An Adapted Reinterpretation Of Armweight Technique

firstly, this is not a replacement for finger technique. it's a theory about how armweight technique SOMETIMES works without direct attention to fingers. I don't recommend that. This comes off the back of the realisation that I wasn't prepping my fingers well enough against keys before moving them (which meant moving the fingers automatically drooped the knuckle down). Since I've been addressing this, I've discovered that rubinstein style arm gestures can actively complement proper finger activation, but would never recommend this "instead" of learning to engage with keys from close contact. however learning to "throw" the hand into opening out through key depression is proving to be something very useful, right now. anyway, what I realised stems from the mechanics of throwing a ball. consider that all good throwers actually decouple hand and arm at the moment before release. Imagine a wrist and elbow that merely stays in perfect alignment as the arm swings in an arc. it's useless. there's no good acceleration. at the last moment the upper arm stops being actively propelled and may even be marginally slowed down by active muscular retraction. this allows the hand to really fly from the wrist and gives huge acceleration through release. a whole arm impulse doesn't work anywhere near as well unless you do allow parts to separate out from each other. thinking about this has totally transformed my understanding of how to safely whip energy into the keys from the arm. at the last split second, the arm needs to slightly decelerate. if the wrist is free, the hand decouples from the arm's momentum which stops the thudding impact. instead, it transfers the momentum the arm gave it, but bounces freely and effortlessly off. even the fingers can start to do the same. when you slow down the arm, relaxed fingers can actually start to shoot out and lengthen based on existing momentum. you get more acceleration by active arm retraction, because it inspires a loose hand and wrist to open out into positive movement. keeping them as a single unit generates no productive acceleration via fingers or wrist, which leaves them having to brace in order to stop contact with the keys- slowing the movement down. the whole problem here is that you need to be super relaxed and there is also doubtless some active muscular usage behind the whole thing. I'd never recommend this as a starting point, but I'm learning a huge amount from looking at it from both ends. the problem with the arm weight explanation is that they never speak of this retraction. they say lighten " after" keys sound, but that's too late. you need to start a slight retraction split seconds BEFORE the fingers are contacting keys. this makes it possible for fingers to lengthen out on existing momentum- rather than crumple up or brace into impact. with this in mind, I have a drastic clearer idea of both the objective explanation for some of the most baffling contradictions in subjective attempts to explain the arm weight ideals, and for how to feel the whipping of the arm in practise. everything from the wrist back will have started to retract, while a combination of looseness and finger lengthening allows energy to continue coasting out into the piano. to sum up the difference in the briefest terms possible, I believe that the objective reality in effective use of armweight is not about the coupling of hand and arm. rather it's about the DECOUPLING of hand and arm in the fractions of seconds before the key descends. this is what makes soft landings possible, without the sense of crushing your hand or bracing muscles to pass on energy. I've been experimenting with with exercises not unlike the action of throwing a dart, but with an active retraction to stop the foreaem, in a way that throws the hand open into a pianistically relevant shape. Part of it's hand action and part of its allowing the hand to carry on out when the rest of the arm stops.

Informative and interesting fact about adapted reinterpretation of armweight technique. Its really acknowledging and helpful to understand the concept in detail.

I think if you read a little more closely, you will find the opinion that playing piano really well involves processes radically different and even opposed to the ones you describe here.

