Hands and fingers hovering on keyboard.Standing vs hovering

Hello people!How are you? Personally i have been retraining myself....Something new is happening something that i should have done when i was maybe 5-6 years old,the frist time i touched a piano. I am preparing something new,something that many of you people will feel strange when they see it.I am not kidding.These videos that i am prepairing will be a proof of my new concepts and ideas. This video footage will be proving the fallacy of the arm weight school. It is something that will underline all the problems i have and had as a pianist,and of course the solution to these problems. Because i have some exams at the university,i will be unable to post it until the exams are over.That will be 16-17 of this September. Kind regards

The reason i think most of us want to discuss things such as lumbricals interroseus,forearm,arm,uparm wrist usage is that we have to and we need to.Sounds crazy? No, it's not Imagine that you have all the musicality...I always loved music i had musical ideas,regarding dynamic control,had big hands and talent for music but something was missing inside so i could not be a miracle kid that is 10 years old and plays the dante sonata. Having musical ideas and discusing that chopin should be played that way or the other way is of no use if you can't control the outcome. Piano_freak let's say that you were my teacher and i was a gifted pianist that didn't need to pay attention much to the technical aspects,all would be ok. If my hand collapsed or the thumb and index finger were not functioning correctly no matter how good will or talk we could have regarding the emotion of music it would be useless.My technical limitations would be the brake that would not allow me to perform it in the way it is meant to be played. That's way there are different levels of performances as well as people,to someone who has large fingers you dont have to tell him how to play octaves relaxed,usually the large span helps achieve a good result.But if someone has a smaller hand then what?You simply sit down and talk about the emotion ? "YOU KNOW LISZT OCTAVES IN LES FUNERELES HAVE TO BE DRAMATIC TENSE AND AGITATED AND FAST" then what happens is that in 95% of the cases the technical limitations will kick in and no matter how much you want to talk about emotion and musical ideas,it will simply not work. The fact that you are one great virtuoso does not mean that all the other people can understand the internal function of your hand mind and thought.While you are a very professional others are none! And that is the dissapointing factor,in Greece's as well as in Great Britain shcools of music (i know that from friends) there are many professors that have not a single idea regarding the things mr Fraser mentions in his book. A good friend of mine was dissapointed in the 2nd Saint saens concerto.In the place that has some double notes 3ds and 6ths and some scale passages,she could not pass a certain point. Her teacher claimed that her 4,5 fingers were the problem because of the passage. Upon observing her play having read the books and dvd of mr Fraser i managed to find at once the limitation.Thumb and second finger interdependence thumb was in the air second was collapsing big brother thumb comes to the rescue knuckles drop tension builts and the passage is far from clear! By showing her what the thumb should be doing and the function of the metacarpals and lumbricals in maintaining a good arch and how the fingers should play that passage within an hour she was able to free herself and play that. The professor of her music school that took quite a large sum of money just for one hour of lessons had advised her to play technical exercises for thirds because of the limitation of 4,5!. I was able to fix her problem by knowing that is going on. Now if you had her would you talk to her about musical spirit and ideas in the saint sans concerto and then torture her and tell her "you have not studied enough,let your fingers bleed till you feel it ?" or would you fix her the problem the underlying one regarding the thumb usage and index finger? I protest against the idea ""you have not studied enough,let your fingers bleed till you feel it ?" because in my whole life i had music teachers and professors talk like that and i feel very angry.... They talked about music and ideas,they claimed i was not musical and did not think musical,yet i had the musical ideas,music was inside me...!but they didn't help me regarding my technical limitations,regarding the arch the thumb,the cobra strike technique...they paid no attention wether in a scale my arch is ok or not ,or wether i had tension when i play chopin etude op 10 no 1 or 2. Just musical advice with no help regarding the real problems. Their technical advice,to study mechanical exercises and study for hours. Like torturing a man that cannot reach when he jumps in the pole 5 meters,and you say "HEY JUMP TO 6 METERS THEN 5 METERS WILL BE OK FOR YOU". Now that is plain dangerous to hurt yourself,if you can't manage the jump to 5 meters you have to lower it untill you feel comfortable ,and then you raise it little by little always trying to feel you are comfortable with the jump . I suffered in the hands of an arm weight teacher for 2 years,all my musical ideas were F*ck*d up.She insisted on the up and down of the wrist feel the hand empty and only feel like you raise the wrist the other hand should be empty!. This is crap,i was analytical i felt my self,i knew that every lifting of the apparatus was done with other things that i could not isolate,raising the wrist involves other muscles in forearm and the active role of uparm,let's not talk about the shoulder.No that was arm weight,studying chopin op 10 no 4 with every note slowly with the wrist going down,then study groups of notes,2 notes wrist down 2 notes up.Then speed it up. That was TORTURE!!!Music and technique were seperated. For my case when i found mr Fraser books or other material (i have been collecting piano books for years),it made me fly.My music got better,my arpegios are smooth with no need to sit on black man's genitals like you said.I feel the difference i can now understand the musical terms,if someone talks to me regarding musical ideas i can fulfil them and do them because my understanding behind the way sound is created is ok. Don't assume that because you were gifted with a blazing technique and mind that can do wonders with the hands that all others can do it.Don't assume that because you only need musical advice that other people can do it like you. What would you say to someone that has the musical ideas,and desire yet there is something bad...Would you talk regarding the thunders and aggresiveness of some of Prokoffievs style or would you try to fix a bad car that the machine has not good oil?. Would you tell to someone that has a car that can reach 50km,ok in this passage it is absolutely essential for the beauty of music to reach 300km we are at the skies like in a spaceship watching the universe?. For god's sake no...it would not work.Fantasy is something,inner listening is something but a malfunctioning hand no matter how much desire we have won't produce the effects of a good hand that is organized and knows what to do. I believe in the synthesis of the 2 worlds.Music that is created by a hand that can function musically.Technique alone is nothing,like some crazy modern piano pieces badly composed at times and even more badly performed,with clusters and horrific sounds making nosense to the ear. Music ideas are ok but all will laugh with someone that makes mistakes or slows down on the Rachmaninov 3rd concerto even if he has 500% musicality. I hope you can understand what i am trying to say Kind regards I enclose the entire quote from this old post just to get clear what I'm responding to. I can only tip my hat to your eloquence, Nikola. A really cogent argument that for me clarifies and justifies the attention we pay to HOW we do WHAT we do... Thanks! AFF

