Legato And Non Legato

hi there. i've playing for a while but i decided to come back to the roots because i had a few technical issues. so i started those first studies from czerny's op 599. now the first question is how should i play the notes if no indication is written?legato?non legato?or staccato? i know that when slurs begin to appear you have to lift the hand in order to mark the end of that phrase and play the notes smoothly inside the slur. but what if no slurs or indications under the staff appear? it doesn't seem difficult when whole, half and quarter notes are used. but at least now it seems almost impossible for me to play 8th or 16th notes lifting the fingers everytime. i am not using them yet but i am just thinking ahead. my second question is about executing non legato. does non legato neccesarily mean detached? or you just play them without that smooth blend that legato requires and don't bother about hand lifting? and the third question refers to thumb passing. for instance the shift between Bb(4th finger) and C(1st finger) in the right hand when playing Eb Major. how can i make that transfer more easy and smooth? ps i heard that even light bodybuilding can affect piano performance. is it true? i do a few sets of rows each morning using 2 kg weights.

Good questions! You should be able to play , or non-legato, or somewhere in between, depending on the sound you want. But this is an etude, so presumably its purpose is to make you capable of having that choice. So let's go through some of the basics of my book & film in telescoped form: 1) Learn to play them as legato as possible, overholding 2, 3 or even 4 notes when you can (Film Chapter 2). This will show your hand where it was unconsciously collapsing, because the collapse will now interfere with the smooth flow of notes. Do this without raising the fingers at all. You can even try not even the fingers but angling your hand in the direction of the next note so the finger kind of falls into the key and pushes it down "by accident." Do all this to discover how your hand can stand on its fingers freely and securely. 2) Continue with legato but now lift the fingers maximally high whenever they are not playing, especially immediately after playing a note - get each one back up sky high (Film Chapter 8 ). Make sure this lifting does not destroy the absolute connection of notes. 3) Once the sense of legato is instilled in your reflexes, dispense with physical legato: float your hand above the keyboard so your fingers can barely reach the keys, and let each rope-finger in turn drop into its note but in a way that it barely reaches the bottom of the key bed before being pushed back up and out by the weight of the hammer returning the key to its rest position (Book II - Honing the Pianistic Self-Image). Here the hand is like a hovercraft instead of a platform on pylons, making it maximallly malleable. As for , again it is a multi-step process to teach your hand how to do it capably and effortlessly. 1) Hold your 4th finger note and pass your thumb under to play its note. Hold them both down and push the space between them up as high as possible, creating a palpable bridge structure in your hand. Practice letting this bridge or arch collapse and then building it up again many times until you really know the feeling of a potent, standing bridge-hand. Then play the scale again and STOP when you arrive at these two notes, again hold them down and consolidate the bridge. Do you see how strong the tendency is to let the bridge be weak and collapsed, flaccid? 2) Now don't worry so much about actually connecting the notes - at high speeds this simply never happens. But The only change is that now that the arch is potent in a fluid way, on the fly, rather than fixed and static. Finally, can help or hurt your piano technique, all depending on how you do it - do you simply try to build strength, or are you trying to maintain maximum sensitivity and discover how your hand actually works? If you do it speculatively, body building can be a real help; done mechanically, you are probably just dulling your senses - not so useful! There, now you don't have to go out and buy either the book or the DVD - do everything I've written here and you'll be just fine! (joke) AFF

Thank you very much. A very logical and effective method. I couldn't find those solutions by myself. I do bodybuilding just to give my laterals and low back an impulse because i had some problems with stress in the back when i began playing guitar and piano. I guess that changed because I am studying more efficiently now but besides that consciousness of muscle stress I thought that a little workout would do nothing wrong. And I wanted to check for some advice. Does non legato require detachment of the notes(lifting the fingers off the key)? Or you just avoid that overlaping that legato requires?

Again, the more variety you can create in your sound, the better off you are. So a non-legato could be anything from just barely neglecting to really connect the keys, to a vigorous lifting of the finger, to a quick curling (out the back door, film chapter 8 ) of the finger for a hyper-staccato. Try them all! AFF

Ha! I love this. We can all learn so much, when taught be someone who knows. Bob T