I'm not talking about this as either a norm or as a replacement for more intensive hand actions but as one part of a puzzle that features many alternatives. There are places where my hand is still virtually guaranteed to collapse if I start from the keys and do it with pure hand initiation. I've come to realise that by sticking almost exclusively to this style of movement, I was actively limiting my capabilities and preventing my fifth from getting any experience of what it's like for the knuckle not to fall slightly in through every octave. Right now I'm not taking the arm throw as either a goal in itself or something to be considered off-limits. It's just one essential viewpoint that complements and improves my ability to do the alternative of playing without a throw. Currently, I've been working at the Liszt Liebestraum. In the passage where the hand have a big jump to the melody notes and accompaniment in the middle, my goal is to float over the keys and move them with the hand. However, 99% of the time my right hand fifth will sag and do a poor job, unless I regularly practise the type of throw described here. By stopping the arm first (rather than after the keys sound), the fifth finger shoots out into length and stands up properly on the octaves- in an open position with a high 5th knuckle and a wide arch between 1/2. This is the only guaranteed way to finish in a proper standing position, with secure and stable balance. With this one point about the necessity of stopping the arm first, it transforms the arm motion from something that deforms the hand into something that trains it how to open out and move well. The more I use this option in practise, the better I'm getting at being capable of doing all the action from the hand without that arm throw. I've never seen my hand opening out so well for octaves before- as limiting it to playing from contact had been virtually guaranteed to see my knuckle drooping down. I didn't get to experience quite how well my fifth can stand up until I started experimenting with this style of throw- coupled with the key instant of retraction, to ensure that collapse is totally off the radar. Arm motions stop causing collapse and instead actively prevent it, with this one key difference in the action. As soon as the arm stops, the fingers shoot out into length and simply cannot give way anymore.

Also- I've realised that this is the objective explanation behind some of the reflexes that the "cobra strike" serves to train. I'm simply describing one of the key specifics in that movement. When you start by aiming to pull the hand away from the keys as soon as they sound, you actually tend to start retracting BEFORE the keys even sound, slightly. This is why the exercise works so effectively- as it gives an instinctive way of experiencing this necessary element for success. You simply cannot perform the task without decoupling the hand from the arm as described, slightly before it sounds the notes. When the arm is still piling down as keys sound, it crushes the hand. However, using the exercise of whipping straight away develops that instinct for starting to retract the arm split seconds BEFORE you sound the keys- which means that any existing momentum contributes a role of opening the hand, rather than to crushing it into collapse. In this situation, all of the muscular action from the hand becomes a productive addition- rather than an emergency stress that merely reduces the extent to which a hand would buckle under strain. I'm not talking about ducking out of hand activations, but a way of experiencing a situation in which all the activation can be felt as a useful positive, rather than as a strenuous last resort against a burden.

I absolutely agree that the decoupling you've managed to perceive is a crucial component of the process. Bravo for figuring that out! That decoupling is exactly what "skeletal" playing (or skeletal anything) is all about. Tension prevents decoupling, tonus facilitates it. Activity cultivates it. I am only wondering where weight enters into it at all. If I let the sense of my arm's weight initiate a movement, I already feel destabilized and disconnected. I am in free-fall. I feel the need to "catch" myself again to regain connection. Moshe Feldenkrais describes the act of walking as a series of loss-of-balance, regaining-balance actions. However when I work on my walking, even though I know this, I very rarely perceive it as such. I experience rather the action of smoothly transferring my body from one foot to the other: bringing the weight of my body onto the foot and then using my foot and leg to move myself forward in space. This is my quibble with the arm weight school: allowing myself the subjective perception of my arm weight will inevitably skew the perception of the action to make it "something other" - it will reduce the effectiveness and the degree to which my action is well-organized.

