons and overly concerned about making mistakes, although this has been getting better and she obviously enjoys playing. But last night when she had her lesson her hands/arms were so tense it was obviously causing her pain.

I will give her some simple Dozen a Day type exercises, and have also given her some other exercises to do just on a table, although of course I am aware of the difference between a kitchen table and the piano keys! Her arm/hand position has been generally very good up until now and musically there is absolutely no problem at all.

Does anyone have some simple exercises or advice they could share with me, please?

Thanks!

Kate

Hi, I had the same problem before. My new teacher helped me fix the habit. She told me "did you notice your elbows are sticking out. It makes it hard to play. Can you try keeping the elbows in". Notice that she did not tell me to loosen up or not to be so tense. Anyway, she had me play one measure very slowly hand separately with my elbow tucked in. When I was playing the measure closely watching my elbows, she smiled at me and told me "look your tension is gone". That did it for me.

Now, whenever I get tense or loose control, she says something like "can you show me how softly you can play the note with your thumb." This is another technique, I think. Because if I try to produce a fine soft sound with my finger, I cannot stay tense. Hope it helps.

My teacher had me do "drop" exercises - letting my hands fall onto the keyboard.

While I'm playing she also will gently shake my elbow to make me realize I'm tensing up.

deep breathing.

Each student is different. (For some, temporarily sticking the elbow out will help to dissipate any tension that builds up while using fingers 45, for example.)

The tension that builds up because the student is afraid of making mistakes is the most difficult to deal with. In many cases, if they tense up while playing the piano, then they also do it when they do many other things.

Excess tension also serves the function of mistakenly allowing the person to feel as if they have supreme control over what they're doing. This is frustrating as well - more so when working with children and teens.

In some cases, the person may lack the patience to sit through the "re-training" process needed to play without tension - indeed, it may be a lack of patience that is causing the symptoms to develop in the first place.

You mention playing chords, and perhaps this is the root of the problem. I also suspect as Gerard said, tension from nervousness.

To solve the issue, she has to realize that once the key has been pressed, no further pressing affects the sound. She need only continue to press sufficiently to keep the key down if is it to be sustained.

She needs to learn to drop into the keys as casinitaly explained. Have her hold her arm high above the keys (do one arm at a time). Then have her drop onto the keys, freefall. Do it enough times to make sure she is actually letting gravity do the work and she's not adding pressure or lightening up just before her fingers touch. She doesn't need to hit any notes in particular. Then have her do the same thing but start with her fingers touching the keys. Her wrist should dip below the key level, then return to parallel to the keys after pressing the keys down while she sustains the notes with minimum pressure needed.

You can then have her play a simple 5-finger pattern (c-d-e-f-g-f-e-d-c) very slowly, bouncing the wrist down on each note and returning to parallel to the keys before moving onto the next note. She shouldn't go any faster than she can do this successfully on each key. Repeat the same procedure with the other hand.

When she can do this (and it might be something she works on for a week), then have her do the same thing with chords, dropping into the keys at first from a height (and it's OK if she misses - the point is to get her over the fear of getting the right notes), then from touching the keys and dipping the wrist down using arm weight.

+1 I often have students drop their hands/arms on their legs, as they get tensed up anticipating hitting the keys. That way they can learn the feel of freedom in their arms.

I think most of the advice here is good. I'd just like to add - expect to try several approaches. Sometimes a particular method that "should" work turns out not to, perhaps because your student was thinking something that you didn't expect her to be thinking.

Depending on the student, you might also encourage her to intentionally make some mistakes; to temporarily "let loose" and not worry about getting it right. Sometimes students surprise themselves with that one.

Thanks for all the good advice, everybody. Some of it I'm already trying with her, but it's good to confirm my ideas, and also to confirm my suspicions as to what might be causing it. And the ideas that are new to me I will definitely try out. I'm pretty convinced it's related to her nervousness. Oh for the naturalness of kids. If we could only combine that with the capacity to sit still of most adults...

Thanks!

Kate

I want to add an idea about dropping the arm: Have her rest her elbow into your hand and wait until she has released all the weight of her upper arm into your hand. Then move her forearm up and down for her (like a lever from the elbow) and then have her do the dropping (from the elbow/back of the forearm), again like a lever. In my opinion, to have the least amount of tension, the movement should be a toned, coordinated one from the back of the forearm.

I had been playing for around 8-9 years when I went to Vienna for a month. I took lessons there and I had too much tension in my arms (just bad habit built up, I guess). Most of the advice given here is exactly what I ended up doing on the teacher's advice there. My arms freed up, my left arm especially.. and it has helped with my left hand finger dexterity too.

So I did the dropping on to the keyboard exercise for a month or so. So each finger, dropped down on to the keyboard from a height and resting my entire arm on that single finger.. and the teacher would swing my arm to and fro at the elbow to make sure I wasn't tensing up.. and I learnt to rest my arms on my fingers soon. Its helped with the tone I produce too.

Thank you!

I'd just add another point here.... Even though my teacher has been telling me about how to distribute the weight on my fingers and how to press keys since I started, it took me a good long while to realize that I was putting WAY too much force into holding the keys down.

I knew at a conceptual level what I was supposed to be doing, but it took me a while to realize that it hadn't really clicked at a physical level.

Cheryl--if the pain is bothering you, you might want to look into some Alexander Technique lessons.

Thanks for the suggestion - I've just googled to see what it is about. I'll read up on it!

My teacher has me playing cadences with both hands (I-IV-I-V-V7-1) and bouncing my wrist up and down similarly to how Moridiene described for the five finger pattern. I usually do two bounces for each chord. This has really helped reduce the tension in my wrists and hands. My teacher also had me play these cadences with my eyes closed while focussing on each hand one at a time, trying to keep the hand/wrist that I'm focussing on as relaxed as possible. Doing that drill with my eyes closed helped me make significant progress with my left hand which tends to hold more tension than my right.