These days i had an idea that i call "whole finger grasp" acrtion.Let's suppose that we try to play a note,most people will try to play the key with the soft pad "cushion" part of the finger all that flesh that really shines and creates a magnificent sound. Now let's forget that technique and try something completely different. With the natural finger shape let's play a note with a finger with the nail of the finger that is let's suppose that the finger is in a slightly curled position one that allows the nail to touch the key surface. Now i dont want you to try this method with actively curling the finger that is about to play,instead use as natural finger shape as possible while the nail is on key(that requires different use of uparm and forearm to do it,that is the hand and elbow may require different placement for this to happen). Now maintaining that new posture of the finger pressing lightly the note with the nail,bring the arm and hand forward while the wrist is elevated a little,you will notice that if the finger is not moved from the place what takes action is that the finger is in someway grasping differently into a naturally position that is somewhat more curled,if that happens in the next moments you can actively lift the fingers that were grasped.I believe this action helped me curl my fingers without curling them with the muscles we tend to use normally. I believe this and the hook offer extraordinary ways to manipulate the fingers.Anyone else tried something similar?

I believe that these days i am at the process of fine tuning my playing mechanism.I noticed that after i started reading the books of mr Fraser and trying to apply all the new data to fine tune my technique,i see that something radical different is happening now. I have been trying to keep a solid arch the metacarpal hummocks in the air ,try to never let that bridge go away. But right now i noticed that the finger exercise of touching the key with the nail while moving the arm and hand forward in the piano while the finger and nail remains on the same spot ,radically made my finger fold unfold or grasp without any muscular effort from the usual muscles that we use to grasp our fingers but rather use the muscles that move the whole uparm,forearm forward or backward from the keysurface. Now this started to make me have solid fingers without fixated joints,i noticed that the arch is a little lower but any attack allows the finger to grasp while not being fixated.Like a rope or whip,it is a radically different approach to me. This improve speed and actually frees the finger for manipulation,i noticed that all this time i tried to manipulate the fingers with too much effort from the extensors and flexors. Now i came back to play a fast passage while using curling technique and noticed that with the new parameters the grasping and curling produced much clearer sound,my question how should curling be used?While using it i noticed that there may be times where it is possible to use the in and out movements of the uparm and forearm to grasp without moving the finger away from the key. I want to have a total control over the motion that takes place when i have such passages.Is it possible?Or should i just try to think more musical in terms and just integrate the motions use them forget them in my reflexes and do what comes as if the piece of music i want to play is improvised ?

I think your second option is great, but why does that preclude the first option. Don't abandon your fascinating process of discovery just when it's at its richest. Everything you're describing in these two posts is very cool. Things are opening up for you very nicely. You're doing great! I'll share a story with you: Kemal had several chamber music concerts recently for which he had very little time to prepare. He had to learn the Brahms Piano Quintet plus a bunch of other stuff in two or three days... He was practicing like a maniac as he loves to do, and in the middle of all that he discovered a way of moving his finger that he had been searching for for 20 years, which allowed him to do certain things more easily. So it seems it's possible to live in both of those worlds simultaneously - it doesn't need to be either/or. AFF