Grade 4 Milestone And Other Problems

I have just reached the minimum tempo for ABRSM's Grade 4. Alan's method is extraordinary. It made me discover how much energy was spent where it shouldn't. However I have certain doubts about going further in 1 bpm/day increments as I have been going for the past few months or going back to 40 bpm and increasing in 5 bpm increments this time before furthering to Grade 5 in 1 bpm/day again. I am playing the scales at 52 bpm with 16th notes -and the arpeggios at 76 with 8th notes- now but the stability isn't solid enough yet; it actually gets quite sloppy sometimes, especially when playing with "real" metronome pulse (16th notes at 52 bmp instead of quarter notes at 208 bpm). How should I manage the tempo in the following period? Moreover I discovered that my hands and body got too used with an "all in the same key" speed of playing a piece. I was rehearsing a Menuet by Gurlitt and I observed that at 80 bpm I kept making mistakes at certain passages and decided to put the tempo back at 60. Then the old tension and back sweat came back for a short time but not in the same intense manner as it did in the "old days". I'm very surprised that one can deal with a speed barrier even when going from fast to slow. It's a new dimension I have recently discovered. The hand and the wrist seem to be working relatively fine, however I'm still lacking arm weight. The fingers sometimes slip towards the palm. Furthermore, the elbow and the shoulder get tense and I think this has something to do with the weight problem. Back before I met Alan I kept using the elbow too intensely and pushed the arm together with the hand "into" the keyboard. I think now the problem is at the opposite side. My elbow keeps pulling up the whole structure. I think this is how the body expresses its fear of a collapsed hand. Any exercises for arm weight awakening and better usage? And finally, I'm thinking about some new pieces from Burgmuller's Op. 100 (#1, #2, #7 and #20). I already took the first etude. Which one from these would suit me better? I'm waiting for other suggestions for an early Grade 4 comer.

Hi, Some general suggestions for speed: * Keep most of your practice at a lower tempo and focus on accuracy, not speed. * Make the pulse very obvious - exaggarate the accent on every beat note, but keep the rest of the 3 sixteens notes very light. * Do some practice with a metronome at ultra slow speeds (less than 50% of tempo, maybe 25%) and focus on accuracy, not speed. Make the pulse very obvious and make sure you hit the beat note exactly with the metronome. * Do stacatto practice (see the the DVD for "out the back door") to really activate the fingers and make sure that each note of the scale is clearly articulated. * Vary the rhythm grouping of notes to gradually gain speed. For example, start with a grouping of 2 (dotted rhythm) in both possible ways, then groupings of 3, etc. * Personally I wouldn't worry about arm weight at all - get your fingers more active and the arc structure more secure and the rest of the body will naturally relax. As far as I understand Alan's method, arm weight is something you add later to get colour, it is not something that will give you speed. And finally, read some of the thumb and rotation related chapters of Alan's 2nd book. There are some great examples there for scales and thumb crossings. I really like etude #2 (arabesque) - I think they are all good to develop technique, just pick the one you like best. Practise slowly and don't force yourself to perform at the tempo designated by the editor. Examiners will usually give a slower accurate performance higher marks than a messy speedy performance. Also, with enough slow practice you would be surprised how fast and consistent you can eventually get. Good luck Zack

Nice to hear from you, Razvan. About arm weight: please remember that in our work together I never once mentioned arm weight. We worked the entire time to develop a healthy action of your lumbricals, which was distressingly absent when we began our sessions. I suspect that some of this inaction has crept back into your playing, and if you wish to improve, that's where to look. Remember, when the lumbricals work well, you don't need to think about arm weight at all, just as you never think about the weight of your body when you're walking down the street. I am serious about this, we distract ourselves with these ideas and that distraction does real damage. Please pay attention to the act of playing, not to some sort of relaxation to feel your weight more which is presumably going to help you play better. That kind of work is preperatory, and that mode of thinking must be left behind when you actually do play. The other key way for you to advance now is to hone your listening. You keep looking for physical reasons for your unevenness, and physical solutions to improve the situation. But your hands are now good enough that they need to develop their capacity to respond to your ear. Listen more, and try to improve your evenness just by using your ear. Let what your hands have learned be integrated into your normal life as a musician at the piano. Respectfully, AFF

