10 years ago by
A Pianist
Hi,
If you want a rational explanation, see here. It's pretty comprehensive on the underlying mechanics of what accelerates a key efficiently and without impact.
In short, a hand is not rigid. So it crumples up when reaching the key if relaxed. This kills speed transfer and wastes energy on impact. Counter this by stiffening and more reaches the key but there's no sensitive control and the impact is even more dangerous. The only way to do massive arm drops really safely is to move in the hand- to bounce out of the key in the same way that you spring out of each landing when running (rather than collapse your leg and fall in a heap, or land on a rigid knee).
Funnily enough, before reading your post I was thinking about how using weight to take work off the fingers makes as much rational sense as holding a large weight while crushing grapes with the feet, assuming that this would reduce the work for the legs. In the most evolved pianism the same issue applies. The more weight you use the harder you'll work the hand. However, if fingers haven't learned to move well, dropping can be less effort at first. It's because it helps cleanse habitual tensions that get in the way when you presently attempt finger movements. The problem is that gravity isn't fast enough to provide numerous drops per second, so you'll only be stiffer again if you try to play fast- unless you learn to move the keys from the fingers, without the habitual stiffness of the arm. Dropping the arm may be a temporary way to learn to stop tightening certain muscles that you currently stiffen, but in the long run, you have to put the finger movements in to become fully loose (both with and without arm drops). It's easier to learn to be fairly relaxed with arm plops than with finger movements. But when you learn to move the fingers from a loose arm, you will find you can be far freer still.
