Arm Weight & Piano Technique - What About FUNCTION?

Quite honestly, i still get a very strong impression that you are directly associating all forms of weight based thinking with collapse? It simply couldn't have anything less to do with collapse. Collapse is ? The exercises to perceive it as much about avoiding collapse as they are about avoiding wasted efforts and seixures. I simply cannot see how trying to ignore gravity is going to lead to an efficient means of avoiding collapse, or how there is going to be a satisfactory feedback loop to monitor the efficiency of balance. How can you achieve a fine balance if it involves a constant factor that you have never explored? Yes, everybody can walk, but do most people even do that spectacular refinement and efficiently? If someone tries to ignore gravity, all it means is that they do what they are used to doing however it should happen to come out- ie. they don't really know what you are doing. How can the average person afford to put themselves in this state, without first having taken the time to check that their means of preventing collapse is based on efficiently refined muscular actions, rather than any old means of making sure that gravity isn't going to get the chance to pull everything down? If we don't match muscular efforts precisely to the resultant forces upon joints that would be moved, they cannot be efficient efforts.

Andrew, Just read that Bernstein experimented with weights (light) and used them to some extent in teaching.Supposed to be described in his book.Just for info. I'm not sure that I understand fully what you mean with elbows moving forward/backward.

Andrew, Just read that Bernstein experimented with weights (light) and used them to some extent in teaching.Supposed to be described in his book.Just for info. I'm not sure that I understand fully what you mean with elbows moving forward/backward. Yeah, I recently got the book where he mentions it. It was from there I first heard about it. Other than bringing it up he doesn't really go into terribly insightful detail about how or why it helps, sadly. He just mentions how it makes it easier to produce a big tone. I don't mean that elbow has to do any moving at all. It just has to be free enough that it moved backwards via release of the upper arm, were the finger not involved. But the finger contributes a forwards component of force. It's like a chain that is tightened slightly via both ends- so there is no requirement for muscular forces around either the elbow or the wrist. When pulled in opposite directions at the ends, a chain requires no generation of internal forces, in order to balance. The forces are created automatically in response to those at each end, without any requirement of additional effort. Rather than being a metaphor, the arm literally functions in this same way- leaving the possibility of a free but balanced elbow and wrist. I'm still having to work very consciously on this with my left hand. I tend to notice slight effort at the top of the forearm much more often than in the right. In order to stop this, I need to tighten up the chain a little more from both ends- in order to stop having to actively hold the joints against gravity. I'm working on both getting the fingers to pull my arm forwards more and on letting go of the upper arm enough to pull backwards. When in balance, there is no movement at all from this- except that of the fingers. My right hand has made huge progress from this though. My 5th fingers never used to feel that it was able to pull at the keys properly, because the arm was not adequately stabilised. Here's a very recent film of a Chopin Ballade. There's still much room for improvement (and the performance is frankly vastly too boring and literal) but it's easy to see the difference between the action of 5th finger compared to my older videos and the greater stability of the arm in general. Before my right wrist used to be all over the place and I fought it with effort. You can see even on this one how the arm is not free to respond properly to the fingers, in even very slow passages. The fingers are pulling against a stiffened arm, not a taut chain: Still plenty of room for improvement (including both places where the fingers are too slack and places where the arm is not releasing enough in response to the fingers) but it's far more settled and direct now. I can feel that I'm hitting the balance bang in the middle a lot more often now, rather than constantly straying on both sides. When felt as a taut chain, the wrist (and indeed the whole arm ) aligns itself to a very large degree, in balance with the finger actions. Still a work in progress, but the clarity of what I need to keep it going forwards (and how to repair faults) do has never been greater.

Thank's for the explanation. I see what you mean thats a marvelous thought to have in mind for relaxing the arm. Yes there is considarable progress if compared to your demonstrative clip in your blog with the "wavings" of the wrist. Hard to get rid of habits like that. Nice rendering of the Ballade it's clean and the pinky is doing fine.I tend to get carried away with this one ending up with either daring to play the coda in a crazy tempo or slowing it down which kills the whole effect. So I understand why you keep the cool. I saw Sokolov recently had a seat behind the scene close to the keyboard. I imagine that's how Anton Rubinstein played- keybedding more than you would think is possible. I'd say he was using rotation a lot to nail the key's not in the Taubmann way but in his very own.Kind off rotation/stand up technique.