Remember, when the lumbricals work well, you don't need to think about arm weight at all, just as you never think about the weight of your body when you're walking down the street. Quite honestly, I find my walking is tremendously improved if I do! When I "just walk" I often catch myself realising that my feet are landing unnecessarily heavily into the ground when coming down. Thinking of weight need not encourage uncontrolled collapsing. On the contrary, perceiving my weight being placed makes the action far smoother and lighter. It drastically reduces any sense of compression into the point of contact. Also, when I perceive my weight being lifted over a foot, I feel the more significant muscles involved acting much more clearly and precisely (while other muscle release tremendously and stop causing me to "dig in" to the ground). If the rationale weer that I was supposed to imagine my legs to be as heavy as possible in order to create large forces, I can imagine that it would cause all sorts of problems and have me digging against the ground even more. However, simply observing the actual weight of my body and what I do with it only ever serves to lighten the efforts and clarify the action of the right muscles. Surely, it's the same at a piano? I'm totally opposed to collapses and the idea that dropping is supposed to replace muscular activation or that the arm is supposed to be willed into heaviness- rather than simply perceived. However, I cannot follow why that means you shouldn't even seek to perceive or observe the arm in relation to gravity. Why not simply be more sophisticated about it, rather than throw it out? Personally, I still see that as being a vital part of a to collapses- not something that could only serve to encourage them. I know you didn't specifically talk about the arm's weight at all in the lessons we had recently, but the things you got me to do definitely improved the feel for it- particularly in terms of how many different states of balance are possible and required to match up to the hand. Since then, I've noticed far more easily when my wrist is being held up excessively. When I feel how gravity serves to pull it back down into a sustainable alignment, the hand actions are vastly more productive. They're absolutely dependent on each other. If I wasn't thinking this way when I notice my arm becoming excessively held up, I feel quite sure the old habits would have started coming back by now and my wrist would be soaring up. Perceiving how partial release of gravity straightens my arm out is allowing my hands to keep activating properly- not interfering with their actions. When I see a film like this: I feel absolutely certain that there are many people who would benefit greatly from trying to perceive the correct amount of release required to enable the hand to activate properly. I think the key is simply to define very clearly the difference between replacing the hand's actions and providing the necessary means of balancing them and aligning the arm behind the hand.

Also, to give one example: I found your advice about keeping the hand working properly between the legato octaves in the Mozart very helpful. However, when I'm practising this, I've realised that a big part of what happens is that when I release the thumb, my arm starts "holding" up above the hand far too much. In order to keep the contact with the upper finger working better and the hand primed for the next octave (rather than in a position where collapse will be pretty much inevitable), I have to release much more at the wrist than my current instincts tell me to. This does not in any way replace the actions of the hand. On the contrary, if I don't experience the release, the hand simply doesn't have anything to activate against- and automatically ends up going a little too slack. The exercise of collapsing the palm against the keys has been extremely useful. Remembering the feeling of what it's like to allow gravity to pull down on the wrist has been a huge part of what I've been needing to keep in mind, in order to retain these things. The last thing I want to do is to willfully strive for perception of "heaviness", but currently I'm often finding that I'm missing the means of balancing my hand well by holding my arm back too much.

