Keybedding, Impact And Injury

Just written a post that may be of interest- particularly to anyone who has suffered any kinds of injury. I'm not yet going too deeply into the practical issues within this preliminary post, but I hope this provides a pretty solid background into the nature of what (I strongly suspect) is the key difference between what does and doesn't tend to cause injury. I hope this provides a pretty clear illustration of the general issues that determine the difference between healthy contact with keybeds (which is essential for good thumb stabilisation, in particular) and unnecessary pressure/heavy collisions. I hope that thinking about these issues in relation to work on Alan's practical exercises would be very useful. Although Alan doesn't talk about it in quite this way, I feel sure that these issues are extremely relevant and run behind much of what I've learned from him. Soon, I hope to provide some closely related exercises (which tie in extremely closely with Alan's active thumb, in particular) to improve awareness of how to acutely perceive the difference between redirection of momentum and the risk of harder landings.

Thankyou for your research about this important issue. I remeber a former post where you claimed keybedding as a major cause to injury and now you developped that. Since then I'm inclined to agree I've had some intensive practise periods and sometimes "the stuff behind my knuckles" can get really stiff which doesn't mean I can't play but that I need like half an hour to warm up. Very annoying indeed. I've solved the problem by tapping which I guess is a real treat to any technical problem but I don't really understand what is going on.As a golfer I clearly see the analogy. Brilliant. Another thing"clubgolfers" has in common is the tendency to go down to fast in the downswing and thus waste all energy BEFORE impact.Combine that with an interruption in the follow through and there you have the average clubgolfer including myself. Like in golf I suppose when you play the piano you have to "wait" and not spend all your energy before impact and then follow though in the way you describe. Could you describe how keybedding (the wrong way) causes injury and where?

I've solved the problem by tapping which I guess is a real treat to any technical problem but I don't really understand what is going on. Yeah, that's an interesting one. The only thing with tapping is that I think it does encourage the on/off movements- which is great for lightning fast runs but not so good for for slower sustained actions. However, I think that very light low effort tapping can be extremely good for developing the unrepressed quality of movements, where there's no feeling of muscular braking along the way. In the past, I think I'd actually added repression when tapping- rather than done it in the usefully unrestrained way. I also like the slower sense of moving the hand around a consistent point of contact (for more sustained actions, rather than quick on/off ones) but I think both have plenty of value for getting confident movement in different situations. Another thing"clubgolfers" has in common is the tendency to go down to fast in the downswing and thus waste all energy BEFORE impact.Combine that with an interruption in the follow through and there you have the average clubgolfer including myself. Ah, interesting. I play some golf myself but not to a high level. I had wondered with some of the top pros- as they swing so enthusiastically, I sometime wondered whether they could still be saving something up for the real burst through the ball. I'm sure you're right though. I imagine that their timing and power is so great, that even when it looks like the've started going extremely fast extremely quickly, they're still saving up the maximum acceleration to go through the moment of actual contact. Also, I think the interruption is very important. I've sometimes had to tell beginners to think of one singular action from the top to the bottom of the key- otherwise they kind of "check" the key by prodding it a few millimeters in one movement and then trying to depress it fully with a separate action. This interruption often causes extremely thin sounds- so I tell them to just think of one similar motion from top to bottom. However, I am tending to feel that advanced players really should go more the golf way- where they feel a slightly slower initial acceleration with far more through the escapement. I think there's more scope for the biggest fortissimos this way, than if you start too quick too soon. Could you describe how keybedding (the wrong way) causes injury and where? If you aim head-on, or push through impact basically. It would be almost like the train accelerating harder as it hits a wall. I think this is where the confusion has been caused. In line with the golf analogy you DO want to be accelerating the most through the point of escapement. However, you have to be able to redirect the additional momentum through into a natural path of continuation. Otherwise the continuation of the action is equivalent to accelerating into a train crash. I think people have tended to see the two mind-sets as in contradiction- rather than realised that the optimum reality contains aspects of both ways of thinking. You accelerate straight through- but into redirected movement, not into impact. I'm confident that any repression in the movement actually makes the landing MORE harmful- rather than less so. Just look at that guy playing the minuet! I'll go into much more detail on this when I get on the post that is more directly about the practicalities of the issues raised.

