Why Where You Sit at the Piano Changes What You Can Play

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One of the hardest things to know how to get right is where you sit at the piano. For many beginners, where you sit at the piano is either an incredibly important aspect of playing, and it's one of the first things that you might try to adjust, or it’s something that isn’t thought about at all. Throughout my teenage years, I spent a lot of time adapting the height of the stool, even going so far as to buy a stool adapted to go much higher and lower than standard stools in order to test out various positions. So, is there a particular way that you should sit at the piano?

The answer to that question is yes and no. The interesting thing that not many people consider is the question of why we want to adapt where we sit at the piano in the first place and whether it always matters where you sit.

Ironically, for the vast majority of beginner pianists, where you sit is actually much less relevant, simply because the movements that you are required to make on the piano are much more restricted. In the beginning weeks of learning the piano, your hands are often in the middle of the piano (surrounding middle C), and you aren't having to make drastic movements to each end of the piano or be overly particular in the way that you play the keys.

However, as you get better at the piano and much more nuanced movements are required, where you sit has a much larger impact. We have to consider leaps on the piano, big chords, playing at the extremes of the keyboard, along with considering other parts of our body, such as pedalling with our feet.

Leverage

One of the fundamental things that you have to know about how we play the piano is that there are three leverage points that we use to play the piano: our fingers, our wrist, and our arm. Each of these leverage points is used differently to create different movements and therefore sounds. Arm movement is used for larger movements on the piano, the wrist for moderate movements or repetitive movements, and the fingers for small, quick movements.

For beginners who are working within one hand position on the piano, most of the work is done with the fingers, and this requires very little movement elsewhere in the body. However, when we move to larger movements using our wrist and our arms, our body can be restrictive if we sit too close or too far away. Sitting too close means that your arms can't move across the piano from side to side as much without your body being in the way. If your elbows are beside your body and you try to move your hand across the piano in front of your body, then your arm is going to be restricted by your elbow. This means that we need to sit far enough away that our elbows are slightly in front of us so that if we do cross our arm, then our body isn't in the way. However, if we sit too far away, then our elbows will be stretched and unable to bend as much and therefore we have less range of motion.

If you find that you are a more intermediate player and you find yourself needing to shuffle on your seat when you play low notes or high notes, then this is usually an indicator that you're sitting too close because your elbow is restricting your ability to cross to those low or high parts of the piano.

So this means the answer is that we need to sit so that our elbows are just in front of our bodies. Typically, on a real piano with fixed pedal placement, this is the equivalent of having your legs just over a right angle to the piano. However, as many people learn on electric pianos with movable pedals, this is becoming much less of a reliable indicator.

As well as how close you sit to the piano, there is also the matter of how high you sit. Everyone is a different height, and this is why we have adjustable stools, because there is no "one size fits all". There are also some things to think about to find a placement that's the best for you.

Similar to how far away you sit from the piano, we also want to consider the restriction on movement caused by how high we sit. If you sit so that your forearms slope upwards towards the keys, then this significantly restricts your ability to move your wrist and elbow and will feel like you are working much harder to play with your fingers. You can actually test this by leaning on a surface as if you are about to arm wrestle someone and bending your arm backwards as if you are losing the arm wrestle. You'll find that your body is very restricted in that plane of motion. However, if you put your wrist on the table, lift your elbow off the table, and move your arm away from you, then your entire arm is able to move more freely. This tells us that we want our arm to be just over a right angle to the keys so that our shoulder, arm, wrist, and fingers all form one continuous, connected, movable position.

If you sit too high, then you will find that your arm starts bending upwards away from your wrist, and therefore your wrist movement is much more restricted on the keys.

Position

Thinking about these things can help you find a position that's going to make you much less restricted when playing the piano. If you don't have a stool that is adjustable, then using cushions may be an option if you feel like you are sitting too low and your forearms are tilting upwards. It can also be worth playing around with sitting slightly further away, slightly closer, slightly higher or slightly lower to see how each position feels. When I played around with where I sat as a teenager, I found that sitting higher felt much freer to me, which is perhaps because I'm tall with lanky arms like Mr. Tickle (it’s also fairly ironic that I’m often seen sitting very low in YouTube videos to keep myself on camera).

Having said this, while a good position at the piano can alleviate the pressure that's restricting movements, most problems at the piano are rarely just because of where you are sitting. It's something that can allow for more ease of motion, more nuanced sound, and generally feeling more comfortable at the piano with less chance of tension. Many problems at the piano will still require practice to build up your skills as a player.

Matt