Hands And Fingers Hovering On Keyboard.Standing Vs Hovering

When i received the second book of Professor Fraser Honing the pianistic self image i tried to fix several bad habits i had in my playing. Something that always troubled me was the feeling that the finger manipulates the keys.Up till now while i tried hard i could not really get the feeling of it. After reading several chapters i tried to find out why in several places i tend to have difficulties to play fast. I came to the conclusion that i had to change the way my fingers were touching the keyboard.I noticed that even in the correct arm and hand posture (no muscle overtension or something) my fingers were touching the keyboard so much.I was trying several times to hug really the keys and use flat finger technique but that somehow made me be have less articulation and speed.Standing feeling and touching the keyboard was slowing me down. Now i tried to raise slowly the hand,i also lifted the arm and arch gently slowly and more slowly until i could barely touched the keys.Now my fingers were not touching deeply yet were not in the air,i believe that if i touched with 80% feeling the keys before now the touch and feel was only 5-10%.Kind of my fingers were hovering. Now this interesting phenomenon occured there was instantly a large reduce in muscle tonus (forearm and uparm) and less muscular effort to keep the hand there,i felt different muscular usage now,when i started to waggle my fingers and play,(always respecting the correct posture of the hand and arch),i noticed that now i felt like the finger was indeed manipulating the key. Less physical contact with the key made me feel the key in a different way,and something more interesting,i could produce magnificent fortisimos without banging simply by the finger to be resting and touching the key so little,like an airplane that has top speed and is just lifting from the ground.When it is about to leave the ground it seems like it has already taken off yet it is still in the ground. What is so different is that i noticed a different muscle organization.to me it seems like there are different layers of touching and feeling the keys. You can feel 1% pressure between the tip of the fingers and keyboard ,10% 60% etc.Yet i felt that the pressure was altered by the way i was lifting my playing mechanism,i felt my muscles in shoulder neck,uparm area contracting in a different way. Eyes cannot understand what is going on,if somebody could see me he could just say,you are just touching the keys!yet the touch was different and the state of my muscles different.The hand and arm was behaving differently. I noticed that this helped me maintain the feeling of fingers being the element that manipulates keys. Next step was to try to play some classical pieces.Now Chopin's op 66 fantaisie impromptu is faster than ever,especially the right hand,melodically strong and with a sense of high speed.Liszt's feux follets,the opening bars that have that fast right hand melody is so clear and very fast compared to what i was playing before. I understand that this is just part of technique,i cannot play always like these forgeting all other technical aspects. As i read your books more and more mr Fraser i am starting to believe that technique should be individualized for each and every person in the sense that each person may have different aspects that needs to fix. I understand that both touching feeling,standing,hovering etc are needed for a correct technique. The reduce in muscular effort that i felt helped me be more expressive in the sounds i created.More energy could go to the sonority i wanted to produce.The diminuendos the crescendos the articulations seemed more clear and better.I am now trying to study many pieces that had very fast passages that i could aproximetaly play and now i begin with new organization! I feel so happy that i have your books and dvd,they are a great inspiration for the world of music and piano. Regards

The most difficult part with any exercise that is developed to build new reflexes is to have awareness of motion,and then try to repeat not mechanical but with awareness of that motion. Old habbits tend to bind our mechanism.Second and third day i see a lot less muscular effort when trying the aproach of hand hovering and just touching the keys as little as possible. Most bad habits may show up (like the thumb codependence,or thumb lifting with no reason for the keys-or arch slight collapses).I am doing it with the awareness and trying to feel myself,it may take some time before the old reflex is being replaced by something new but i am on that way. Today i have been thinking : is it right to assume that the key actually is not manipulated but rather the way our fingers are manipulated by our new and better skeletal and muscle usage actually make us feel that we manipulate the keys? Better and more effortless skeletal and muscle usage leads to a feeling of the key being manipulated?

Day 4-5.Now it is getting more interesting,the less the fingers that have to touch the keys,the more the internal function of the arch feels.I feel power being gathered in the metacarpal area,i feel great that the arch never collapses.Now slowly i see that in very fast speed the closer the fingers to the keyboard the less movements that are available,but these had better be good. I took some difficult fast finger passages,along with octaves and chords (Rachmaninov etude tableux,and some Mephisto Waltz by Liszt) and behold no more of that strain and disorganization in fast passages. I am literally replaying all that repertoire with awareness. Also i noticed different areas of my shoulder and neck and chest muscles working differently,i really felt that the shoulder is more relaxed now and is lowered a little and less tense,and that there is a different radical reorganization of the playing apparatus.Now i no longer have to sit so much higher to feel great. In the past i used to sit very low but that was difficult for my knees as they were not in an optimal playing position.As i am tall i had to adjust it more to feel good with the knees but the arms were very high.Following that approach i then lowered the bench quite a bit and now i feel that i can play fast with no strain. I am looking for other changes that could occur.The sitting and the playing is something dynamicaly it is never the same.I have to keep that in mind.