Also, I'm going to write a post on efficiency issues to show how much energy is wasted by many common faults. A lot of that ties in very closely to the keybedding issue- as if energy is being wasted you need to put a lot more in to get a big sound. This makes the amount of wasted energy flying around far greater than in an efficient movement. Also, I've found some interesting ways to prove that relaxation can cause vastly more impact and associated strain than proper activation. I'm going to try to define something called "negative movement" (basically this is what Alan refers to as "collapse") which leads to very poor efficiency in a transfer. Relaxation often causes these movements and leaves a lot of energy to impact the keybed. "Positive moment" (in the opposite direction) is something that actively contributes to extremely efficient acceleration of the key- and which also gives any remaining momentum somewhere to go (other than into the impact of a dead stop). The principle is basically as simple as the fact that if something is moving one way, it can't be moved in the negative direction. So rather than attempt fixate or brace, you simply make sure that you are moving in a productive direction, around any joints that might otherwise collapse. I've already written up a fair amount of the post that goes into detail on this, so hopefully I'll be able to get plenty of things posted in my summer holidays.

Golfpro's have their maximum acceleration at impact and amateurs has often lost their power long before power.Escpecially when they try to hit hard and very far with the paradoxal result that the ball will go very short if at all. So the cure is to start slow and wait wait wait. Pro's swing looks fast but they kind of drop the club from the top completely loose and then lets the club accelerate.If you watch videos in slowmotion pro's have very different swings but they all look the same at impact and just before. If you transfer this to piano (which in a way is also a sport) you would have maximum acceleration just at impact which is the point where you pass the escapement. So how do you acheive acceleration through the key? I guess you just let the finger drop down "slowly" letting the key down a little bit and from there give it a blow (acceleration)? and then follow through by "redirecting" the club, sorry, the hand/finger.

"Golfpro's have their maximum acceleration at impact and amateurs has often lost their power long before power.Escpecially when they try to hit hard and very far with the paradoxal result that the ball will go very short if at all. So the cure is to start slow and wait wait wait. Pro's swing looks fast but they kind of drop the club from the top completely loose and then lets the club accelerate.If you watch videos in slowmotion pro's have very different swings but they all look the same at impact and just before. If you transfer this to piano (which in a way is also a sport) you would have maximum acceleration just at impact which is the point where you pass the escapement." Yeah, that all makes sense. Definitely agreed. Well, I wouldn't describe any of it as a "drop", generally speaking. Even in gravity drops, without the feeling of the muscles accelerating through the key you end up with the negative movement that limits energy transfer. But yeah, I think it's good to feel you're "saving up" just like in the golf swing. I think the trick is that the redirection happens by itself, as part of a single action. People often assume that advanced pianists are able to "relax" much more quickly after landing, but I'm certain the reality is that the movement inherently redirect momentum automatically. There's no special change upon reaching the keybed, but simply an automatic continuation. The further you continue the movement the more you redirect anyway. With those who make heavy contacts, the further you extend the movement, the more you dig in- unless they can time a split second release. I think that achieving this is a lot to do with the mind-set. Alan told me to think of trying to lift things up and away from the key- not to think of pressing the key down. Most of the exercises depend on this basic premise to at least some degree. Psychologically, if we think down, the whole arm tends to want to get involved too much. If we think up, we're more likely to free the arm and simply let it respond to the hand. If you imagine the same in a press-up it helps clarify. Strictly speaking, we go up because of a downward pressure that the ground gets in the way of- causing the reaction force to move you up. But we have to think up, in order to let the right places respond well to the consequences of that initial downward pressure. If we think down, we simply resist the natural upward movement and work against the reaction force. It's interesting to take virtually any movement and try reversing the perspective back and forth between opposite directions.

This is very interesting, by the way. Traditionally, the forward defensive is thought of as being a mere "block" where the bat just gets in the way of ball. However, this film clearly shows positive acceleration through contact- albeit a very small one. I think that it's essential to be accelerating through these things to have any control. Otherwise you'd either have to be absolutely rigid, with no give at all, or you'd have your bat pushed too much by the ball and lose all control. It's the same principle as the negative movement and positive movement issue I'm thinking of in piano playing. For a cricketer to be able to have what they call "soft hands" I feel sure that you need that small positive motion through contact. When you're making just some movement in the positive direction, there's no for the hands to grip especially tightly. Although the bat is visibly knocked back for an instant, it still goes on in the positive direction, because it has enough motion. Although it fairly easy to learn a feel for that, I think that a lot of cricket coaches fail to clarify that it's a small positive- instead using language that suggests you should move far more negatively.

