Examples of non-skeletal playing?

At the moment I am visiting Kemal at his home in Miami and we are working intensely together. This whole idea of skeletality is at the center of what he is showing me, and yet at times the arch does collapse. For the biggest, juiciest tone, we splay the whole finger, hyper-extending all the joints but keeping the metacarpal-phalangeal strong. Then at other points I will see him continuing to be skeletal while he lets that keystone arch go. It is just convenient in that moment - but the lumbricals are still working bigtime, you can tell by the sound. And then when I try to do it, I will end up with a weak imitation where my finger actually "breaks" and he tells me, "no, that is your old set of reflexes again, that's not it..." The key is to keep that strong effort in the lumbricals, you must learn to recognize and love that sensation and the sound it produces. It is fantastic to address this but I admit, from the outside it does appear confusing!!! In the end, GO FOR THE SOUND! TRY FOR A BIGGER, JUICIER, MORE EXPRESSIVE SOUND THAN YOU THOUGHT THE PIANO WAS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING. That will get you going in the right direction. And KEEP DOING IT. After awhile you forget and reduce your parameters, then you are lost... AFF

In the example below (great close-ups starting around 1:34) Horowitz collapses often the distal finger joint (more visible in the middle finger). Would you call this skeletal playing? ocd

A great example of what I've been talking about in this thread. He collapses the distal to increase the surface area of finger pad actually making contact with the key. This increases the richness of the tone a lot. He can do this and still play skeletally because his lumbrical activates enough to support this arrangement of bones. In skeletal playing, the bones do their part but they don't do it all; it's still the muscles moving them. Here, one part of the skeleton is put 'out of alignment' on purpose for a specific musical and tonal goal: the metacarpal-phalangeal joint and the lumbrical that flexes that joint must be extra functional and potent for the strategy to work effectively. In other words, the collapsed distal must be supported by an especially strong metacarpal-phalangeal for it to work well. For an even stronger cantabile, the distal AND medial joints might be hyper-extended to make the entire finger a long, flexible stick and allow an even great surface area of finger to have direct contact to the key. Try it, and enjoy! AFF

Speaking of Horowitz, Been practising the yin/yan legato for a while.When I speed it up it LOOKS like I'm articulating/slapping but actually I'm doing the opposite. Is this what is going on sometimes in Horowitz playing it looks like articulating but it is finger-release from a yan-finger becoming a yin-finger?

We can certainly see the collapse (maybe there's hope for me--ha), but he seems to know exactly what he is doing. According to what notes and tempo are of the moment, he choose to either keep the arch or let it collapse. Is this innate to Horowitz to know exactly when to do what, or do you think he learned it from his teacher and further developed the skill as he continued to play? Maybe he was one of the 1st Russians to use Tia Chi? interesting. It is also interesting to note the angle of his elbow to his wrist, to his fingers. It looked to me as though his elbows are lower (quite a bit lower), than the wrist and the wrist is broken so the fingers are above them. Yet, even with this, he keeps the arch in the fingers/hand (although sometimes he plays flat fingered). Do you think all this was done on puropose? Do the lower elbows help keep the sound smaller? So it is somewhat as we might expect Mozart would have heard from pianos of his day? Or am I just imagining? --A general question about wrist/elbow/piano keytop alignment. What should this be? Elbow and keys approximately same height? Elbow higher, elbow lower? Change it for the style of music and power wanted? I've been carefully paying attention to my elbow height. Because I have a long torso, shorter legs, I cannot get my bench low enough for my elbows to be even with the keys. They are about 2" higher. Do I need correct this (by raising my piano) or is it a matter of taste? Actually, if I lean forward so that my nose is over the tuning pins, I can get me elbows even with the top of the keys. I look a bit like a chicken though: hands are next to the torso, elbows are way to the back. I don't think this is good for technique or skeletal alignment. I know of "nosing" the keyboard, but not the tuning pins! In any case, Horowitz just can't be faulted for what he does. When I first saw him on TV, I thought, this man and the piano are talking to each other. They seem to be old friends. Total relaxed with one another. Horowitz speaks to it and it responds and all the words are carefully chosen. For me, his playing is the epitome of being able to "play" the piano. It's an unforced dialog, to which we are privileged to see and hear.

