Arm Weight & Piano Technique - What About FUNCTION?

"Part of the problem is maybe that the standing up occurs on different dynamic levels and as you describe in your blog the counterweight "travels" like with the gym-device. What I mean is that when you "stand up" slowly maybe the weight of the hand is a sufficient "counterforce" but doing it very fast I suggest it's more an effort from the muscles in your upper arm that is counterbalancing. At least I clearly feel'em." I don't think the counterweight needs to travel. This is an aspect I haven't entirely gotten to grips with yet- but I believe that the descent of the key and the rise of the knuckle cancel out. I'm not saying the muscles are definitely not involved at all, but I don't think they need to be. Any backward pull that acts about the elbow is more than enough for the fingers to activate against in most dynamics. Any pushing strikes me as replacing the finger's activity rather than fuelling it. It's basically the opposite entirely. Not 'banned' of course, but I don't see any need for it in the base level. I honestly don't feel even a flicker in my triceps for most things I have tested- even in some passages of loud chords. Also, you couldn't separate the weight of the hand from weight further back if you wanted to. The closest to that you get would basically involve stiffening joints. "Or the movement of the elbow slightly out to "add morecounter- weight" to the hand." If looking at giving the fingers something to pull against, that would be a reduction, not an addition. I think you're looking at ideas of pushing through the hand, rather than pulling the keys with the fingers. The more the elbow is felt wanting to go backwards the greater the counter force that the fingers can generate their own force against. Lose that force with a major elbow out and something is going to have to fix somewhere, for the fingers to generate equivalent force. "If you put eg your left hand on your right hand and press hard while doing a very sudden strong "standup" with your right and then do the same thing without the left hand I beleive you feel how much weight you would really need." Ah- but thats DOWN weight! I used this a lot myself, but I think it actually tricks the elbow into releasing- or causes stiffening. The fingers don't want to collapse so they have to activate against something. I have a feeling that this makes the elbow more likely to be drawn backwards by gravity for the fingers to have something to stabilise against. If that doesn't happen, something has to stiffen instead. I think that's why the exercise can either be very good indeed, or very bad indeed! EDIT- only just thought of that as I was typing, but I tried it just now and I'm now certain of it. I think the fact that the support of the knuckles is being tested inspires a greater tendency to ensure that the elbow and wrist are being pulled backwards- assuming you don't want to activate the fingers against stiffening. I had never realised this before, but I think the weight on top of the knuckles primarily TESTS the forward/backward interaction rather. Wrist weights however, would be directly contributing a notably greater backward pull- directly creating a state where the fingers have to employ more forward pull to balance. I think this makes full sense now. The most important counterforce pulls backwards at wrist and elbow etc. Tightening up the 'chain' on a horizontal level actually offers a lot more to work with than vertical pressures. I think this is why traditional weight thinking often leads to stodgy movement and I think this is what Alan was so skeptical about. It's looking at the wrong axis for generating stability- hence the heavy tensions that often have to create the stability. When the weight simply tightens the chain of joints- (rather than be made to bear down at the keybed, via fixations), it is far more useful and the effort is far lower. "Muscular effort does maybe compensate for the LACK of weight? It's just that I've seen too many tiny girls banging the shit out of the piano..." True. Some of them may need to use more muscles. But I'm convinced that most could reduce the workload if they felt a better interaction between the forwards and backwards forces. I think it's when you dwell too heavily on up/down that weight would seem most inadequate.

My example with left hand pressing the right was just to show what amount of force you can apply to resist the power of the standup as opposed to doing the same thing without anything more than armweight. Since we started this debate I have in fact reduced the use of my muscles considerably but they're still working. We're of course not speaking of moving trailers here. I notice your suggestions about elbow in out that's interesting. Here is a video i found that maybe examplifies just that Bon weekend

By the way, to be absolutely clear, when I say tightening a chain- I mean like if a chain were fixed to hang from a wall (representing the shoulder). Now say that you take the end of the chain and walk away. You don't tighten in the sense of getting it taut and then pulling the hell out of it, as if trying to bring down the whole wall. You just tighten it so it's exactly enough to take out the slack (or perhaps even leave a tiny trace). So when I say tighten the chain, I don't mean tight muscles but the very opposite. By trying to pull the arm forward via the finger (cancelled by the elbow being drawn backwards), you simply take out the slack in the chain of joints- meaning that both the elbow and wrist can be supported with literally zero requirement of internal forces. However, the weight of the arm as a whole can be taken primarily at the shoulder- so the finger is not burdened.

