Clarifying The Ideas

Hi, I've been closely following Alan's ideas at Pianotechnique.org, reading his books and this forum. I can say it's worth it, but you must give time to yourself to absorb those ideas both mentally and physically. If I am right, there are few topics which must be taken carefully or otherwise it can take you to wrong direction: (1) THUMB Alan teaches that thumb is functioning better when kept straight. Many teachers teach to curve thumb (I remember well my own teacher saying this) and probable reason is that curving thumb prevents its joints from collapsing. However when taking "idea of straight thumb" too seriously it's quite easy to overextend thumb and this can lead to extra muscular tension. I believe that thumb case is perhaps easier than it seems: natural position of the thumb is the way how it is when it's held without doing any effort. When I release all the effort from my hand I can see that my fingers 2-5 have slight natural curve but my thumb wants to remain relatively straight. Now when I experiment both curving or (over-) extending my thumb (or other fingers) I can easily feel the tension which it immediately generates. Of course when I go to piano I cannot play without any muscular effort and then there's a challenge to not go from tonus to unwanted tension and this leads to other issues like keeping light touch vs. using arm weight. But anyway why wouldn't I try to keep these "natural positions" as much as possible? (2) WHICH COMES FIRST There's another idea which must be perhaps similarly clarified. Alan teaches us to grasp the keys when we are playing the piano. I've interpreted this the way that many people approach the piano downwards, they slam keys down with arm and wrist and fingers are often loose and inactive (bad interpretation of arm weight school). Better way of thinking is that when grasping the keys hand rises and this generates arch structure. The movement is better imagined as going upwards. Recently I've been thinking about the very first moment of this grasping: (when thought wrongly) is there a risk that someone leads this with arm? I mean that everything basically looks the same - fingers are bending nicely from the knuckles and arch rises - but movement began from arm and not from the fingers. When practising this is it important to concentrate on the finger movement at the very beginning of the grasping and let the arm follow? Or are the finger and arm movements better imagined simultaneous? thanks! P

EXCELLENT questions! 1) When the muscular efforts needed to move fingers and thumb are effective, fingers and thumb will not depart so far from their natural alignment (except in a cat-scratch tight curl for instance). Skeletal playing is playing that uses effective skeletal alignment to maximum efficiency. 2) The grasping comes first but the arm is so close behind that one could be forgiven for thinking they are simultaneous. They are VERY close together in time. If you even begin a slight grasping, the arm is immediately in movement, because fingers and arm are attached. It's not so much that the arm moves later in time than the grasping action, but that the cause and effect relationships are maintained. Grasping is cause, arm effect - MOSTLY. Having said that, sometimes I do practice the reverse, creating a perceptive illusion in myself that the arm is indeed cause and grasping the effect. It can "smooth things out." But it is an illusion. AFF