When Anton Rubinstein was asked how to get that rich tone he replied, "Press, press press... press until your fingers bleed." Interesting concept! But if he pressed without any collapse he probably wasn't that far from what you are doing, Andrew! AFF

When Anton Rubinstein was asked how to get that rich tone he replied, "Press, press press... press until your fingers bleed." Interesting concept! But if he pressed without any collapse he probably wasn't that far from what you are doing, Andrew! AFF Yeah, it's an interesting point about keybedding. I think this "chain" approach to removing slack without fixation allows an extremely continuous finger action that requires no feeling of stopping at the keybed. With the right path, you can "follow through" as much as you like without any feeling of a rapid stop. In fact, there's so little impact, I think you actually need to be very careful to hold back for a while. I don't willfully "press" into the keybed, but being sure to balance the forwards/backwards aspects between finger and arm does lead to an extremely solid sense of contacting the keybeds. If you avoid the "down" thinking, I think helps to keep it healthy. I wonder if this is what Rubinstein actually did when he referred to the "press"? Was he really pressing straight against the path of keybed? Maybe it was actually more the ongoing contribution to balance of the finger's pull- rather than a case of actually digging in with the arm? With the forward/backward approach to matching finger action to the arm's release, there's so little discomfort from landing into the keybed with even the most exaggerated actions, I'm actually a little worried that you need to be even more careful not to overwork yourself. With a heavy impact, the discomfort serves as a big warning. However, I feel as if there's virtually no limit to how hard I can pull from my fingers now- while still feeling a soft landing and a loose wrist . Strangely enough, I think the sheer comfort makes it even more important to be careful about building up the intensity. It actually feels deceptively easy, when working the hand to extremes. I think the fingers themselves still need to time to build up to the highest intensity- even when you take away the kind of impacts that would usually start alarm bells ringing.

By the way, one thing I have found very useful is to eliminate all finger drumming on table-tops. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad in all forms, but I realised that it encourages a very different movement to finger stands. Finger stands are slow and continuous and are felt to arrive in balance at the end- not as stopping and starting the muscles. When lifting the fingers and drumming them on the tabletop, either you feel action and sudden release before landing or you end up straining into the surface with a heavy landing. Instead of such actions, if i do anything on a tabletop now, it's slow finger stands from one balanced position to another- where the finger is still actively contributing. I feel it more as the finger slowly moving a lightened arm- rather than moving an imaginary key. I think that realising how different "finger-drumming" is from the basic standing action has been very helpful. I'll probably come back to the more hammer like actions of the fingers at some point. However, feeling everything as a slow pull on a free arm (rather than as an instantaneous finger tap) has made a collossal difference to the sensitivity of actions. This slowness of action makes it a lot easier to maintain the arm as a taut chain. As soon as you resort to more hammered actions, i think it's impossible for the elbow and wrist to be as loose. They certainly have a purpose too, but I think it pays to avoid them entirely until you can feel just how free the wrist and elbow can be within the continuous two-ended support of legato actions. Finger taps are too much on and off. The wrist and elbow can only be stabilised with more, sustained finger activity- not by explosive stops and starts.

That's funny, I don't make a habit of drumming my fingers on tables but I still find it an excellent movement. When you drum the fingers lightly they are basically in the state of unstable equilibrium, a highly desirable condition. They are ready for quick action - "explosive" may be too strong a word, but the instantaneous contraction followed by an immediate release is indeed a type of "mini-explosion." They are free from parasitic contraction. The drumming stimulates their skeletal structure to easy, right alignment. And that feeling quick, incredibly even and incredibly light attacks is very similar to what I feel when I play a light scale passage in Mozart, let's say, or even a sinuous, slightly thin in a nocturne... When I drum my fingers my arm relaxes... AFF