I am giving Razvan the advice I gave because if he thinks too much about arm weight it screws him up. Everything you say has its validity - in your consciousness and experience. I tailor what I tell him to suit his consciousness and experience - as much as I can at this distance. I am still pondering the eternal problem of arm weight... Moshe Feldenkrais defined his method as "making peace with gravity." I propose the following: "Feeling how gravity acts on you" is not the same as "feeling your weight." Feeling your weight is a kind of dead experience, feeling how gravity acts on you is relational and keeps you alive. Could we use this as a global context for the discussion? AFF

"Feeling how gravity acts on you" is not the same as "feeling your weight." Feeling your weight is a kind of dead experience, feeling how gravity acts on you is relational and keeps you alive. I think I see what you mean, although I'd definitely describe it as "feeling my weight" when I think that that way to lighten up walking. It just has nothing to do with thinking that the weight is supposed to be spiralling downwards uncontrolled. I feel my weight precisely because I want to have control over it- not as a way of encouraging larger downward pressures. As long as it based on accurate observation of the pull that occurs when you release (rather than preconceptions that this will supposedly create a huge force against the piano) I find it's exactly what I need to cross-reference the action of my hands with. I don't think weight even creates a very big force against the piano at all- when it's genuinely down to release. I think it's when people think that weight is to create a massive force (and they subconsciously start using all kind of whole arm pushing actions to make this happen) that problems come in. If I'm not releasing properly, the actions of my hands begin to feel weak very quickly. It's at this point where I often find myself pushing to compensate.

One thing I was once surprised by, and have often used as a test since is this: Sometimes when playing chords I'd find myself getting tired. Upon looking to release the efforts in my arm as much as possible I'd find that my hand actually felt pressure against the keybed, rather than more. Although I had no idea I'd actually been doing any pushing, it immediately revealed that clearly I had been. I've often found this a very useful test when playing. If I stop on any given note and relax my arm (not my hand) as much as possible, does it increase the pressure between my hand and the keyboard or does it decrease? I've regularly been surprised to find that far from burdening my hand with added weight, it results in a vastly less effortful sense of stable contact and exposes arm pressures that should probably never have been occurring. At the end, I'm left with a very clear feel for the interaction between the hand's ongoing actions and the true results of weight release (rather than results of arm efforts that might be thought of as having been caused by "weight"). Whether these efforts were caused by inaccurately perceived weight-based thinking or any other possibility, I do regularly find that stopping to be sure I have perceive the weight accurately results in vast improvements to whole arm and hand.

Again, your "weight-experiencing" moments are really rich and useful for you, as they are for many. However they are therapeutic and I question the practice of constantly living in a "therapeutic" state of mind. As the Nike commercial says, just do it! Making peace with gravity does not mean being constantly aware of it. It means functioning well within the gravitational field. Being aware of it could definitely be an inhibiting factor. AFF

Again, your "weight-experiencing" moments are really rich and useful for you, as they are for many. However they are therapeutic and I question the practice of constantly living in a "therapeutic" state of mind. As the Nike commercial says, just do it! Making peace with gravity does not mean being constantly aware of it. It means functioning well within the gravitational field. Being aware of it could definitely be an inhibiting factor. AFF Couldn't you say the same for any element of piano technique though- including things like the arch? Isn't it true that with pretty much anything you have to start by making sure you're doing it right, before you forget about it? While my goal is simply to be able to "just play", I find that awareness of the many different ways the arm behaves under different degrees of release is still every bit as important for me to focus on as what my hand is doing. If I don't cross-reference the hand elements with a feel for how release in the arm contributes, it's the action of the hand that starts getting screwed up again very quickly. Instincts to push start to come back to the forefront unless I feel both elements absolutely equally. This is particularly the case in the op. 10 no. 2 and op. 25 no. 6. My wrist is capable of staying in a very good alignment now. However, I have to monitor the release of the arm exceedingly carefully or the wrist still wants to end up at a weird angle- completely compromising the hand's ability to activate. The only way to keep the hand working is currently to be certain that gravity is allowed to keep pulling my wrist straight- without any muscles resisting that in a way that would force it up into an angle. However, this also runs right back to the shoulder. I can feel various things just lifting up and wanting to go forward a touch, unless I'm very conscious that they ought to be releasing. I experience nothing but positives from this- as long as I don't have the mindset that this is supposed to create some massive force against the keyboard that moves the keys for me. It couldn't be more different from that style of "weight" thinking.