Piano Technique | justinjacobsmusic

One of my greatest passions as an educator, is helping people navigate difficulties in their playing of intermediate and advanced-level piano repertoire. Dorothy Taubman said of technical problems: “Students do not agree on what is hard”, and “If something is hard, it is because you are making it hard” (quoted in the documentary film about Dorothy Taubman, Choreography of the Hands).

Many principles and teachings of the Taubman Approach are easily and immediately accessible to students, often resulting in seemingly miraculous fixes to technical problems within a piece.

Traditionally, piano teaching includes very little awareness of what the hands actually have to do in moving across the keyboard, and the best ways to accomplish this. How truly strange this is! Mostly what is taught is reading notes, rhythm, and paying attention to and following directions written on the page (dynamics, articulation, etc). The page is considered to be some sort of sacred truth, and the student required do whatever it takes in order to carry out the printed directions. We pay such little attention to our level of comfort at the instrument, that we end up twisting and contorting our arms, hands and fingers into uncomfortable and potentially injurious positions.

I have developed my own way of teaching physical movement at the piano, based on my many years of studying the Taubman Approach with Edna Golandsky and applying it to my playing. Rather than taking apart a person's technique and rebuilding it from the bottom up, I seek to build on and improve what is already there in the way that person moves at the keyboard.

If you have questions about how to navigate certain passages in your pieces - sections that perhaps feel difficult or awkward - I invite you to see how I might help you. Playing can and should feel easy; and not just easy, but also organised and beautiful.