3d Piano Method

Has Alan come across this new method? Apparently the guy come from a background of Feldenkrais training. Just checked the site, however, and it's $300!

Here is Karpof playing: Effortless playing without orchestration I'd say...

Here is Karpof playing: Effortless playing without orchestration I'd say... I do like his sound and wouldn't go as far as to say it's without orchestration. However, it's within a very small short-term range and rather "polite" for my tastes. I find it reminscent of Bolet's late recorded style. Very musical, but needlessly careful and restrained. I prefer that to the average competition thumper, but it would be nice to hear a little more momentum and character.

Karpofs playing style can be described very precisely with a basic principle of Tai Chi: Suppleness should never be allowed to degenerate into softness. And here you have a pretty bad case of softness, or as Neuhaus describes it: Timidity. Rhythmic pulse and dynamics are softened out to practically nothing. Compare to the playing of Richter and Gekic, and it should be abundantly clear what I am talking about. I am very happy that I am using Russian School and Alan Fraser methods.

Karpofs playing style can be described very precisely with a basic principle of Tai Chi: Suppleness should never be allowed to degenerate into softness. And here you have a pretty bad case of softness, or as Neuhaus describes it: Timidity. Rhythmic pulse and dynamics are softened out to practically nothing. Compare to the playing of Richter and Gekic, and it should be abundantly clear what I am talking about. I am very happy that I am using Russian School and Alan Fraser methods. I'm not sure if I'd personally agree with the physical analysis. I think it's primarily about his musical intentions. There is great focus in his melodic notes, that I wouldn't personally attribute to physical softness. There's a "ping" to his melody notes that would likely come across far more in a concert hall, even if he sounds a little bland on the recording. It's still far too restrained for my taste, but I think that the sound is very much coming from a place of intent. My most recent blog post is about the mechanics of why "collapse" and flaccidity cause poor energy transfer, but why bracing is pretty useless too. It's neither about tension or relaxation, but how movement at each joint either contributes to, or hinders the acceleration of the key. From this point of view, I don't see all that many moments of either dysfunctional softness or stiffness. I think his physical balance looks rather effective and I think this is responsible for the focus in the tone, despite the small dynamic range. There's no major sense of his knuckles drooping down through the key depression. I think he balances out the positive/negative movements I describe very well- with no fixation but relatively few moments where sagging occurs. It would interesting to see whether he has limitations when playing big chords- but I do suspect that he intends that kind of sound here.

Maybe I was a little condemning on Karpof. When I read about his "method" I made an image of his sound and it sounded just like I thought it would! He is clearly skilled enough to enchanten an audience and probably does. His method is born out of injury and I think one has to have in mind that injured pianists often have an extensive fingerpractise behind them.Edna Golandsky was not injured (I suppose) but is on the other hand a Julliard product. He is an advocate of no playing with the thumb and here I totally disagree as I've been concentrating the last year on developping the thumb with I'd say amazing results. I have no proof but by experience I think that many injuries, when "working out" thumb/fingers are due to mixing what you call negative/positive movements. If you think stand up or playing with the lumbricals I'd say there is hardly any risk at all to be injured. I'm a fan of exercises and I can tell you that before Alan extensive work with Liszt/Pichna/Donanhyi gave me a probably very unhealthy paine.Luckily my hands were strong enough to take that.Now with a "standing-up" or "grasping" concept I can work those exercises much more intensively and almost never feel any pain. I very much like the approach in your latest blog I guess what I try to say is all there. You start collapsed and then find out a positive movement. The thumb-blog is also interesting but here I'd say you could go much further. It's just unbeleivable how much you can improve on the thumb. Trying to keybed standing up playing on the full pad etc etc is crucial to develop the thumb making it (for educative purposes ) the pillar of your playing. Sandor has a nice exercise for "taking out" the the bone so there will be a 90 degree angle at the second joint from the tip.Hense you get a thumb looking a bit like cziffra's.He wasn't born like that.But one has to be very careful with the angels when working the thumb I think the danger of injury is great.

Speaking of the thumb, Karpoff's own thumb seems to be chronically tense in all of the videos I've watched so far.......... I've been researching this thing over the past half hour or so. It doesn't seem very innovative at all. It's great and all that it won an award from MTNA, but I don't think that says much. That basically means that it won an award from a bunch of Little Old Lady Piano Teachers. Little Old Lady Piano Teachers don't like to think too much. And they don't want anything that rocks the boat too much; they've been doing this too long to change any of their long held beliefs. Thus, you don't hear about MTNA awarding the more serious innovators in piano technique. Say, Alan Fraser? Or perhaps, Dorothy Taubman? Though... I suppose I shouldn't knock it 'til I try it...