"My example with left hand pressing the right was just to show what amount of force you can apply to resist the power of the standup as opposed to doing the same thing without anything more than armweight." Yeah, I see what you mean. You can even do it on a tabletop with the whole arm supported flat. However, at the piano, I think it's the release of the elbow that contributes to the largest possible input force without stiffening. I think that's the part of the exercise that transfers specifically into allowing bigger sounds without actually having anything to press down at your hand. Simulating the interaction with that press itself requires many elaborate actions. However, letting the elbow release a little more gives a very similar scenario, with a simple added release instead of complex added effort. "Since we started this debate I have in fact reduced the use of my muscles considerably but they're still working." I'd just consider trying push based movements and pull based ones separately. I've been thinking about this a lot and I have very strong suspicions that combining elements of the two at once can actually be counterproductive. I'm tending to feel that a movement should solely have the quality of a finger pull with a free arm or the quality of pushing the arm through a supportive finger. I won't rule out that you can aspects of both productively, but I'd be wary of combining them as standard. "I notice your suggestions about elbow in out that's interesting. Here is a video i found that maybe examplifies just that" Backwards/forwards you mean (if facing the keyboard)? Yeah, interesting how much goes on there. Bear in mind that you don't necessarily have to see any actual movement at all, if the balance is always maintained, but those movements certainly seem to suggest that he's just tipping it slightly one way or the other from time to time, along those lines.

By the way, to be absolutely clear, when I say tightening a chain- I mean like if a chain were fixed to hang from a wall (representing the shoulder). Now say that you take the end of the chain and walk away. You don't tighten in the sense of getting it taut and then pulling the hell out of it, as if trying to bring down the whole wall. You just tighten it so it's exactly enough to take out the slack (or perhaps even leave a tiny trace). So when I say tighten the chain, I don't mean tight muscles but the very opposite. By trying to pull the arm forward via the finger (cancelled by the elbow being drawn backwards), you simply take out the slack in the chain of joints- meaning that both the elbow and wrist can be supported with literally zero requirement of internal forces. However, the weight of the arm as a whole can be taken primarily at the shoulder- so the finger is not burdened. I like this very much. Have been snowed under with other things so haven't been following this thread very attentively. But yes I like the "tightening the chain" image a lot. Now. Squat down, and rise half way up to standing... then return 10% of the way towards sitting. Now rise another 30% towards standing so now you are more than 2/3 erect. Return another 20% so you are half erect. Now stand up 90% erect. Now continue to stand fully erect. What stopped you each time you elected not to stand up fully? NOT GRAVITY. You reduced muscular contraction to the point at which gravity and your muscular effort balanced each other. It's not "all or nothing" in terms of your muscular contraction in standing up. There are a thousand points along a line of increasing effort. The more effort, the more effected movement which all takes place within the field of gravitational pull. If you pull on a chain attached to a wall, there is only one point at which the chain is exactly taut with no extra tension. You can move the end of the chain around, but the amount of effort to keep it just taut remains constant. However, the amount of effort to keep my arm chain just taut, nothing more, changes with the degree to which I stand my hand arch up. Or to put it differently, the action of the lumbrical has nothing to do with keeping the chain just taut. It has to do with standing the arch up, which is a different function. It is only 'indirectly' related to keeping the chain just taut. I am 'thinking out loud' here, totally spontaneous, so please don't take it as "God's truth," it's just my thought in the moment.... AFF

