3.4 Enhancing kinaesthetic awareness through tactile guidance

This set of videos presents practical examples of tactile guidance for developing kinaesthetic awareness in piano instruction. It demonstrates how hands-on teaching methods enhance movement learning by fostering deeper bodily perception and progressively strengthening proprioceptive understanding as students advance in their learning.Key demonstrations include the teacher physically guiding the student’s hands or arms—such as placing the pianist’s hands upon the teacher’s during playing—to enable direct sensory experience of subtle nuances in gesture, touch, and movement that are often difficult to convey through verbal explanation or visual observation alone. These examples highlight how tactile guidance facilitates embodied comprehension of complex technical gestures. In this context, tactile guidance is used as a facilitating strategy to support the development of proprioceptive awareness, rather than as a substitute for the pianist’s own kinaesthetic learning. While hands-on guidance may help direct attention to specific sensations and movement qualities, proprioception ultimately develops through the pianist’s independent sensory engagement, repetition, and reflective practice.Additional examples illustrate the integration of auditory guidance, such as playing with one hand while singing the melody, to reinforce the connection between movement, sound, and perception. These immersive strategies support the internalisation of intricate movements, contributing to improved motor control, precision, and a deeply embodied understanding of piano technique.These videos form part of a broader research project investigating the development of coordinated movement in piano performance, with implications for piano pedagogy, injury prevention, and performance enhancement.