Can "Craft" Be Applied To Kids Learning Systematically?

My daughter 6.5 year old is learning with a piano teacher who uses "craft of piano" in teaching since last July. But we don't get it systematically, so it is very foggy what to be and what motion to apply. And my daughter has a small and soft hand/finger, seems to never get there, the structure is not solid/stable, there is no strength. A lot of confusions and we don't know what to do in daily routine for piano technique. How to build up for beginning kids? Is there some basic techniques we should acquire/practice before some other techniques in books? (we have "the craft of piano playing" and "Honing the pianistic self-images") My daughter recently plays Burgmuller "Innocence", "Tender Flower" and "The WagTail" and "139 Valse D.Kabalvsky" from "Russian School" book, Bagatelle Op.68 No.5 by Robert Schumann. Somehow the motion part is most difficult, even she plays, we are not sure motion needs to go with and spending most time experimenting. We are surely limited by our experience in music interpretation. Is that "Craft of Piano" more for advance student? What about playing basics, 5 note scale, with and without slur, backward &forward, legato &stacato & in between, sad or lively mood, in 3/4 and 4/4, slow and quick tempo? What about scale? Any general guidance there. Does a music sentence start with thumb up? Or thumb up more for ending? Recently we are experimenting to interpret music in Yin/Yang and associate to Taiji movement after all baffle. Is that the "structure" is more of a check point/regroup point to rest where motion starts and ends and the alive "static" point in the flow? How to build up our technique with "Craft"? Any ABC here.

Thank you for this very important question. My books are aimed at more advanced pianists, and yet I have found that many amateurs have benefitted a great deal from them. Sometimes this problem crops up: which exercise is most appropriate at which stage of development. Each case is individual. Some generalizations can be made, but not always. I am in the process of completing a new book, "Kiddie Craft," which attempts to set out the principles of The Craft of Piano Playing in a systematic form of development that clarifies its application to young children. Hopefully this will be published by the end of the year. In your daughter's case, I suspect that her hand may be too unweildy to take the structure building exercises and use them effectively. I would suggest a very light walking on the keys, lifting each finger a great deal before playing its note. Make a game of it. This should get her structure working better while avoiding exerting any stress on it. At this distance it is difficult to say what the problem is, but try this for now and get back to me. AFF

Alan, Wonderful to see your reply. My daughter couldn't believe YOU wrote to us, she read your writings and it takes her. We did hear occasionally some unusual rich and beautiful tone when she played recently, it is a different world, but when tried to catch them again, they are lost. So trying hard for getting "Craft". Great to know "Kiddie Craft" is coming soon, do please keep us posted. ( Maybe there will be a "Kiddie student video section" and "Kiddie mastered video section" in forum then. ) In your daughter's case, I suspect that her hand may be too unweildy to take the structure building exercises and use them effectively. I would suggest a very light walking on the keys, lifting each finger a great deal before playing its note. Make a game of it. This should get her structure working better while avoiding exerting any stress on it. How right you are! She just started doing of "roll towards the keyboard" in playing and forming a bit dome structure this few weeks, but once to ask her to raise finger, her arm, wrist locked up and only finger left, motion stopped. However, not sure how to practice "light walk with raising up finger" right. Where shall the support from when do light walk? She does either of the three below i) wrist very high (sloping down to the finger) ii) a dead dome, Knuckle is highest, but fingers are falling into one line; iii) arm, wrist, hand, knuckle on the same level and when finger is raised to the top, she does i) her finger (the tip part) points straight down toward the key(super curly) -- most often ii) her finger be naturally curve What about if weaving "grasp" and "roll towards the keyboard" with raise up finger the following way on step/skip notes: 1) thumb kick forward (thumb up), wrist is high, while about going down, raise finger up (hand natural curve), finger down on tip (dome structure). 2) Grasp in and when about to grasp in, raise finger up and shooting down with roll out/up towards keyboard. Just run over this idea with you to see if it makes any sense to do this exercise. How does pianist do when raise up finger? When you say "light" walk, do you mean not to press down the finger and at ease. Will check if she gets there "light". And Thank you for putting your advice so simply and well for us to understand. Kaihua

Hi there, I am glad your daughter enjoyed my message. About "light walking:" not so easy to say. When the finger lifts it is quite a vigorous action, BUT the arm must not tighten. As the finger lifts, the forearm rises "in sympathy with the finger." When the finger goes into the key, the support for the finger is within the finger itself, nowhere else is needed. Everything else is just going along for the ride. Let me know if this helps! AFF

@Mel02 We currently have two lessons with Alan and the young pianists:

Hi Jovan, Thanks for letting me know. Busy and now got time. Is there more information about the link? What is in there? Can you introduce more about yourself too? Are you Alan's web administrator? Suitable for kid. Every months two lessons from Alan? Can we see old lessons? And review of kid's playing video? Also, do let me know any other resources if there is. Web safe to pay credit card? KC

I found the announcements of the pianoorg and got most of my questions answered. The lessons is a great treasure. Just one thing is not clear: by subscription, can all lessons of different teacher be viewed anytime? What is about private ones/series?

Thanks for your questions. All the lessons of all the teachers can be seen - those lessons, that is, that are in the master data base. The private series are entire Alan Fraser Institutes where some of the participants do not want to share their lessons with the entire subscriber group. We encourage students to share their lessons in the spirit of collegiality, but for those who would like their lessons to remain private, we must respect their wishes. I hope this clears up your question - if not, please let me know. AFF

Private series = AFFI Institutes (all the lessons, lectures, ATMs) My lessons = Lessons you don't want to be shown in Private series as well as lessons from private series you copied to your lessons page.