I absolutely agree that the decoupling you've managed to perceive is a crucial component of the process. Bravo for figuring that out! That decoupling is exactly what "skeletal" playing (or skeletal anything) is all about. Tension prevents decoupling, tonus facilitates it. Activity cultivates it. I am only wondering where weight enters into it at all. If I let the sense of my arm's weight initiate a movement, I already feel destabilized and disconnected. I am in free-fall. I feel the need to "catch" myself again to regain connection. Moshe Feldenkrais describes the act of walking as a series of loss-of-balance, regaining-balance actions. However when I work on my walking, even though I know this, I very rarely perceive it as such. I experience rather the action of smoothly transferring my body from one foot to the other: bringing the weight of my body onto the foot and then using my foot and leg to move myself forward in space. This is my quibble with the arm weight school: allowing myself the subjective perception of my arm weight will inevitably skew the perception of the action to make it "something other" - it will reduce the effectiveness and the degree to which my action is well-organized. I share your concerns about the traditional explanation of weight moving keys, but I can't personally agree that all weight perception is an inherent negative. By appreciating the instant of decoupling, I can do it effectively either with a descent that initiates purely in free fall or with a more active muscular whipping. If I use free fall, it's literally the opposite of how people usually describe it (where the moment of tension is during key depression). The arm as a whole accelerates under gravity (and no muscles need to be actively causing the initial descent) but the wrist has a small activity to preserve alignment during the majority of descent. I don't initiate with a floppy or limp hand- which would certainly be a poor way to begin. when the keys move however, it will have already let go of these alignment activities before this point. The negative about the arm weight explanation for me is that it encourages weight and all - round down force DURING key descent. That is plain wrong. They don't tell you about the need to have decoupled via arm retraction, to keep weight out of the descent. This either leaves a flaccid drop plus collapse or an instant of severe tension to fight that. However, if I adapt it around the idea of momentum by retracting the arm slightly in advance and releasing the wrist, it simply doesn't matter. Whether I whipped the arm down or did it by perceiving gravity as my accelerator, it all hinges on whether I timed the instant of retraction and let the hand and fingers fly out freely. This is a complete game changer, for me. Gravity takes on a totally different role, that actively safeguards against the dangers of collapse. With too much restraint to the arm's weight upon descent, it's not actually possible for the hand and fingers to shoot out positively, upon retraction. They just end up fused into a dead unit. A student who has not learned to let the arm drop with freedom is going to be hampered even more than one who has, but who has yet to appreciate the need to start retracting the arm and individuating the hand from it. The dead drop student is a lot closer to the final product than the student who can't let go- with just one extra element to add to their picture. Also, I honestly can't agree that gravity and weight are bad to sometimes perceive in walking. Recently I've been jogging regularly and became aware that my feet land too hard. This has nothing to do with thinking of my weight too much, as consideration of weight had never been the mindset. By NOT considering weight, I naturally land heavily- in a very similar way to how a pianist who misunderstands arm weight can get bogged down. When I start to try to feel my feet accepting my weight more gradually (rather than as a sudden thud) and start to feel them springing my weight right back up (instead of abruptly down) I start to feel lighter and freer. While I agree that there are ways of thinking about your weight that contribute negatively, I just can't agree that deciding not to make it one of the occasional viewpoints serves as a positive. The key for me is whether you have the right model for performing the task, not whether you sometimes try to accurately perceive where weight is in that. If your model is wrong and you're trying to make weight do something impossible, it's definitely negative. But by improving my model for movement in general, occasional attention to weight both helps me to run more with more lightness and freedom and to open my hand better at the piano. For me, it's the bogus model behind traditional arm weight explanations and the poor quality of explanation that is the negative.

This is brilliant. This one or two sentences of yours illustrates the direction we need to move in, in terms of perceiving our weight and using that perception to our advantage. When you spring back up, you are making peace with gravity. You are also proactive, no longer succumbing to gravity but working with it.

This is brilliant. This one or two sentences of yours illustrates the direction we need to move in, in terms of perceiving our weight and using that perception to our advantage. When you spring back up, you are making peace with gravity. You are also proactive, no longer succumbing to gravity but working with it. absolutely- this is the same context I want to apply weight considerations in with piano playing. I'd already been trying to perceive the hand action in that sense, but the idea of actively stopping the arm in advance has made it much easier to succeed. By slowing down the arm in those fractions of a second before the sound occurs, it not only makes room for the hand to stand up but ensures that existing momentum contribute something positive to the same end, rather than something negative. In the past, I wasn't truly making room for the hand to stand up, when using the arm for power. The arm was still squashing, rather than easing back in advance. In one sense this is pro arm weight but in another it's completely anti traditional explanations of arm weight- as it's about starting out with weight release for initial acceleration but retracting the weight of all but the hand itself, that moment in advance. I still believe in doing the majority of piano playing from close contact, but by reevaluating the approach to use of arm drops I've learned things that help my hands move better in general.

I should add, by the way, this same element has made all the difference in practise of rotation coupled with finger lifting. The finger gets thrown free by a slight retraction of the hand- as if to physically be lifting the palm and knuckles up very slightly via the arm, while the finger flies out on its own steam. The sense of decoupling the finger makes it much easier to finish in a good standing position. If I'm collapsing slightly when playing from contact, this exercise does a lot to restore the quality of action. However, I've noticed that you have to be very careful not to start lifting the thumb too much, when lifting other fingers. It easily destabilises the whole hand if the thumb tends to lift.