One thing that occurred to me recently (after having been stimulated into a great deal of allround thinking from both the book and discussions here) is the fact that most people almost certainly judge the point of releasing the preceding note from the point of . In the long run, I suspect that this would actually be an excellent way to get the semi-legato sound that Horowitz often used for passage work. However, during slow practise, if one key is starting to go up before the previous one has finished going all the way down, there's a split second where the arm cannot rest upon the keybed. Every new note requires a tiny point where the arm is 'held' in the air, rather than supported on the key bed. I've recently noticed how virtually every student I have has been playing with this near-legato- rather than with a full sense of physical connection. I discovered how much of a problem this has caused me only recently, through doing the overlapping exercises (where you stop to feel the sense of weight on two fingers, before releasing the first). Apologies if I'm simply restating a point that Alan directly covers in the book (which I haven't gone back through for a while now), but I recently realised that there is a tremendous tendency to want to start both movements at exactly the same time- which inevitably produces a physical hiccup that can have enormous consequences (even though the sounds may still be connected!). I think it is rare that general instincts lead a student to do anything other than begin the ascent of the resting finger at the same time as the finger that follows begins to descend. It was only after trying the overlapping exercises that I came to feel how this actually equates to hopping (as no physical support is being offered during the point where both keys are mid-way up)- no matter how smooth the transition had previously seemed to feel. I know that Alan is not a particularly big promoter of the 'arm-weight' approach, but I realise now that unless at least one finger is ALWAYS in contact with the bottom of a key, it simply isn't possible to properly apply the weight of the arm through a finger (rather than physically hold the arm in place from the shoulder). I've recently started stressing to all students that you need to judge the release of a preceeding tone from the moment the following key has reached the key-bed and not from the moment that the following key has only begun to move. Thinking this way has certainly been making a phenomenal difference to my own playing. When these micro-seconds of physically holding the arm up from the shoulder are completely eliminated, it suprised me to discover just how much more ease can be felt in the upper body. Thanks for raising the sheer importance of this!

BRAVO Andrew! Your whole post is completely right on! I love it when somebody else rephrases in their own words an essential, pertinent truth which they have arrived at through their own experience. Feldenkrais describes learning as that moment when you "discover" something that you may have been led to earlier by someone else, but which you later forgot and then still later rediscovered by arriving at it through your own perception - now it's really YOURS in every sense of the word. So yes, you we are missing it (emperor's new clothes syndrome). But now you have painted it with fresh words and thus brought it new life, which is a wonderful thing! AFF

In the beginning I considered the overholding exercises and the thai-chi-walkingin in the DVD as transitional.But it has more and more become a standard procedure exercise with every composition and every passage. My wife shot a clip with me playing recently and I could then to my great pleasure see that it looks more and more (from distance) like my hands and fingers are immobile like I'm doing nothing clued to the keyboard so to speak and that must be the result of these exercises. Due to previous learning way-back I'm also afraid of overdoing this overholding so my question is are there any recommendable restrictions?I wouldn't dream of overholding (except for harmonic reasons) when it's showtime rather the absolute contrary. Do you actually use these exercises on a daly bases?Maybe even at showtime? here is another silly question.I've found that the more strength and flex I develop in the hand muscles the easier it gets to maintain a longterm pp and p playing which is very welcome musically. Is there a connection or would you suggest other reasons?I know that many pianists wouldn't agree that develloping muscles is the issue. Another less-desirable effect is that I now need a lot more warming-up as my playing is more dependent on hand-muscles. eric

Great questions, Eric! Overholding is tricky because it is SO helpful and so conducive to progress and a real change in the entire organization of your hand, as well as a profound evolution in your sound - and yet, it can become problematic. There comes a certain point where the very thing that helped you now becomes restrictive. Once the hand really knows its own structural stability, it begins to search for more and more freedom in the use of that structure. Once the structure really knows how to stand, you need to go beyond standing. There are people who teach never to play legato but get that singing cantabile from connecting with the pedal. The hand eventually evolves to a point where this too becomes a viable and useful solution. But I still use overholding frequently and often even in performance. In a large hall, blurring many things with your fingers can make them sound better - richer. You must discover this by trial and error: the important thing is to know about it and make the experiement - try it out! As for having more muscles - you are right, the stronger the hand is, the better you can manage . However, there is no need for them to be tighter and thus require more warmup time. The ideal combination of skeletality and muscularity will give you strong muscles that still rely on the bones for a large part of overall strength, thus leaving them always moveable. Maybe they are still holding some residual tension because the strengthening process is quite recent - hopefully they will be able to let go in time as you use a skeletal approach to enlighten them in their newfound power! Glad to hear about the changes in your hand on the keys! AFF

Thank's Alan! I guess one shouldn't forget (ever) that the groundtheme is sceletality.Here are some more thoughts. Grasping is as you say ever present in pianoplaying. When working with some fast passages with acciaccatura with double thirds 4th,5th etc like in Grieg Amin or Ballade I've tried to literally grasp. I place my fingers on the outside of the key and then press the two keys by (almost) grasping the sides of the keys between. Pinch? in english. This works well with the thumb involved but it can be done with any group of fingers if the given position is favorable.This involves another group of muscles does it?Is it worth starting to think about these? What you don't want in Grieg Amin is to mess up these few bars in any way. I haven't gone crazy just experimenting... Eric