Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum The case of the lazy left hand

A friend who is a teacher noticed that I tend to play a lot with the heel of my left hand sinking pretty low on the keys when I am playing just a simple octave or chord. I am not quite on the 'wood', but.....

What impact is this having on my playing? It is becoming a hard habit to break, and if I think about it, I am not playing as well as I could.

Should I let it go or work to correct this old habit? Thanks for
your time.

You are probably using very low wrists. It can lead to injury, I believe. You might find this useful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=H_v5VdEDrHs Though it talks primarily about seat height, you will also get an idea about the optimal hand/wrist positions.

Play the same kind of chords/octaves with the RH. See if the hands are doing something different. If they are, you have a problem...

I think there should be 2 things you should think about. Does your left hand hurt when you play? and How often do you play. If your hand does not hurt and you are not playing all that much, it might not matter. Even if you play a lot and your hand does not hurt, it still may not matter.

Thelonius Monk would play almost completely flat handed. His palms almost resting on the keys. I think this played a role in his sound and he is one of the most influential jazz piano players.

If you do start to feel pain, see if the pain is from the wrist down to your finger tips. Any pain in this area is bad pain. It means you are hurting your hand. If you have pain in the forearm, that is most likely good pain, like "working out" pain. If you have pain really close to the elbow, that could also be bad pain. So if you decide not to fix your hand posture, just pay attention that there is no pain in your hand.

Thanks for the link. (I also stumbled upon the lessons by Rachel and will be sure to watch each one.)

Maybe I am making too much of this as I have never felt wrist pain.

I have never felt any wrist pain, so maybe I'm not as bad as I thought.

I play every day - I'm an accompanist for two choirs and a sometimes substitute organist.

In my teaching experience, I've found that the student's perception or awareness of the length of the arm/hand/fingers mechanism is the problem. Basically, the length of the mechanism is longer than what they think it is.

So, to match whatever erroneous concept they have in their head, they introduce tensions into the arm (or shoulders/upper body, even) that pull the hands off the keys - helping to produce the lowered wrist effect.

Stand up and imitate swimming slowly with your upper arms. With each stroke - are you aware of the total length of your arms? By that, I mean from the end of your collarbone at the top of your chest, to the very ends of your fingers. Also be aware that the systems that support your arm as it moves through the air are the same muscles that support your arms as they stay on the keyboard.

This is all shorthand, but it might help.

Yeah, I have this thing when I play of pulling back from the keyboard as a piece goes on. I always have my bench and my posture set to what I think is a pretty optimum hand position. But when I get going along nicely on a piece I can play well I noticed that by the end I'm sort of leaning back and stretching my arms out a bit to the keyboard.

Of course I can't play as well that way. Which is weird. I do it anyway!

I don't know how correct this is, but.....when I sit on the bench, I back off just enough so that my outstretched arms and hands are just touching the highest C and that lowest A. This seems to get me the right distance from the keys, but that being done, I wonder if this is inducing that lazy left hand.

Probably not immediately helpful, but fwiw. A friend of mine switched from violin to viola, keeping the same teacher. Her teacher did not stop telling her how heavy, large, hard to hold, this viola was. Even two years later she was only intermittently comfortable with the instrument. One summer she had a chance to work with a teacher who normally didn't take other students (except summers). He did something unusual. She had to stand with her eyes closed and without an instrument while he played a recording of viola music, and mime playing it. From what he observed, he told her that her imaginary viola was much bigger than her real viola. Once she perceived the real size, it no longer felt big and awkward.