That's an interesting terminology I just had some maybe irrational thoughts: The key is a lever and when you press the key down/forward with your pad or part of pad the angle between your pad and key must increase. Trying to keep that angle constant would result in a very awkward movement. Maybe crazy but it might have something to do with positive and negative movement. I think you're right about this redirection "theory" because I don't beleive the ability to quickly strain/relax muscles differ so much between individuals. Somewhere I read that there is absolutely no difference between pianists and non-pianists when it comes to the speed at which you press down the key. As usual these redirectional movements probably are so microscopic when integrated fully that it's hard to see but you can clearly see it with J Prat. Didn't know that it was Matthay that coined the word keybedding (that's where Taubmann got her ideas from?) but it must have been around as Lhevinne was a great advocater.Probably from Liszt like everything else.

"The key is a lever and when you press the key down/forward with your pad or part of pad the angle between your pad and key must increase. Trying to keep that angle constant would result in a very awkward movement. Maybe crazy but it might have something to do with positive and negative movement." Absolutely. Trying to force the angle to stay the same means a lot of tension. However, the angle CAN stay the same in a far healthier way, if the amount of negative movement (or collapse) s perfectly countered by just the right level of movement in the positive direction. This makes arm pressures far healthier than when simply trying to brace in a fixed position- although from the outside it probably appears to be completely still. "I think you're right about this redirection "theory" because I don't beleive the ability to quickly strain/relax muscles differ so much between individuals. Somewhere I read that there is absolutely no difference between pianists and non-pianists when it comes to the speed at which you press down the key." I'm not sure if that's necessarily true. I've actually been suspecting very strongly that the whole process can feel and indeed be slower if negative movement comes in. I'm still trying to get my head fully around this, but I think that the movement will take a little longer for the same end result- if there is give in the finger. When you remove the give through positive movement (even the strongest fixation can never have zero give in it) I have a strong suspicion that it happens quicker. If a professional moves slowly in a way where nothing is lost in negative movement, it can still produce plenty of tone in a very short space of time. Conversely amateurs would feel all the lossage and try to jab faster to compensate for all the wasted energy. In theory, they could end up feeling they are having to moving very fast- whereas the key itself could be moving relatively slowly due to all the loss. This is reasonably theoretical at the moment. It all makes rational sense, but the issue would be of a difference it might actually make. I think it could be notable though. In my post on efficiency, I want to show how an absurdly exaggerated negative movement is extremely slow through the key and produces miniscule tone. While nobody would be dumb enough to do the actual movement I'll show in practice, it illustrates how some form of time lag can certainly ensue. "As usual these redirectional movements probably are so microscopic when integrated fully that it's hard to see but you can clearly see it with J Prat." Yeah, it may be tiny. If the hand is properly linked to the arm's inertia, you have a hell of a good braking system to slow down any extra movement. I think this is where the arm's weight really comes in. It's like a safety net to enable confident and unrepressed hand action- although the shoulder needs to lighten it up plenty. Yeah, apparently Matthay was obsessed with it. However, I wouldn't associate that with what Lhevine said about the bottom of the keys. I feel pretty sure that Matthay was warning about unnecessary ongoing against the keybed- whereas Lhevine was wanting to encourage positive, unrestrained finger actions that end in stability rather than in flimsy balance, or with keys partially bouncing back up instead of settling under control. I think Matthay caused a lot of confusion by not clarifying the difference between negative keybedding and healthy contact with it. Ironically, the negative type can easily be made WORSE by trying to hold back- instead of playing positively to the bottom. To be honest, I probably should have come up with alternative terms myself, rather than continue to speak of "keybedding" later in the post. I think it can cause huge amounts of misunderstanding.

Playing "to the bottom fo the keys" is a phrase that I've heard a lot, although I've been uncertain as to the best way to achieve such a result. I'm presuming that the phrase means to let the key go as far down as it can go, as opposed to only letting the key go part of the distance it can go (i.e. playing "out of the keys" or "on the surface of the keys"). What is the best way to ensure that you go to the bottom of the keys without becoming excessively tense? I think that some pianists injure themselves because they press too hard on the keys, probably in an attempt to ensure that the key goes all the way down.