When I read through the forums I see various mentions of students picking up so call-called 'bad habits' for whatever reasons.

I taught myself piano for a year before starting regular lessons and my personal bad habits were distinct lack of expression and poor fingering (I was making it a LOT harder for myself by having poorly chosen hand positions)

I was wondering what different bad habits there are that can be avoided. Obviously all teachers have different opinions and all students have their own technique, but some examples could be interesting.

Do you as a student have or have you fixed any bad habits, what were they? Teachers, what do you find you have to correct most in your students playing and what habits have you seen when you take on a new student?

I play flute... let's see, poor RH position, or should I say thumb - it should have been under the body supporting it, instead it was right out in front! Plus rolling the flute in, not being flexible enough with my lower lip (not moving it forwards with respect to the upper lip for the upper registers).... oh I could go on and on!!!

What's this smiley mean BTW?

Lets think...

Singers and pianists:

Appauling posture

Pianists, tense arms, dropped wrists, flat hands, hunched shoulders, curved backs

Singers: poor breathing technique, inability to let jaw drop due to tight TMJ, complete lack of undestanding of placing. Support muscles just not functioning.

My biggest bat habit: Holding the music too high when singing from a score thus hiding my face.

Singing and violin - not standing square with weight equally over both feet - have ended up playing the violin balanced on one leg....not very clever.

Singing - used to sing through my nose too much, have moved my voice back to its proper place now, but occasionally slip up with it.

Singing - tension! If you don't relax, you can't support the sound, or breathe properly or anything.

violin - not gripping the neck as if afraid you'll drop the instrument!
you have to support the violin on shoulders under chin without strain so you can stop the strings without relying on left hand thumb pressure. or you'll never shift positions easily nor play vibrato!



love to see it, katyjay - playing the violin standing on one leg! nice one.

Clarinet - breathing too high up, tense upper body, embouchoure shape, tense fingers.

I'll add a couple of extra clarinet ones : 'throating' as opposed to tonguing, blowing out the cheeks.

VIOLIN: gripping the neck as if they were hanging onto a frying pan or saucepan handle. Holding the instrument at an angle that makes it sick out from under the front of the chin, with the scroll pointing towards the ground. Right arem bowing from the shoulder, instead of from the elbow, wrist and fingers.

CELLO: playing with the spike still retracted into the instrument, so that it's propped up vertically with the player hunched over the instrument.

OBOE: players who clamp their elbows to their sides like they've got a bad attack of BO and don't want everyone to know. Throat vibrato - it makes the oboe sound like a sheep or goat bleating.

Flute: rolling the flute in too far so that the tone is sweet at the bottom, but the top notes don't come out at all. In addition, the flute rolls towards the player, resulting in a 'death grip' when C or C# are played, and the flute is perpetually flat.

Pointing the flute downwards and playing with the head on one side to compensate.

Lifting the fingers too far off the keys. I drape a tissue over their hands - if they raise their fingers too far, it flies off.

Conducting with the elbows whilst playing ( a sin I found I was guilty of when videoed on a flute course).

And nanny goat vibrato as for oboe in above post.

Oh, and how could I forget! Leaving the first finger down for middle register Eb/D#, and, horror of horrors, top G#.

It's depressing how many of those I have been guilty of...

Fewer now though!

Never left my first finger down for G# though... *smug*

Ah well, I wouldn't have expected you to, Sarah, as your aural skills are good. It's a quarter-tone flat, for goodness sake. And some of them have been taught that fingering by so-called woodwind teachers at school. Grr!

Ahhh! I didn't know that. But then, I have never tried the fingering!

Yes, some so-called woodwind teachers are.... well... let's just say that it took me 6 months to unlearn the bad habits my school flute teacher taught me as good technique....

But at least I've definitely avoided one bad habit conclusively

Reading through most of these, posture related problems definately seem to be the most prominent.

When I learnt the Oboe, I was banned from using vibrato until I could consitently produce a sweetly tone note without it. Now my vibrato comes from conrollig the support muscles, it can warm notes up or I can leave it out.

At college I had some lessons in Alexander Technique, and it certainly improved the way I sing, play the oboe and piano. Recently I've taken up pilates, and although the breathing technique is diffrent, the sense of body-awareness it ingenders is now fundimantal to my teaching.

Second to breathing problems, the biggest bad habit I have to deal with with singers is TMJ problems. The number of singers who are not prepared to let their mouths unhinge from the back is rediculously high! Next comes tense neck and shoulders to the point where I spend time in lessons doing exercises to loosten them up.

Other technical problems, singing through the nose, obtrusive "h", poor tuning and harsh tone all stem from Bad posture, poor breathing and the inability to relax muscles on demand

Ah, thanks Barry. Tonguing seems to be less of a problem, most pick that up fine. Blowing out cheeks is important to stop though, there seems to be greter tendency for that.



