Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Bench

I was wondering:

Is it allowed to sit sligthly different with respect to the middle C, according to the piece one is going to perform?

A.

Like everything else, there are a variety of opinions. Mine is that it's best to always sit it the same spot so you develop a better sense of where you have to reach to hit each key. If you keep shifting around it makes the keys moving targets.

If a piece lays higher or lower on the piano, then by all means move the bench. But many pieces will only be very high or low in parts, in which case it's not practical to move the bench around.

I agree with bluekeys: sitting in the same spot fixes your orientation relative to the keys. Usually if a piece has a lot of parts where you're playing with both hands in either the high or low register I'll lean in that direction to play while staying "planted" in the same spot.

Actually I was wondering about this due to a piece with a very central left hand arpeggio (around middle C) which I found uncomfortable to play if sitting exactly in front of middle C...

A.

In that case, you should move to the right, because having your hand/wrist twisted like that can not only be uncomfortable, and make it difficult to play that arpeggio well, but could cause injury.

But until you feel very at home with the keyboard, you should have one central place so that your brain can learn movements from that. Unless it is something as extreme as your example, whereupon you should move, but move back to home base soon.

ps...you usually don't have to move the bench...just slide up or down a bit.

I follow the tip to sit with the belly button directly across from middle D. But it can get uncomfortable with Czerny who seems to enjoy putting your left hand in the octave above middle C for many of his studies.

Ok, this makes sense...



this could be actually possible when I will have a proper piano bench, for now I am using a very small rounded bench on which I can't actually slide up

A.

Yes, anytime you have to put your hand across the body it can be very uncomfortable. You should either lean if this is temporary in the piece, or slide up if the whole piece is like this.

I have wondered this question myself recently as one of the pieces I am trying to learn is all over the keyboard. Unfortunately it is not even broken into small sections of upper-lower register but constantly very high and very low. Every other beat!

I've experimented with sitting a little to the left of center, sitting in the center and sitting a little right of center. for some unknown reason to me, sitting just a tiny bit left of center was the overall most comfortable position. Sitting center was second and sitting to the right of center was the worst.

I have no idea why.

My personal clinical study.

you don't have to sit still. organists bounce all over the bench, especially if they're small.

what ever you have to do.

For the past few weeks, I've been working on etudes that (mostly) have the left hand playing around middle C, & I've been sitting a bit to the right. But just last week, my teacher suggested I not do that, so I'll try it his way for a while. I think at my next lesson I'll ask him why not, though - it may be as Bluekeys said that it will help me get a sense of where things are on the keyboard.

One other thing - if you feel cramped when you have to move your left hand up to the treble (or the right to the bass), you might be sitting too close to the piano.

Good point, Andy. Distance from the keys allows for greater freedom of movement.