As the days pass i feel that i need less muscular effort to have the hand be in the natural hand position.I noticed that the shoulder is much lower than before and more functional,the arch is very natural and the metacarpal bones are high where the fingers start.I noticed a vast increase in speed. Drawbacks?When i hear the pieces i played i am not satisfied with the performance:It seems that with less muscular effort needed now it opens many oportunities for better performance.My ear is the judge now. There is a tendency to press harder,i am trying no to over do it. Would it be ok if i have the hand and the arch fully fuctional yet hovering and just touching the keys ,to press with much vigor?I noticed that as long as the hand is barely touching the keys and is ready to press with minimal action comes great sound and with more pressure comes very powerful voicing. 1)I am afraid i might hurt my performances if i stay on playing always like this that's why i am asking. 2)Also what about the wrist? I noticed that many of the up and down movements of the wrist building area of weight school technique is now gone.The wrist is more in the middle area performing but yet the metacarpals always are in the air. I remember the horrifying days of me taking class from a Greek professor of mine with good technique and performances yet that was in the arm weight school.I could never understand arm weight techniques,i was always finding errors in that kind of playing. I remember speed was something of a mystery for me with that technique,while now by taking care of the alignment of fingers and metacarpals and the natural finger technique it seems that speed is taught like in humans when a a baby grows up,when you walk correctly and you grow up soon after you can run!

Dear Niko, Your series of posts has just blown me away. What a great set of descriptions - so powerful, so accurate, so evocative, so detailed. When I wrote the book I could not have expected an any more wonderful response than this. Bravo! You ask whether you should return to pressing more vigorously, yet I think you already know the answer. You are playing with a much more finely honed awareness now, and you can SENSE that more pressure will only rob you of the riches you have recently acquired. You really don't need it any more, because you have discovered a much more effective and wide-reaching method of tone production. As for the changes to your interpretations, I think that you should simply dive in and enjoy the changes you're discovering. I don't think they'll make your playing any less musical. I think that you have opened up that wonderful window into a world where an interpretation is not fixed in stone but is constantly evolving, constantly growing and changing and self-enriching. I know it can be a little scary to leave the familiar behind, but I think it's pretty obvious the rewards make it worthwhile. And I think your post also illustrates how our esthetic has been formed by technical limitation. We accept a phrase as pleasing when it's actually plodding in its regularity, because so many pianists simply don't have the technique to make a more bold statement. And so we all end up in this pianistic rut. I wrote the book largely to help people get out of that rut, and I am so glad to see you succeeding. Again, bravo! Once again, my really grateful thanks for your posts, and it's nice to have you back on the forum, it has been quite some time since you've posted. All best wishes, AFF

Mr Fraser Thank you for your kind words and any advice you offer to all of us who are lucky to be members of your forum and owners of your books and knowledge. Thank you for your answers.I will try to have that in mind regarding pressure.I try to seperate pressure from skeletal playing.Soft muscle tonus gives an amazing variety of sound. While pressing gives an "explosion" for the moment but miliseconds after i feel like my muscles are "emptied" of their force and a slightly collapse of playing apparatus.I noticed that as i play no matter how hard i try if i overpress part of the arch collapses (though a tiny one at times). Today i had an effect of "old muscle memory eradication effect" (forgive me for the way i call it if it is wrong). I was so aware of the new organization of my hand paying attention not to press,to keep the arch to have the lumbricals and interroseus powering my hand,trying not to do the mistake of thumb liftings with no reason,or collapse of the knuckles,that my sound was very good. I was practicing part of an old piece i knew for years that has many octave and descending chords both on the left and right hand. My new organization was good and the sound so better that in the middle of the piece i forgot what i was playing. I tried to do it again but my new organization made me forget the "muscle" memory-(is this good technical way to describe it?)- part of it.I think i may not have learnt the piece musically but mechanically repeating it somehow over the years,so in a way i was not playing it paying attention to the melodies. The new organization and the awareness of the new method of playing somehow emptied out my way of playing it like i did before.I had to think "what notes am i playing now?".Really i didnt know what notes to play!And i have been playing this piece for years!And it was not a memory lapse or something. The melodies between voices were very different.I felt like i did not know the piece at all!. And of course it was more rewarding.More challenges musically. Mr Fraser my shoulder area seems to have lowered more over the days. Now i am not slouching but i feel that my shoulders are in the natural position as when i am straight up and walking and the "hovering and just touching the keys lightly technique" seems to have helped in that. I think i suffered from sitting like a stone trying to stand up on the bench and my shoulders were definitely lifted more than the natural area they should be. Now my breathing is natural and i do not feel my chest or back is compressed.It seems that better use of the arch and fingers somehow made other parts of the mechanism relax!.Like you say in your books.Fixing and having a good arm and hand makes many problems go away! However i am always trying to have the "awareness" mode on.It is so easy to revert back to old style.I have caught myself many times this day trying to do it.But i see that as time passes and i try new ways i may be able to change into something new.

