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Alan i have the temptation to ask about the Horowitz piano,how did you feel the rebounds?I strongly believe Horowitz must have used this technique for some of his majestic fortisimos. If we try to take advantage of the rebound thing aren't we always tuned to the technical limitations of the specific piano we play?(other pianos have light resistance some others are very heavy).

Surprisingly enough, not as much as on the Landowska Steinway, and not as much as I expected. But more than average. It's actually hard to say. I was plunged so deep into pulling the amazing sounds that were possible out of that piano that to tell the truth, I don't even really remember. But if the rebound had been exceptionally present I think I would have remembered... And of course, although it is still regulated extremely lightly with a high touch weight, it is nowhere near as finely honed as it was when he had it. AFF

Yeah, agreed. I think the weird thing is that the non-legato at speed resembles the actions of legato at a slower tempo more than non-legato at a slower tempo (in the arm, at least). I think it's a bit like swinging across some hanging bars. If you go slow and let go, you'll fall off. If you go fast, there's not enough time to fall, so you need not necessarily always be touching one of the bars. However, at the piano, the arm will hold you up instead, if you lose contact between notes- putting it in a completely different state to the released one it needs to be in. I think this is why legato practise is always useful in slower speeds, even if not needed at tempo. The faster non-legato involves the "hanging" arm that can only be utilised in a slow tempo if proper legato is employed. Without that, it either becomes a held arm, or one that constantly fluctuates between held and released. I think it seems to make rational sense, if viewed this way (odd as it looks on the surface). I definitely don't think it's right for anyone to say you don't need to practise legato. As for key rebound, when you land on cement, it doesn't bounce you back up at all. There's an impact, and the resulting "up" force doesn't make you go up at all. It just stops the down. The energy is transformed into compression and, if strong enough, breakage! No up at all. If you land on a trampoline, you do get bounced back up again. So how much is a piano key like cement, and how much is it like a trampoline? Yeah, fair point. I'm wondering how much is the from key springs and how much is from that. Actually, I think the keys themselves do provide a very notable up-force. Although I didn't make it clear before, my main point was not so much about the key raising the finger- but more to point out that the finger cannot do anything to raise the key. Obviously you cannot pull the key up, so it's just a matter of how well you are letting the key come up of it's own accord. However, how much the key can move the finger is certainly very interesting to add to that. I've found that if you rest on a thumb and play a note with other fingers, the up-force is much more inclined to move a finger that just releases. However, if it is the only finger down, the arm's weight makes it much harder to have the finger moved by the key, without muscular withdrawal. There's an exercise I've been using recently that gives a good illustration of how strong the reaction force can be, by the way. If you rest your hand on your leg, so the fingers are only just touching your thigh (but not resting on it at all) and pull back very sharply (aiming to keep the arm totally passive) I find that I can bounce my whole arm a few inches in the air. The arm muscles shouldn't provide any active help- but neither should they respond by relaxing any more than they started. That way, what you see is the direct response to what the fingers have done- with everything else remaining constant. I think practising this has been a massively useful part of having finally figured out how to play repeated octaves (as in the Liszt 6th rhapsody). I could barely do it all before without real seizure. However, if the hand has no need to provide any active up forces at all, it's simply a matter of plucking and allowing the bounce to take you up. However, in a trill I'm not quite so sure.

One of these days I'm going to have to teach you how to use the "quote" function of this forum.... I love your analogies - always so original and always so apt. Great! Another really perceptive observation... This is a very cool discovery. Have you extrapolated it to the point of realizing that the functional support offered by the thumb in the scenario you describe can continue even when it is not rooted in a key? When you root it in the key, it creates a certain muscular organization in the hand. This organization can continue, as a latent amount of muscle tonus, even when the thumb leaves its key. Just as your hip joints maintain a fairly high amount of tonus even when the leg is not actually bearing weight. Thanks for these cogent observations! AFF

Yeah, this is something I'd mostly forgotten about for a while. I think my muscles have developed enough that I can generally now get pretty decent support and knuckle shape without involving the thumb conciously. HOWEVER- I noticed recently that my thumb was occasionally throwing itself outwards when making transitions (eg. turning under in scales and in op. 10 no. 1). Just the slightest trace of inward action (even if felt solely in the end segment) seems to be enough to keep it stable and prevent it from flicking out, but it takes a hell of a lot of concentration to maintain that in these passages. Definitely something I need to pay a lot of attention to. It's amazing how small the difference is, but I suppose any slight trace of inward action prevents the unwanted outward reflexes from kicking in. What's the trick to the quote thing, by the way? I'm always too lazy to copy and paste the opener and closer, if there are various bits. Is there a quicker way?

You click on the "quote" button at the upper right of the post you want to quote. That entire post appears in a new post box. You then erase all the parts of it you DON'T want to quote, which leaves the parts you DO want inside the HTML code that you'll find at the very beginning and end. You then add your own commentary OUTSIDE that HTML code and voila! I just did it myself. It only took me about 3 years to figure it out - pretty good, eh? And I even figured out that if you want to quote more than one part, in separate quote boxes, you just copy and past the HTML code where you need it... Do you think maybe I'm in the wrong profession and should have been an Internet geek? AFF