An adapted reinterpretation of armweight technique

By the way, to return to your original analogy, does anybody ever think about the weight of their arm when they throw a ball? I actually have, but on one occasion I overdid it: I let me arm get so loose that I threw my shoulder out: it actually got too loose and some things stretched that shouldn't have. Just to highlight the idea that we are always dealing with action, not with trying to manipulate a dead falling weight. For actions to be efficient, the bones need to be snug in the joints or the joints won't move effectively. Too loose is just as detrimental as too tight.

I take your point, but in the case of the ball there's literally nothing weight can do to contribute to acceleration. It could only be altogether subjective, whereas in a timed arm drop with correct use of retraction, it can objectively account for almost all of the active energy input. Gravity supplies the initial momentum and then the arm retraction ensures it can be transferred, without the fingers collapsing. Working this way, I've been surprised at just how slight and effortless the active muscular input can be- when timed absolutely right. I cannot stress enough that it's just one option and not something to make the norm (and it obviously cannot be used for things like rapid scales). However, it's opened the option of dropping totally freely and producing a genuinely good result, with nothing more than a very slight action in the hand, to complement the degree to which it's already opening itself due to timing of the arm. There's definitely no danger of straining yourself, because you catch the landing and absorb the momentum (which never exceeds that which can be produced by acceleration of 1G- only introduction of extra muscular efforts can introduce the scope for jolting anything abruptly). What I find is that it's important to preserve a sense of length to keep the wrist aligned (and stop the hand from losing its reference shape during descent) but that by letting go in the elbow you can instigate almost all the required momentum without expending more than a trace of new effort. Previously, my hand was working harder but achieving less - because I hadn't understood how to transfer the arm's momentum directly into the act of opening the hand through the keys. In throwing, I suspect that the danger comes in due to having to use muscles to go considerably beyond this relatively low rate of acceleration and when having a huge quantity of momentum that could never be fully imparted into the ball. I remember straining myself using Wii bowling. The problem was that I was imagining a big heavy ball to take up the acceleration - but with no ball it meant that I was putting a lot of momentum into my arm and there was nothing to absorb that. At the piano, the rate of acceleration and deceleration is pretty low. As long as you can take the arm's momentum out if the landing, it's even less strenuous on joints than flopping your arm to your side. In a throw the forces could be multiplied many times over- which puts way more demands on joints than merely dropping freely from the elbow.

The only problem with weight technique is that it is concerned with up and down motions. Evolved piano technique is concerned with eliminating any sense of verticality. Instead there is a sense of already being in the keyboard, and just going a little bit further in to get a key down. This "little bit further in" is accomplished with seemingly horizontal movements which may actually have a diagonal component but are perceived subjectively as having no verticality whatsoever. Any sense of a controlled fall will prevent this more evolved piano technique from appearing. AFF

Hi I guess the term "armweight" is here to stay and continue to confuse yet another generation. Just re-read Sandors "On pianopl.." and like many he also has problems with the term it's "freefall but..". Wouldn't it be easier to speak about contraction/decontraction or release of biceps/triceps because is it not as simpel as that? The "weight" itself in scientific terms doesn't exist in the way we think and the gravity you just can't do anything about it. Paul Wirth has made a nice little DVD intended for children called gravi-DVD or something, very confusing title, but he actually helps the children to be aware of biceps and triceps (calls them Buba and something) and that is very comprehensable. Eric

Paul Wirth's CD is great, actually, because he clarifies that you let the weight of the arm hang He clarifies that this sense of feeling the weight of the arm has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual action of the finger moving the key, it merely frees the fingers to move well. I will continue my campaign to have the term eradicated in its misused incarnation, stressing how making peace with gravity involves eliminating all sense of the arm falling. It's like in human walking. Moshe Feldenkrais describes it as a series of "losses of balance" and "regainings of balance" - a series of falls and catches where the body falls off the standing leg and the striding leg catches it. But does Feldenkrais, anywhere in any of his thousands of Awareness Through Movement lessons, ask the student to experience the falling of their weight to improve the way they walk. Moshe called his method "making peace with gravity," and you do so by getting more skeletal, that is, by experiencing how your skeleton is artfully designed to maintain a perfect balance between down and up forces while you move - not by succumbing to the force of gravity. AFF

