Flat full finger flexion

Initial tests in sitting higher appear to give favourable results - although I'll need more time to explore before I can come to any conclusions (which hopefully I'll keep flexible, this time). However, even a brief test reduced the irritation I've been having and made the stuff I was playing easier. I feel as though I can involved my arms more, too - not in pressing, but just in staying mobile. Since my piano stool is not adjustable I had to resort to stacking up my two volumes of Beethoven Sonatas amongst others to raise the height. I'm sure Beethoven realised that his Sonatas would be useful to future generations of pianists for development of their technique, just not quite like this. I'm gigging with my band tonight, so I'll use that as another test.

If Beethoven only knew how many cheeks kissed his works in the name of improved technique! Glad to hear it's helping! AFF

Ok, sitting higher has passed the gig test. I managed two forty minute sets with only a tiny issue surfacing, which I believe may be separate from the main issue (as separate as they can be while being part of the same organism, that is). So I still have work to do, but I'm now able to approach my work without fear of injury. I'll have to buy myself an adjustable stool. Ironically I've avoided doing so in the past as many of them will not go as low as my current stool. Oh, now that I'm able to focus on development, I can say that I really like flat fingers, it has opened up a sound world that I was capable of imagining previously. It has also revealed where I've been exerting too much effort with curved fingers.

All very cool! I buy an adjustable then saw the legs down... I have had concert halls do that for me as well. In Warsaw at Philharmonic Hall they have a Steinway adjustable bench sawn down because Kevin Kenner requested it at a Chopin competition years ago... AFF

The problems that I have been experiencing have become even more interesting (to me, at least). I stepped back from the piano over the last couple of days to see if I could find a more fundamental cause of the discomfort. What has come to light is an almost constant low level tightness along my arms, which I can currently perceive from my elbows down to my hands. I'm sure it is probably originating from further back, but I can't yet perceive that far. I can recall only one occasion when I was able to let this tension (and every other bit of unnecessary tension) go, and that was an unusual experience I had one time in which I managed to stay aware when falling to sleep. I was able to watch all of that tension dissipate in real time (the strangest part was that I was also aware during sleep, which was the best sleep I've ever had). I've been approaching this from an Alexander/Feldenkrais perspective - experimenting with tiny movements and observing the effects. I've been reading Awareness Through Movement and started working through a couple of the lessons, though I find that one or two paragraphs of each lesson is usually enough to occupy me for quite a long period of time. I find that the Feldenkrais method of working is uncannily similar to how I was taught the Alexander Technique, just with a few small differences. I managed to book myself in for an individual Feldenkrais lesson later this month, so I'm going to take things fairly easy and just do a lot of exploration until then. I've just realised that it has been about four years since my initial injury. Ever since then my pianistic life seems to have consisted of one injury or discomfort and a subsequent rebuild of technique, followed by another, and another and so on. I'm ready now to find the real root of the problem and move beyond this cycle. ------------------------------------ Another discovery today - I am able to let some of the excess tension go, but as soon as I sit at the piano (or at a computer) I re-instate it by habit. I'm thinking I'm going to be sitting at the piano a lot and not playing over the next few weeks.

So, I've been thinking about possible ways of approaching this issue. Solutions seem to fall into two categories: 1. Working with and tweaking what I know - which is obviously part of the picture, as I'm causing the problem with something I'm already doing. 2. Working in a way that is so different to what I already know that change must occur. It's the second category that I've been exploring. Right at the back of there is a tiny chapter about a scooping flat finger technique (Chapter 53: The various guises of skeletality in piano technique). I've been trying out something along the lines of what is described there today. It seems to activate my mechanism in such a way as to avoid the problems I've been having. I was wondering though, Alan, if you might elaborate more on this technique? I'm pretty sure what I'm doing is only a very rough approximation, as I'm not entirely sure what's involved from the description. Could you point me to a particular video of Kemal Gekic which illustrates the technique (hopefully something slow, I can't imagine I could pick it out in La Campanella!).