I can't really agree on the gravity issue. If you were to even begin the standing action in zero gravity (while fastened to a surface in a kneeling position) the energy would carry you right up to standing position. So it literally is gravity that stops you halfway- when the ongoing muscular force perfectly matches that of gravity. You don't stop pulling but you stop pulling more than gravity is pulling you. I'm basing a lot of ideas on movement around this. If you feel how gravity is resisting the movement (instead of the direction of the movement) I think it helps train you in getting the interaction. I've used this for many sensitive movements and vastly improved the fluidity. Rather than always feel the direction of movement, I try to feel the interaction between the muscle and gravity from two different perspectives. It sounds like more effort on paper but that effort is always there or you collapse. It gives the lowest possible effort for only just balancing gravity without excess contractions. I'm thinking of this as stopping without stopping. You don't slam on any brakes to stop or reduce contraction. You simply stop adding to the existing pull so you're literally stopped by gravity. If you reduce contraction, you fall down again. I still feel the muscular contribution but I feel it reaching the point of being balanced by gravity. Then I can add a fraction more, little by little, for the slowest and least effortful movement possible, or take away a little to reverse. With no thought of intending to stop (but simply noticing the finest balance between ongoing muscle activity and gravity) I think it puts you in a still position with very low effort. I'm trying to never to involve any conscious stop in movements of any kind but prefer to feel how it arises from slowly matched up forces. Also, I think legato is a big factor in this chain thing. With non legato or near legato every finger pull acts to tighten up the whole chain. There's no way it cannot do so- unless it becomes a push instead of chain of free joints. However, with overlaps I think the chain is already stabilised so it's a bit more complex. I think that it makes the mass less of an issue, but the stronger the pull, the more of an issue the whole chain becomes. The lighter the finger action, the less the rest of the chain is an issue, until it becomes the supporting finger. I see your point about the chain being a kind of "on or off" although I don't think is the case when balacing release against the finger. I think the thing is that the more the finger acts downwards, the more it acts on the whole chain. So you have to balance that with gravity or muscular effort- so the finger can get on with imparting that downward force. I can't immediately think of a good illustration to include that aspect, but I think the chain either needs to tightened for the finger to get on, or free joints will have to stiffen instead for the equivalent effect.

Well, you are right there. If I even began the first little bit of standing up in a weightless environment, I would just keep moving even if I ceased all further effort. So yes, I see now that it is indeed gravity that stops me. But I don't to think about it, it would be a distraction from my normal activity. AFF

Is that because you don't need to though, due to your feldenkrais training? I have been doing a number of exercises where I shake my arm loose and then very slowly feel the adaptation from limp to an aspect of the playing position eg. Raising a collapsed hand. I have sensed and released huge amounts of wasted effort this way. normally if I lift my wrist I think of the up. But if I feel the force I act against for that to happen and barely exert enough force to even cause the movement, it's far more sensitive. On the way back I don't think down but gradually feel how slowly releasing the up feel lets gravity move my wrist a fraction at a time. Then I do the same thinking up/down as normal and compare the sensations. Specifically, I suspect that thinking of releasing an upward force might help to avoid working muscles against each other. If I think down, I have a feeling that start doing it by pushing down before I have even released the up action. My whole hand has vastly improved mobility from this exercise and the same principle has been very useful for various aspects of arm alignment. Still positions are no longer held still but simply balanced still. I can't help but wonder whether feldenkrais has already given you what you need but whether this is a key step for others- along the lines of "learn to do it first and then forget it". This has made a collossal difference to my ability to balance with low effort. If you don't know exactly what force you are balancing, I think it can be like someone in a blindfold who expects to be pushed from any angle and generally seizes up. Surely understanding exactly what force you are required to balance is the key to balancing an unstable equilibrium with low effort- without accidentally resorting to extra, non-essential forces? It seems to me that this trains an absolutely vital function: that of balancing gravity with low effort precision rather than with 'spare' levels of fixation.

No, no, you misunderstand me. I was referring to normal people doing normal everyday activities. We live in the field of gravity. We do not go around thinking about it. A "totally natural" piano technique would theoretically be like that. However, in a Feldenkrais lesson we do indeed become more sensitive to, more conscious of, gravity and our relationship to it. And as I try out stuff you are writing about at the piano, wanting to really experience what you describe instead of just having a theoretical opinion about it, I find myself learning in a Feldenkrais way - where sensation is the great teacher. I don't , which makes a myriad set of new adjustments possible. But then we come to that perennial problem, integration. The processes you describe are largely didactic - you sense and adjust while playing under tempo or while practicing one hand. But how does one carry this into a performance? Some like to say, "Just forget about it and play," but I don't think that's quite the best way to go. I have often made the mistake of trying to carry that process into a performance (see my ISSTIP article on Carola Grindea and arm weight at aff.net), with disastrous results! I think the optimum lies somewhere in between: I am mostly focused on the music and the sound I'm producing, but somewhere there is still a physical awareness, present, minutely adjusting, quietly guiding, never obtrusive but never completely absent either.... AFF