--A general question about wrist/elbow/piano keytop alignment. What should this be? Elbow and keys approximately same height? Elbow higher, elbow lower? Change it for the style of music and power wanted? I've been carefully paying attention to my elbow height. Because I have a long torso, shorter legs, I cannot get my bench low enough for my elbows to be even with the keys. They are about 2" higher. Do I need correct this (by raising my piano) or is it a matter of taste? A school of thought is to keep the top of the hand lined up with the forearm. The theory is that by doing this one avoids friction (that would be caused by a bent wrist) when the tendons that connect muscles in the forearm to the fingers contract through the wrist. This approach is similar to what movement experts prescribe to avoid/treat typing injuries. I do not know of experiments or clinical trials that substantiate this approach. Two assumptions are behind this recommendation: first, avoiding injury has priority; second, the forearm muscles are active when playing the piano. The first assumption is a matter of personal choice: if one believes that something might be possibly injurious, but it produces good musical results, one might be tempted to do it anyway. The second is somewhat puzzling: I have read in many places that it is possible to use the hand's intrinsical muscles (muscles in the hand, e.g., lumbricals, interossei) to play the piano. No matter what recipe I follow to play with the intrinsic muscles, I have never been able to play without feeling and seeing muscle activity in the forearm. Re body shape: you can always saw off the legs of your piano bench. I have done it. ocd

My torso is so long that I must sit very low, but I also have long legs (I am 6' 2") so I generally tend to raise the piano a bit as well. I have a rider in my contracts on the exact distance from bench seat to keyboard because I am so tired of showing up for a performance and there not being any bench available for me that is low enough. I don't care if they raise the piano or lower the bench or both, but that distance from seat to key top must be 18" minimum for me. I prefer that they raise the piano at least a bit so my legs have some room - it is not good to sit with the hips lower than the knees - but perhaps with your shorter legs that would not be a part of your overall problem. Many people write that elbows even with the keyboard is about right for optimal skeletal alignment. Horowitz's elbows were even lower than the keys. The people who sit with their elbows higher than the board tend to have a smaller sound, something difficult to hear on a YouTube clip. It is generally possible to sit with elbows at least somewhat higher, but the tendency of the arm's downward force impinging on the integrity of the metacarpal-phalangeal arch keystone is increased. When the hand muscles work well in playing, as they need to for any richness of sound, muscles in the forearm and upper arm must work as well in support of these contractions - they are all connected. Tendonitis often develops when the forearm muscles are working on their OWN because the hand muscles have pooped out. Having said all this, I must only add that optimal skeletal alignment is what keeps all these muscles working at optimal levels of effort rather than overworking. Does this offer some clarity? AFF

Does this offer some clarity? How can one tell if the intrinsic muscles are doing their work? Thanks, ocd

The problem I come across most often is flexion of the distal and medial phalanges at the expense of flexion at the metacarpal-phalangeal joint. Curve your finger and tap the table top with your finger tip. Now flatten it out and smack the table top with the finger pad or even the entire flat of the finger. Notice how much richer the sound is. This second type of stroke also gives a richer tone at the piano, and a good, strong effort from your lumbricals is needed to make it. Flattening the fingers largely eliminates the superficial and deep flexors from the equation and isolates the work of the lumbricals. When you do the flatter stroke, can you feel more effort at the metacarpal-phalangeal joint? THAT's the sensation of those intrinsic muscles working. Try increasing the clarity and strength of this sensation by putting your finger pad on the table and using your flat finger to pull your hand upwards and forwards as your arm hangs from your hand. It's perfectly OK if your distal phalange splays as you do this; the important thing is to intensify the sense of your lumbricals really working. Don't overdo it at first: if you have ANY sense of strain, back off! Like in any intelligent body building, the strength must be built up gradually and organically, with all the other parts of the mechanism evolving as well in how they support this effort. Have fun with this, it sure makes your piano sound more juicy! AFF PS I write a lot about this in my book, didn't manage to give it quite that much attention in the film...

How about this? She uses what appears to be an extraordinarily high wrist; apparently it's a technique known as, you guessed it, "High wrists technique" (According to some comments on her videos.) You can see more of her playing here: