Grasping The Key

Dear Mr. Fraser- I read your book, and viewed your film with great pleasure. You have cleared up several of the more nebulous questions of piano technique, and I cannot thank you enough! I did have one question though: like you advocate in your book, I am trying to grasp the key with my hand, while keeping my arm loose as a goose, trying to achieve a functional structure. But somehow I can't exactly visualize what this grasping at the keyboard should look like. If I try to graps, my hand muscles contract, and I find it actually inhibits finger movement. I can still keep my arm loose, but my finger are somewhat immobilized by the over-activated hand! This made me wonder how much should one "grasp" until the hand feels undue tension that inhibits? I feel like I can still maintain the structure and activity of my hand, without cultivating the "grasping" feeling like you describe. Does my hand automatically lose its activity and/or structure if I'm not grasping? Or, how can I grasp firmly, without feeling clenched up? I was also curious about your opinion of Gieksing and Leimers description of pressure playing. Does never removing your fingers from the keys really give one more inherent control or dynamic potential? Does raising the fingers really "waste" energy like so many have argued? Perhaps this "pressure" technique is just more suited for the impressionistic playing that Gieksing is famous for. That is certainly more than one question, but I knew if anyone could help me with these problems, it would be you. Thanks again for everything. Sincerely, Kevin Krug

Dear Kevin, Thank you for your kind words. And your question indicates a really accurate and sensitive assessment of the problem. The more 'skeletal' you get, the less you actually grasp muscularly: the more it is the bone alignments themselves that seem to grasp with no effort at all from the muscles. This sensation is actually quite weird when you first find it. In the film and the book, I focus on grasping to evoke a rudimentary activation for those in whom the function is really totally asleep - it is good for getting a first, gross sense of how the hand was designed to work. But the more evolved your technique gets, the finer the amount of effort needed to get your hand working as it should - and at this point, as you rightly perceive, too much effort is as much of a problem as too little. About Leimer-Geiseking's pressure playing and not lifting the fingers: again, this addresses an important part of the problem, but only a PART of it. There is something very vaulable to be learned from doing as they say - it gives you an intimate feel of the key and allows you to enter a world of finer and more immediate, tactile, tangible control of that key. But to make that the ONLY way of touching the key would be tremendously limiting. Learn that, and let it educate your kinesthetic sense, then use that enriched ability to refine other touches as well. Kind wishes, AFF

Hi, mr. Fraser, I was wondering if the grasping of the key as you describe it in the video, is the same as what I've learned. My teacher told me that every connection with a key should be done with a little bit of tension, meaning not just placing my finger directly on the key but after placing it on a key, pulling the finger a little bit back (grasping?) while keeping contact with that key. I'm not sure but I think that this technique gave me the problem that I have now: playing on my nails. Does this sound familiar to you and has this something to do with the grasping technique? André, Sweden

I think I start to get the feeling of the grasping key technique. Funny thing is that my movement of the arm/hand looks at those moments exactly like the way I saw Glenn Gould playing on a video I have of him. Is he using the same kind of playing?

Is he using the same kind of playing? For what i know about his technique, i think, yes, but the form is different. To me it's too extreme, i would advise maintaining a natural shape as more as you can.Playing with natural shape gave me better results.with all those strange hand positions you end up stiffening your hand.Sure there will be time when you will explore all he possibilities of your hands and when all kinds of movements will do you good.But for start, for building up your technique , the natural shape is the ultimate start! Its not in the form of the hand, its in the internal function of the hand! Chapter 76 in the DVD!

The "extreme" form of grasping that Gould uses so well is what I call 'curling' or the 'cat scratch.' This is where only the two bottom parts of the finger move, the distal and medial phalanges. Gould uses this to great effect because he needs precision more than power. In the Baroque period this was the norm. The grasping I talk about is something else altogether. It uses the lumbrical and interosseous muscles and the whole finger is involved in the movement. There is much more power in it, and much less danger of developing tendonitis. If you pick something up, your finger curls all the way from the top knuckle. If you carry your briefcase, for instance, and don't use your whole finger to grasp the handle but just the bottom parts of it, you'll notice pain developing in your forearm quite soon. So: yes, Gould's 'grasping' which you've discovered for yourself is a valid technique, and one of the essential techniques we need in our pianistic repertoire. But it is limited in its application. See if you can expand your ability in grasping to include whole finger grasping, and sense the differences between the two styles.

I can feel how the grasping works well with chords what automatically moves my hand forwards as in an reaction on the grasping, but what about scales and broken chords? Is the grasping technique used here as well or would it slow down the playing? André

Grasping is even more important here, because it is easier to neglect it. Hang your hand off the edge of the desk with one fingertip on the desk. Now use the action of your lumbrical muscle to pull your whole hand up. This is the fundamental action of the whole finger. Most of us do NOT have that reflex firmly 'installed' or 'wired in' to the 'movement image' of our hand. Play a scale VERY slowly, consciously invoking this movement on each attack. You will see how very different the scale both feels and sounds. Take a LOT of time before you try to do this at speed. Work up the speed very slowly, and take care when you 'cross a threshold' and all of a sudden that grasping feeling is not there any more. Reduce speed once again and restore each finger's individual capacity and desire for grasping. The benefits to your piano technique are incalculable! AFF

Thanks, I'm trying your techniques out on one of my own pieces that I was not able to play correctly myself till now, using the way I learned to play at my conservatory. It's a good motivation for me to put some time in learning your way of playing. I learned btw a technique that didn't involve grasping but that was more some kind of pointing my finger forwards in the key, something that is totally the opposite. When I think about it now, somehow my teacher told me to do some kind of combination of pulling my finger towards me in one moment and pushing it into the other key on another moment. Looking backwards at those teachings now, that's a very confusing way of playing piano. André

Exactly! But the funny thing is, each one of all those contradictory things you describe might come in handy at some point - they can all be useful in a certain context. I myself have tried all those variations. I spend half my time telling students NOT to do what I earlier told them to do! I have tried the "finger as a stick" technique and it can indeed be useful for certain sounds and to address a certain problem a student might have. Curling rather than curving the finger is also very useful for certain things. The trouble is, to find out which technique applies where, and to have them ALL at (or should I say 'in') your fingertips so that you have choice in the matter. Using the finger as a stick and pointing it into the key has the advantage of heightening the skeletal sense of the finger - you can really feel how each bone pushes into the next one until the key itself gets pushed. This increased clarity of sensation may then inform other finger actions that use more muscular effort - either curling (which uses the short and long flexors) or curving (employing the lumbricals and interosseous). Try to teach your fingers as many of these as possible, just as a baby tries hundreds of varying arrangements of the pelvis and legs before it finally stands up. This is how to give yourself ability. Good luck! AFF