I see what you mean- but it wouldn't necessarily mean he carried on with it purely with injury prevention as the main goal. I think injury can sometimes just be the trigger for exploration. I must say that I was very impressed with some of his voicing- even though I do prefer greater characterisation overall. There was one moment where the chords were much thicker, but where he produced an extremely clear and piercing melody line and kept a real sense of space to each chord. This is the sort of thing that really reminded me of Bolet. In this bit, I could see his hands starting to engage in a very positive way- rather than merely bearing arm pressure. He's flaccid as hell in those first left hand Fs (which are totally without character, for me) but I think he was using activity where he intended more intensity. Well, I wouldn't say you have to start collapsed- but it's certainly about exploring the full range. Some things start collapsed, whereas others might start having almost used up all the room for positive movement, but just squeeze the last bits out. It's largely about noticing the opposing directions of movement and their effects- rather than necessarily the position itself. Ah, interesting. The thing is that my right thumb has virtually zero movement from this joint. I hadn't really thought about this at the time. I'm imagining that anyone doing the movements as described might well involve that joint a little more than on my on demonstration- especially on the cocking back and then extending one. Sandor's exercise could be interesting. I think the main point of my exercise it to ensure that positive movement occurs and that there is zero scope for any negative movement. I think that the action of opening the thumb away from the hand is the main thing that contribute power, but the extension is a little extra to ensure that there's positive rather than negative movement in the thumb itself. I'm not sure if it's 100% necessary to engage the other joint as well, but people with more movement from there might well get something extra. I've heard though, by the way, that there's something anatomical called a curved thumb. I'm pretty sure Cziffra must have had this. In the past, I used to use inward gripping actions more and have one student with this, who got that joint into all kinds of weird positions from that. More recently, the extension actions have proved to be much more useful for him.

Did you see the ancient Schumann film on youtube? In that one, he has an extremely stiff hand, with very little movement at all. There are loads of arm movements through a braced hand. It's a style of movement that you tend to see with many competition players, that I find very unpleasant to look at. He tries to fight negative movements, but the stiffness still leaves plenty there. It looks much improved on his recent films, but I don't know whether he explains much about the hand. He talks about the moment of "fixing" the hand in the octave film, which I certainly wouldn't agree with. He does seem to have gone beyond mere bracing in the Liszt Sonnetto- although there are many teachers who clearly employ positive movements in the their own playing, despite telling students simply to solidify their hand. Yeah, I could imagine that. It seems reasonable enough from what I've seen, but nothing in the clips struck me as in any way new. It doesn't inspire to want to fork out. Are you planning on firing off $285? I find the price pretty remarkable, for a "new" method that is supported by so little background. Who would leap straight into something like that, without a substantial taster of what might justify such a high cost? I presume the Taubman method already had quite a signficant cult, before their own extravagantly priced set was published?

Are you planning on firing off $285? I find the price pretty remarkable, for a "new" method that is supported by so little background. Who would leap straight into something like that, without a substantial taster of what might justify such a high cost? I presume the Taubman method already had quite a signficant cult, before their own extravagantly priced set was published? Nah. My next investment in piano-related materials will be to complete my collection of Alan's products (I only have , book version). Regarding Taubman DVDs. Alan's website lists the Taubman series as 5 DVDs for $250. Believe it or not, the Taubman lectures are comprised of 10 DVDs, totaling $500 for both sets. Now that a ridiculous price! Haha. I watched them all and took scrupulous notes. But never bought them... Borrowed from a friend. (I may or may not have burnt the first 5 for later viewing). I'm not too interested in throwing down the $300 (or whatever it is) for 3-D Piano. But I do think we should be careful to avoid over-criticizing a method we have not invested in. Alan should review it for his website....... if he's willing to throw down the $300. If this guy wants to sell more DVDs, he needs to prove that he's not just recycling the same technical vocabulary that pedagogues have used for the past century. When the Taubmanites talk about rotation - whether you're willing to subscribe to it or not - at least you know it is (in some sense of the word) "new" (though admittedly, none of it is truly new... people have been playing piano for well over 2 centuries now). Or say, when Alan talks about "skeletality" and "functionality". Maybe these are just buzz words, but these ideas are the things that separate a bland recycled approach off from an innovative one.