Legatto 3rds

Any ideas on these. They seemed like they would be easy enough. WRONG!!! I can't get them to be legatto in the same way I have been succesful with scales/arpeggios. Things for thought... 1. Fingering: I have the hanon fingering and the Tobias Mathy's fingering(which is the opposite of hanon's) Is one better than the other? If not should I choose one and stick to it or learn both. 2. Do we play "alan legatto"??? By this I mean, say in the right hand if the first 3rd is held with fingers 1 and 3, when the second 3re is connected with fingers 3 and 4 should all 4 fingers be held for a second. This seems very difficult and unatural at a slow speed and I can't imagine playing like that quickly. I have been doing what I like to call the see-saw where when the first 3rd is half way back up the second 3rd is half way down. This seems to help with feeling the keys coming up(By the way I think this is as if not more important than feeling them go down in developing a good sound) and having a good wrist movement. Any thoughts on how to practice these and/or a definition of what constitutes good/true legatto 3rds would be greatly appreciated. OH Alan , Thanks for the advice on activating the thumb on arpeggios. You were right in saying that is the key to playing them well.

Alan, you may notice my fingering is not correct in my explanation of legatto 3rds. I ment to type if the first 3rd is held in the RH with fingers 1 and 3 and the second 3rd is taken with 2 and 4.

Remember, the overholding that I often recommend is a didactic exercise, meant to give the hand a certain feeling and establish a certain function in it. Trying to play double thirds with both voices totally legato can be useful in developing a sense of flexibility and movement in the hand and fingers. But to PLAY them that way is not easy! I actually do play them legato (for instance in the coda of Chopin 4th Ballade) but it's AS IF I don't. You have to dispense with ANY slight sense of pressing - any pressing at all quickly makes it impossible. SO: practice them legato, ESPECIALLY sensing legato at the - even more than at the fingertip. Do this so obsessively that finally the sense of security and support is so strong and palpable in the top knuckle that you can play NON-legato WITHOUT your hand pumping at all. It remains a totally secure platform from which the fingers fall into the key. It's as if you were still really playing legato. Finally reinstate just enough physical joining of the notes that you keep a continual sensory connection to the key without that connection accumulating any pressure. Voila, they start to go like the wind! AFF

I'm going to laminate this post and tape it up inside my shower. This is exactly where I am right now in my own progress: practicing the overholding in order to keep the legato feeling in my knuckle. I think I feel it. I strive now to instill that as an inviolable force of habit (so I can lighten up one day on those lower notes in Chopin's Op. 10, No. 2.)

Hi First a stupid question to Alan, what exactly do you mean by pressing? Speaking of exercises I was brought up with the dexterity exercises by Isodor Philippe I think they helped a lot to develop very strong hands and fingers.As a bonus you also got the ability to play any possible combination with 5 fingers- a good solfegestudy I've been working with Alan's ideas on a regular bases for some month's and I'm amazed of my own progress. It took a long time to find out that the thumb and the 2nd finger were useless, dead meet.My arch looked good but it didn't function. Very very hard to beleive but when suddenly Feux-Follets starts to move descently-respect man. I probably worked those Philippe-exercises with more or less collapsed arch and so on. But when I think of them now they do develop the skills of the craft of pianoplaying if played properly. Liszt had something similar maybe Philippe got it from him I don't recall. Eric

I have been working on a problem of thirds also. There is a two-octave run of chromatic thirds in the second movement of Ginastera's Sonata #1, and it is supposed to go incredibly fast. Even though I had practiced it a fair amount using "overholding," (and I was getting the hang of "walking" quite well in other parts of the piece), I didn't seem to be making any headway with this run. Then I read what Alan said here and decided to go back for another look. I couldn't feel "legato at the top knuckle" like Alan says, but it helped to know that I shouldn't be pumping my hand or pressing, as that seemed to be my automatic response as soon as I started into the run. Anyway, I was eventually able to get the thirds working by going very slowly, deliberately transferring the sensation of walking (that I had in other sections of the piece) into my execution of the thirds, at first taking only two or three of them at a time. I went no faster or further than would allow me to maintain the walking sensation, or the sensation of my fingers just dropping into the keys without pressing or needing to pump my hand. Once I could do the entire run that way at a very slow speed, I began to speed it up very gradually. Eventually, after many repetitions, I can now do it faster than anything I had done previously, and it doesn't seem like I've yet reached the limit. Learning how to "walk" on the keys has been a big discovery for me--thanks Alan! It makes so many things much easier. My old way was to press or push in an effortful way to get the keys down. That generated a lot of tension. But "walking" with a functional arch gives this wonderful feeling of ease and support, so that tension relaxes and my touch is more sensitive. It also makes my playing sound much better; I'm getting that "skeletal knock" that Alan talks about. My playing overall is decidedly clearer and more even. And the shift in my technique has been generalizing nicely to many different aspects of my playing. Now I'm eager to try all kinds of new music, to see what I can do.

Mr Rush, I get so excited when I read something like your post. You really got it! It's obvious from your words. I get really happy when I see that the concepts are clear enough that they offer concrete, practical help even at a distance. Bravo! AFF

As for pressing: I mean any touch on the piano key that is heavier than an ounce or two, let's say. When you go to the bottom of the key, you feel first skin to key, then a little more pressure gives you flesh to key, and finally you get to a certain point of firmness or clear connection which is bone to key. Pressing begins immediately after bone to key - anything more than the absolute minimum kinetic energy into the key needed to create a bony feeling is pressing. Another way of expressing it: pressing is "down." Standing on key is "up," even when you feel firmly connected to the key. Although you are firmly connected, you feel as if you could leave at any moment with no preliminary need to free yourself or reduce pressure. Nice question, it makes me think! AFF

Alan, you are to be doubly congratulated on your ability to communicate this stuff from a distance, given that several fine teachers I've worked with in person have tried to teach me much the same thing but did not succeed. For instance, my first teacher as an adult some 25 years ago (a stellar performer) started me off by pointing out the arch of the hand, but did not pursue it with me. She also from time to time mentioned the idea of "walking" at the keyboard, suggesting that certain technical problems I faced at the time would be solved when I learned to walk. But she did not have the specific means to teach me how to do it, and instead focused closely on the music itself. A later teacher of mine belonged to the "arm weight" school, and she had her own version of walking (I now see in retrospect); her discovery of it had apparently been a major turning point in her career, but since she understood it entirely through the lens of arm weight, in her teaching she said nothing about the role of the arch in supporting that weight, and my collapsing arch made a mess of it. --Rush

EXACTLY! I have seen really great arm weight teachers, including the sadly recently deceased Yonty Solomon, use an amazing arch and never say a word about it in their teaching. Of course the student, not being in the know, tries to get the teacher's results without using the teacher's resources and it doesn't work. I think virtually all of us were taught to "hold an apple in the hand" or something similar when we began to play. That's playing with an arch, right? And yet, how many of us really do it now? It's my training in Feldenkrais Method - that deals with body structure and function - that 'opened my eyes.' After that experience, to me it's so obvious that sometimes I feel like the little boy in : "Hey, you don't have an arch!" It's our blind spot in piano technique. AFF