When a student walks into my studio, I do not listen first. I look at how they are sitting, and I can usually predict what I am about to hear.
Adults find this deflating. They have come to learn music and the first subject is furniture. But the instrument is played with the whole arm from the shoulder, and where the shoulder sits in relation to the keyboard determines what the arm is able to do. Get it wrong and you are not learning the piano — you are learning to compensate.
Height: the one that matters most
The rule: your forearm should run level with the tops of the white keys, or a shade above. Never below.
Here is how to find it without measuring anything. Sit down and let both arms hang loose at your sides — genuinely loose, shake them once so the shoulders drop. Now bring your hands up onto the keys without lifting your shoulders. Where the forearm naturally arrives tells you whether the seat is right.
If the forearm comes to rest below the level of the keys, you are too low. This is the commonest fault in adult playing, and it is almost always a chair rather than a body: dining chairs are built for tables, and tables are lower than keyboards.
Why it matters so much: from below, the weight of your arm cannot travel forward into the key — the angle sends it into your wrist joint instead. So the fingers press, alone, and the aching forearms, the thin sound and the uneven notes all follow from that one angle.
If the bench does not adjust: a folded towel or a firm cushion. Add thickness until the forearm is level. This is exactly what an adjustable bench does, and there is nothing makeshift about solving it this way — the wrong height is the problem, not what you sat on to fix it.
Distance: further back than feels natural
Most beginners sit too close, because being close to the keys feels like control.
The test: sit so that when your hands are on the keys, your elbows are slightly in front of your body rather than tucked at your sides. Your upper arm should hang, and there should be room for the elbow to move forward and back without meeting your ribs.
Sitting too close pins the elbows, and pinned elbows mean the arm cannot travel — so when the music moves to the top or the bottom of the keyboard, the hand goes alone, sideways, at an angle, and everything about the sound changes. A pianist's arm follows the hand along the keyboard. It cannot do that from a chair pulled in like a desk.
How far up the bench
Sit on the front half of the bench, not back against it. You want your weight forward enough that you can lean slightly toward the instrument and your feet can carry some of it.
Feet flat on the floor, one slightly forward if that is comfortable — the right foot near the pedal even if you are not using it yet. If your feet do not reach the floor, put something solid under them. Dangling feet leave the whole body hanging from the seat, and the back tires within minutes.
What good sitting is not
It is not a military back. Adults often overcorrect into a rigidly straight spine held by effort, which tires faster than slouching and makes the shoulders rise. The back should be upright and easy, leaning very slightly forward, with the weight carried through the sit bones and the feet.
It is not stillness. Watch any good pianist and the body moves constantly — with the phrase, toward the difficult passage, away at the end of it. Sitting well means being organized enough to move freely, not being fixed in a photograph.
And it is not shoulders. Check yours now, reading this. If they are up near your ears, that is where they will be at the piano, and raised shoulders lock the whole arm. Let them drop, twice per practice session, deliberately.
The three-minute setup, in order
- Height. Arms hang loose, bring them up, check the forearm is level with the key tops or slightly above. Add a towel until it is.
- Distance. Elbows slightly in front of the body, free to move, not pinned to your sides.
- Feet. Flat on the floor, carrying some weight. Something solid under them if they do not reach.
- Shoulders. Drop them. Then begin.
Do this once, note where the towel or the bench setting needs to be, and you never think about it again.
Check it from the side, not from inside
You cannot see your own forearm angle while playing, and your sense of it is unreliable — everyone's is. So put your phone on a shelf to your side, at roughly keyboard height, and film thirty seconds.
Look for one line: does the forearm run level into the hand, or dip at the wrist? And watch what happens at the difficult bar. In almost every recording I am sent, the setup is fine until the music gets hard, and then the wrist sinks and the shoulders rise. That is tension arriving on schedule, and once you have seen it on video you can catch it in the room.
If you would like me to look at those thirty seconds, send them — I answer recordings myself and it costs nothing. It is the fastest thirty seconds of teaching available to an adult learning alone.