Yes, bad idea on flute! I remember though.

Believe me Neil I've seen ALL of the habits you've mentioned as well as the two I've mentioned. I'll add one more for clarinet- leaving the fingers too high above the keys/holes.

I'm sure I've said this elsewhere on the forum, but it bears repeating :

It's a LOT easier to learn the correct technique than it is to un-learn bad habits!!!!!!!!!!!

Barry (clari)

I'm certainly guilty of bad posture! When singing, my worst habit is to shift my weight onto my right foot whenever I lose support - an instant giveaway to my teacher that support has gone! Am trying very hard to unlearn this, but it's taking forever! I also used to be guilty of shifting my weight forward which was even worse for the breathing. I definitely find Alexander technique to be hugely helpful - it's just difficult to scrape together the money for that when you're already paying a lot for singing lessons!

Piano: Flat fingers, wrong hand positions, "scuttling crab" effect on scales and runs.

Horn: Bad embouchure, throating rather than tonguing, stuffing hand in rather than hinging hand over for stopping, dropping mute.

Now guess how many of these I've been guilty of

I think that the most annoying fault that I have had to correct is that of telling the teacher (ME) that they will continue to do a certain thing in a certain way as they have always done it like that and cannot change now. If only adult learners would get a few lessons from the start instead of thinking that they could teach themselves the basics and then get lessons when they have gone as far as they can without them! From time to time I have been asked to give adults lessons on the recorder. Often they play other instruments and have taught themselves to play without the aid of anything! The results are sometimes horrible! It is not enough for them to be one step ahead of their school pupils and I tell them so.

My biggest bad habits for flute are:
1. NOT relaxing - thus tight embouchure and clamping of fingers
2. Going too fast

worst habit now: Moving my wrist along when I try to slide my RH little finger from C to D# keys. it knocks my other fingers off-centre.
Oh and not opening my mouth wide enough when I breath in.

What about piano students who are not prepared to ditch their talons for short well manicured nails. (Adult learners and teenage girls are the worst candidates)

I know I'm not always quick enough to find that emery board and make sure I don't click when I play.

I used to play the piano with dropped wrists. I don't now.

Tomosiano as you are learning the piano, what I say below will not be relevant for you but will be handy for those kids on the forums who play the violin. Well, two very common bad habits re. violin are as per below.

We were at a junior conservatory and we were genuinely shocked at how many kids were:

(1) either pointing their violin scrolls forwards and downwards towards the floor instead of squarely to the wall; or

(2) bowing from their wrists rather than from their shoulders.

The lady conductor was very sweet and had endless patience. She kept reminding the kids from time to time during the orchestral session - Remember to lift your elbows ...

But bad habits die hard!

One way of avoiding this according to VN's teacher is to practise, at an early stage when beginning violin, with your right elbow touching a wall ALL the time. Apparently, this forces you to lift your elbow and PULL the bow up from the shoulder instead of PUSH the bow up from the elbow itself. When you do it wrongly, i.e., instead of pulling the bow up from the shoulder you PUSH the bow up from your elbow with your wrist, your elbow will leave the wall and no longer touch the wall! Get the idea? Clever man.

I need to do my nails every week as by the end of a week they start to annoy me.
They are a bit annoying now because I put off dealing with them until tomorrow because of the concert on Saturday.

Oh I have about a million bad habits. *Sigh*

Violin - I'm the most incredibly tense person in the world, my wrists refuse to be remotely loose. I have to do my practise in big chunks because it takes me a while to loosen up. My left hand tends to go fairly claw like and grip the violin for all it's worth and my right does the same on the bow. I also tend to shift my weight from foot to foot. I'm also terrible for leaving fingers down

Singing - I do the shifting weight thing again and often tense my neck.

I don't think I have any really bad ones for guitar.

If someone said that to me, I would ask why are they having lessons? However, there are lots of good reasons why adults don't want lessons from the beginning. Why pay someone to sit there while you find 'B' on the keyboard?
There's a really interesting website called Musical Fossils
which addresses the prejudices involved for both adult students and their teachers.

Loops

A decent teacher dealing with an adult learner won't just "sit there while you find B on a keyboard". They will be looking at a range of issues from the start. For example, one crucial issue, regardless of what instrument you play, will be your posture. Sitting wrongly at a piano and playing with poor technique can land you with RSI just as easily as sitting wrongly at a computer can. Holding a violin wrongly can do damage to your neck, back and shoulders - and so-on.

Starting with a teacher means that there's a lot less to un-learn, and the issue Petrat has identified won't come up.

Musicalfossils is indeed a good resource. We haven't mentioned it here for quite a while, so thank you for bringing it up again.

Hear Hear!!! I have two adult learners, one male, one female for piano - I have told them on many an occasion that the "castanet accompaniment" (i.e. talons) is hardly suitable for Debussy

...........to little avail