The only problem with weight technique is that it is concerned with up and down motions. Evolved piano technique is concerned with eliminating any sense of verticality. Instead there is a sense of already being in the keyboard, and just going a little bit further in to get a key down. This "little bit further in" is accomplished with seemingly horizontal movements which may actually have a diagonal component but are perceived subjectively as having no verticality whatsoever. Any sense of a controlled fall will prevent this more evolved piano technique from appearing. AFF I'd agree if we had to choose a single viewpoint for technique and then exclude all other alternatives, but surely this isn't so? I don't see Volodos, Rubinstein or Moisewich being hampered in their ability to drift the arm horizontally for intensive finger work, simply because they sometimes use a gravity drop for particular qualities of sound. The main reason I'm reevaluating the weight drop is not even as a end in itself, but precisely because I've discovered that doing it correctly in some of the practise actively improves the ability to move well on a horizontal level. In the 6th rhapsody, my wrist had a tendency to get bunched up into a tight position. When I use a series of gravity drops with the retraction spoken of, the slight pinching in the 5th finger side of my wrist has a chance to release and everything has a chance to lengthen out properly. The Fifth finger and thumb stand up properly and the whole sense of structure is improved. Obviously you can't drop on every one at full speed, but it trains the quality of position that I need and freedom in my wrist- in a manner that I simply don't get by limiting myself to the option of finger manipulation from immediate contact. The different viewpoints are complementary to each other, not opposed. By going through a phase of limiting myself to close contact, I actively imposed limitations on how well I could succeed within that approach itself. By the way, I've thought of an analogy that clarifies the difference between good use and bad use of the arm, when practising this way. Imagine a car with a concertina on the front. If it crashes into a wall, the concertina is squashed. This is equivalent to collapse in piano playing. Giving way reduces energy transfer. However, if the car starts braking first, the concertina continues on forwards, with the momentum the car gave it. It lengthens out and can hit the wall without the car's huge momentum piling in after. It's exactly the same in a gravity drop. Without any retraction, everything piles into collision, during which it collapses. There's lots of impact but no control. When you start to retract the arm, the fingers are lengthening out into useful movement, of their own accord. Once you perceive how to do this, even the slightest addition of finger action will add something extraordinarily productive. But a pianist who hasn't learned this foundation of throwing the hand open may work very hard with his muscles, yet fail to open out the fingers into such free movement. Equally, when coming back to close contact, the fingers will have the experience of situations in which they definitely cannot collapse - so there will be much more sensitivity to any collapses that creep in during the close contact. The only kind of gravity drop I'd view as an absolute negative is that where the arm's weight piles through into impact, minus the initiation of retraction. This does nothing to inspire movement in the hand and makes for a heavy impact. The usual explanation seems to be of fusing the arm into a fixed structure during impact and then relaxing and disconnecting after. Really, it ought to be be of freeing the parts from each other for sound and then subtly rejoining them after sound is produced. Once you get to the heart of these issues, the gravity drop changes into both a useful learning tool and an occasional option, within the big picture. I can't tar both of those scenarios with the same brush, based on what is a superficial similarity in the appearance, but a radical difference in the result. Personally, I don't think comparing to walking is comparing like with like- as there's no function from greater downward forces in walking. To move horizontally with ease is literally the only task. At the piano, the task is to control the downforces, while simultaneously evolving into a movement that flows horizontally. When you can use weight followed by retraction to accelerate the hand through the keys (without the arm landing hard at the end), you have the very antidote to traditional arm weight faults, as long as you do the bulk of your work on moving the fingers while the arm drifts horizontally.

Just to add to that - even in simple finger passages I'm finding genuine benefit from a more subtle version of this. In the simple accompaniment arpeggiation at the start of Liebestraum, I just started from close contact and felt squashed. The fingers didn't feel truly free. So I lifted them and felt the whole arm throwing them towards their keys, with this same sense of a retraction to let them fly free and unrepressed. Any arm weight that helps initiate the movement doesn't land down on the finger and it never serves to squash. When I returned to close contact, there was a whole new ease and the sense of being squashed had gone. I agree very much with the final ideal, but I'm getting closer to achieving it effectively via reference to this occasional viewpoint, than by excluding it.

Maybe not R or M, but Volodos is definitely hampered by that: his sound suffers, i.e. his capacity for orchestration has a certain limitation. When even the example of Richter's Schubert G major sonata shows him doing this "fusing," and someone here on the forum cites it as an example of optimum arm weight technique, then I am with you 100% - it ought indeed to be a freeing of the parts so that optimum moveability and capability of variegating sound is always preserved.

Yes, I see what you mean with Volodos. I do find some of the movements excessive in certain moments, where close contact would be better. However, I'm thinking largely of the kind of things he does for massive sounds in things like the Dante sonata- where some of his big descents are used very effectively. The sound on recordings doesn't come close to the way that comes across in a concert hall. I totally agree on the Richter example. That's everything I want to get away from. I don't think gravity has any place when starting from close contact - as it can only inspire collapse when you're already at the keys. I'd only use it as the initiator in situations where it's appropriate to drop from a height- and then be sure to start retraction so the hand flies free from the weight of the arm upon landing. In that kind of case, I'd probably practise a little wiith a mild drop and retraction - purely in order to experience the hand opening out positively. After that experience, I'd definitely want to go move the keys with hand action, from direct contact, with no sense of falling down. Using the arm to swing the fingers out into length, from a state of ultra-low muscle tonus, is making it much easier to get to that more evolved final state of simple hand action.

But it's never appropriate to drop from a height! AFF