Very nice to hear about your forgetful muscle memory. Yes, it means that your way of playing has improved so much you will now have to relearn the passage... I like this and often find my students experiencing it during lessons. As for your shoulders, did you get to the part in the very last chapter of Honing that describes my shoulders doing something very similar while I was playing the Horowitz Steinway? That experience still lies very fresh in my memory, it was quite a sudden and graphic change... Thanks for your kind words! AFF

Yesterday i had some more progress! I will try to describe it as accurately as i can. Imagine that there is an imaginary road that is made of single wood planks like that one here . I imagined that i was walking on that road with both of my feet all these years.I thought that all these years i was walking with half of my foot on the air while i was standing only on the let's say right part of my left foot or the left part of my right foot (while the other half was in the air!). If someone could see this it would mean that i am not physically adjusted well to walk my feet are not walking properly on the ground.(because half foot is on ground half is in the air!) I imagined that the same goes for my arm and fingers.After i started doing the as little touch as possible of the finger touching the keys and to try to have the softest muscle tonus as possible my fingers seem to have been able to feel the touch of the key when that happens. There is a new way of touching,one that respects the natural finger construct now when there is the physical pressure of the key i feel like the pylon finger is hovering on the key and touching it slowly but at the same time it is an extension of the key,finger could become the extension of the keyboard as well keyboard the extension of key. That opened many doors regarding how i touch the keys and in the way the pylon fingers are walking or standing slightly. This happened yesterday and in an instant all my touch to the keyboard changed forever,i feel like a small child that could not see very well and now all the colors and all the shapes are available again! I mean i could touch a key but the pylon could be in the air and unstable like when half of the foot is in the air when walking on the wood plank.Or i could simply be running very well on that wood plank road but because my feet were touching and were prepaired well i could do miracles. The same goes for finger i believe after a while many pianists have to fix the way the bone fingers touch the key,what percentage and angle the bone touches the surface and how that thing is actually in respect with natural finger length or with the extension of the fingers.I mean many people play even slow passages that half of the finger touches the key while the other half is ready to fall down (especially in the black key area) or is in the air. The possibilities seem endless. I believe it is in the life of a person a radical change that happens once in a while and it is so intense that as an experiance is shocking! Tha happened yesterday.The more i read your books and try to apply the techniques you describe the more surprises happen and changes that change me forever as a pianist. Try to fell the fingers as being feet that have to walk on a very narrow road (example the black keys),if part of the finger is in the air and a very small part of it touches the road how stable or unstable is the situation? It seems to me now that the fingers touch the keys more organized and the way the keys are depressed the fingers are always close to the correct way.The attacks on the keys do not seem random but the fingers seems to reach the keys more efficiently! Kind regards!

Some more update. The last days i have been lowering the bench with a new awareness.I am trying not to stay still and stiff and feel like i am at peace with gravity and try to feel my skeleton floating in me when i sit. Always trying to have the as natural as possible finger technique that simply touches the keys very little at first.I noticed that while i may be sitting lower,my speed increased in scales,arpegios,leaps and fast passages. The only problem is octaves and double notes.Sitting lower somehow makes me feel stressed.While there is always the effort to activate the fingers and respect their natural design and not bash by making movents only with arm and shoulder,there seems to be a freezing in my playing. Could that be an exaggeration of the current method i use to play octaves?I mean if i sit higher i may not be activating the fingers much and simply just play by rigidifying the hand,and that thing is magnified the lower the bench is? I feel that if i sit just 5cm taller octaves would benefit.However the scale passages and arpegios are all right with no tension at all right now.If i sit higher i will lose some strength and the scales,arpegios will be under less control i feel. So i am at a dilema,should i continue to sit lower and try to play octaves and double notes ?Do i need to activate fingers more?Generally what is your opinion regarding very difficult octave and chord passages?Is someone sitting higher having the benefit of playing easier passages that someone that sits lower has to be more careful?Why is it so easier to have top speed in octaves when you sit a little higher? Kind regards

UPDATE: It seems to me the lower i have to sit,the further away from the piano i should be.I noticed that my sit bones were too near the piano in the sense that i was sitting on the 1/3 of the front area of the bench.I moved myself more "insise" to the bench,by 2/3 and some problems seemed to have been removed.And also the knees higher than the back seemed to have been healed a bit. Although i have to say that the pressure effect on my sit bones is lower,there seems to indicate that i should sit a little higher. Now on the playing,my fingers seems to have been re-educated.Less external movements yet more internal contractions and functions.Less stress.But i have to be there watching.Old technique seems like to be lurking in the back of my mind as i have not made my new playing be part of my reflexes yet.Although i am trying hard for this to happen. What would you suggest to me?I feel at times while i am doing all right that my back and sit bones are taking an extreme force.Like i am compressed and part of my internal self pushes me down and i try to lift it up.Is this a sign that i should sit higher? I am experiancing a very large change to the bulk of my playing as i am experimenting with lots of conditions and parameters. Kind regards