"No, no, you misunderstand me. I was referring to normal people doing normal everyday activities. We live in the field of gravity. We do not go around thinking about it. A "totally natural" piano technique would theoretically be like that. However, in a Feldenkrais lesson we do indeed become more sensitive to, more conscious of, gravity and our relationship to it. And as I try out stuff you are writing about at the piano, wanting to really experience what you describe instead of just having a theoretical opinion about it, I find myself learning in a Feldenkrais way - where sensation is the great teacher. I don't , which makes a myriad set of new adjustments possible." Absolutely- this is very much how' I'm looking at it. When I have I ever suggested only thinking about weight? It is exactly the fact that weight is only one half of an inseparable two-sided balance that I'm talking about. I want to understand how to feel that balance, so I can to forget about it. The exercises I'm doing are based on generating exactly what you describe there- definitely not on looking at weight alone. Weight alone would be perceived by free fall collapse exercises (which are a good way to prepare the neutral state first)- not ones where the muscles interact sensitively. (Also, I should clarify by the way, the one about slowly raising the hand up and down from the wrist is done away from an instrument- although my description was rather vague.) It's all about feeling the finest possible interaction between gravity and muscle actions that are barely enough to move rather than merely support, and then feeling how every slightest increment of release produces the slightest movement via gravity- then IMMEDIATELY using this unfamiliar perspective to inform the ease of the "just doing it" type of movement. "But then we come to that perennial problem, integration. The processes you describe are largely didactic - you sense and adjust while playing under tempo or while practicing one hand. But how does one carry this into a performance?" But isn't that true of everything? Sorry, but I don't understand why you feel the need to stress that with this element, when it's equally applicable with just about every aspect of piano playing and movement that we ever learn. I don't want to spend my whole life thinking about how to walk (literal walking, now), but exploring issues with gravity has allowed me to teach myself to place my feet down less heavily, and feel my body being lifted across the ground with far less effort. Why think "just do it" rather than learn more about how to interact efficiently? Also, the exercises I'm formulating for gravity awareness in piano playing are designed precisely because of how they are to continually required aspects of the playing mechanism. I've found some of your most didactic exercises of all (eg. wiggling the metacarpals with the spare hand) extremely valuable, but what I'm looking for involves some of the most directly applicable actions possible. I want each of these to be absolutely specific to an inescapable requirement. They are both designed to train sensory issues and to serve a literal, ongoing purpose. An arm cannot be aligned over the piano without specific muscular forces to prevent collapse. I do not believe that gravity is generally balanced out even remotely efficiently here, even before key depression. I believe that has a lot to do with why so many people ADD stiffness in the arm itself upon moving a key, instead of allowing the arm to hang as a chain with LESS internal effort. Unstable fingers are also a major factor, of course- but only the finger needs to actively add efforts- at least, in the purest and most simple style of movement. That initial balance is integral to what fingers can do and acquiring it aids sensitivity towards matching up against external forces in general. I'm looking at specific exercises to aquire the lowest effort possible in the interaction between forces, before the first note is sounded. I'm also looking at another exercise to simulate the resulting forces of actually playing as well as how to get the arm to interact with them in an even lower effort balance- rather than fight them with added efforts. None of this is just weight for its own sake and its all very specific to purpose. If someone doesn't know how to balance gravity for any given position, it follows that they are almost certainly using unnecessary efforts to do so. You need a base line here. "I am mostly focused on the music and the sound I'm producing, but somewhere there is still a physical awareness, present, minutely adjusting, quietly guiding, never obtrusive but never completely absent either...." I basically agree, but the other day I played through a Schubert slow movement for the first time in ages, feeling how extreme finger activity was interacting with corresponding release at the elbow. My musical thinking had not changed in any obvious way, but the technical feel absolutely transformed the sound from anything I had previously made before. If aiming for a concert, obviously I'd want to integrate these things. But thinking almost exclusively about the movement translated my pre-existing musical ideas into actual sounds that were more close than anything I had ever been able to make before. Also, I thought more regarding the chain issue. Although the chain can only be taut or slack, the standing person still represents the finger. The arm basically eithers matches or does not match to the finger, yes. That's what keeps it so simple to balance and why it enables the fingers to act so freely and easly. The only thing to monitor is how much the finger acts and how much the shoulder releases to keep the chain taut. Imagine someone standing with a chain attatched to them pulling them backwards. They'd have to balance this in order to stabilise and it would affect the force they apply to the floor. When a finger pulls a key it ALWAYS pulls the chain of the arm that it is attached to as well. So either the chain has to pull back or the whole chain is hence pulled forwards and there is no stillness. When the chain is not kept taut, we have to hold joints in place to stop them collapsing or we see such movements. When a finger tries to work separately from the chain, you basically have to involve a lot more muscular efforts compared to if you merely allow gravity to keep the chain taut. I think is the simplest way of letting a finger get on with standing up.