Working With Small Children?!

How can I use your techniques when working with small children? When I try to create the arch in their hand, they stiffen, but when I try to relax them, their structure collapses. What can I do?

A great question and very pertinent. As my idea is to create a new generation of more competent pianists who don't suffer from so many of the technical ills we see today, we need to know how this works with kids, and it is not easy! I myself do work with children occasionally, and it is great simply to discover through experience what works and what doesn't in applying my ideas. It depends a lot on the level of the child's physical development. I received an email recently from a viewer of the DVD who told me he was showing his 10-year old all the stuff in chapter one about the hand's arches and his kid was just eating it up. He could see an immediate improvement. However, I have also worked with kids where precisely the problem you describe has arisen. Working with a 6 or 7 year old at the piano can be kind of like forcing a baby to walk at 9 months when the body is designed to crawl for the first year. The baby learns to do it, but its spine is not ready to bear the weight. Oftentimes these kids have back pain 40 years down the line. But the 6 year old child WANTS to play piano! One thing I have done to solve this is to get the child to activate the fingers more. I'll have her really LIFT the finger before playing. This healthy activity creates the hand's natural arch without stiffening it. And the arm goes along with the lift so it doesn't develop into the stiff finger action school. Another thing is to AVOID USING THE THUMB. Eventually I plan to develop a whole new piano method for kids that is based largely on going back to the way harpsichordists did it - they did not use their thumbs AT ALL. The relationship of thumb to hand is incredibly complicated, and we generally introduce this far too early. The child should master simple walking on the keys with the four fingers before bringing this strange outrigger strut into the picture. Generally the hand falls down 1) as she plays the thumb, and 2) as she goes from the thumb to the next note. If you are going to introduce the thumb, give the child my thumb pushup exercises etc. so they really understand that special role of the thumb and can FEEL it, educate their senses about it. I hope this helps - what other specific questions do forum members have about working with kids? AFF

Dear Prof. Fraser, I tried some of the things you recommended and it was just as you said: generally the younger the child, the less able he or she was to maintain that arch, and the more I had to help them arrive at it in some indirect way. My main problem - once they have started using their thumbs, they don't really like abandoning it, no matter how clearly I show them that they are falling on it which is not good. Any more suggestions? Thanks so much for your answer, it was really helpful! Zach

You have to make the child sensorially aware of the problems of falling on the thumb. Like in my film where I relate the collapsed metacarpal-phalangeal to a hip joint collapsing in walking. You can also take him or her through the special exercises for the thumb and then point out when she doesn't maintain the feeling of thumb potency but starts falling on it again. Help the child realize how well they walk on their fingers, and bring them to the point where they won't tolerate the thumb not being as good as the other fingers but work to improve it. Or at a certain point he or she may come to realize that hey, maybe it would be a good idea to give the thumb a break for awhile, and to develop a sense of power on the keys with the other fingers. AFF

...Eventually I plan to develop a whole new piano method for kids... AFF Alan, have you started this project yet? When do you plan to finish it?

The project is started but no definite finish date yet... a number of other projects are taking precedence right now... Thanks for your interest! AFF

Hey, Alan! Any news about the piano method for kids? You're doing a wonderful work spreading your wisdom for grown pianists all over the world, and it would be wonderful to have a first-class healthy piano method for the children. We're (adults and kids) waiting for it to be released!

Right now I have several teachers working from the manuscript... they are trying the exercises out with their pupils and getting back to me about what works and what doesn't. This process is taking a fair amount of time. In the meantime I published All Thumbs! You can read about it on the Maple Grove home page... Thanks for asking, AFF