Sometimes children in piano lessons can get stuck playing well in one hand position where they feel secure, but become completely lost when presented with music in another key. Learning a new hand position doesn’t have to be scary for students. There are simple and effective strategies for teaching children new hand positions that take only a few minutes to learn. With these effective tools students quickly overcome their fear of learning new music in new hand positions.
The Grand Staff for piano music is a map of the piano keyboard. Just as students study different regions of the globe in social studies class they can learn the different “regions” of the piano keyboard. Each line or space note on the Grand Staff is one location on the piano, just like your hometown is one location on the world globe. Each new hand position young students learn in piano lessons is another “region” on the Map of “Piano Land.” Learning a new hand position can be compared to identifying a new country with a particular geography.
Here are the steps involved in learning to visualize the keyboard from the Grand Staff.
1. Draw a piano land picture of the five-finger hand position of the new key. The key of G for example is G,A,B-flat,C,D. On a piece of paper draw three black keys, leave a space and draw 2 black keys, then fill in the white keys around the black keys for a total of 7 white keys and three black keys. Label G,A,B-flat,C, and D.
2. With their eyes on the picture and not looking down at their hands, students need to play and say the keys under each finger. Start with the lowest note and going up and then starting with the highest note and coming back down. Do this for each hand.
3. Now students need to play and say each note in the new hand position again, but with their eyes completely closed. This is an essential step for visualizing the keyboard. Students need to see they keyboard in their mind’s eye before learning to read the new notes.
Once students have done this they are secure with what keys are under each finger and can go on to learn to read these notes on the staff. Teaching students to read new notes on the staff without first learning to visualize the corresponding keys creates a learning roadblock. Follow the steps above to remove this roadblock to playing in different hand positions and your child will learn to play new music and enjoy piano more.
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