"Pulling Back" Piano Technique Pros And Cons

This is in reply to s take on pulling the arm back instead of letting it roll forward... I can't find the thread so am starting a new one to address it... Andrew, lengthening the arm by rolling the hand forward is crucial for you, because it addresses your hand's chronic inactivity. Most of your observations are correct but I am always a little leery because I feel that all your investigations miss the main point. You have to do all the stuff you do because you don't address your particular central problem, a lack of activation in your hand. When my hand works from the inside in a way that naturally and potently generates its arch, I almost inevitably roll forward and up - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Thus my arm automatically lengthens. If you are pulling back your arm to establish key contact, then you are forcing your hand into activation to save itself from being pulled off the keyboard. It's just another version of the arm weight fallacy (in arm weight technique as it is mostly practiced, the fingers are not proactive but reactive. Rare is the pianist who has evolved to the sophisticated, subtle organization which overcomes this barrier to empowered playing). You've got to do something to get yourself out of your vicious circle compensation strategies. You have to make your hand more proactive. This leads me to another point: sometimes I am disturbed when I see your posts confusing other forum members. For instance, what you advised a couple of years ago was fair enough, but he needs first and foremost to activate his hands. In the one time we worked together, this was the constant theme. He was nowhere in this department, and in one week he made huge strides. But he didn't understand his experience well enough for that new ability to crystallize in him, and so your later, on-forum advice threw him off. And I don't think he has ever gotten back on track since. This saddens me. AFF

Quite honestly, I think you misunderstand what I mean here. If something goes forward and up, something has to bring it back again- or it stays there, with the wrist bunched up in what eventually becomes a cramped position, unless you can come back out of it. I fully agree with the value of rolling over the top, but I'm also looking for the means of returning to the middle of alignment without the abrupt wrist "flip" to reset yourself. How can a pianist only go forwards? Something has to be capable of restoring regular alignment, in a functional manner- or everything gets locked into a limited position that it is very hard to relax in. It needs to be possible to restore regular wrist alignment not only after a long note or phrase, but also within the middle of a long phrase of series of notes, without interfering with the control over the line. As I said in the other thread yesterday, I'm not talking about pulling back in a way that transmits to the finger- which would mean it would be forced to hook itself into the key very firmly, in order to prevent sliding. It's simply about avoiding getting stuck a bunched forward position, in which the arm gets locked into a position that cannot be sustained with the same comfort as a traditionally aligned wrist. The pull back is stop the wrist from getting locked into the single option of constantly going forwards and up until trapped there- not to pull at the fingers themselves or the keys. Nothing I have said to Arhi is intended to detract from the hand activation element to any degree whatsoever. I have never encouraged him to to produce sound by a direct arm pull, but to simply straighten his wrist out- so the fingers are in a suitable position to move the keys. When I look at his old videos, I see his fingers working at a very indirect path to the keys- which is constantly sending out reactions that drag his wrist forwards. My feeling is that he is shying away from the finger actions, because he senses how they are contributing to pulling his wrist into a position that is not comfortable to sustain- just as my own right wrist used to get locked into that same bunched up position. With indirect finger paths, the more you activate the hand, the more you get dragged forwards. This makes it extremely hard to keep things going when you've already been pulled massively forwards half-way through a phrase- yet still have the rest of it to somehow get through. The finger actions become so indirect that they produce little and the arm naturally starts stiffening up in a bid not to get pulled further forward still, by reactions that are relentless tugging it forwards over and over/ I don't wish to encourage him to do anything other than move the keys with his fingers, but unless something can pulls his wrist back to straighten it out, it will be permanently stuck there. I still find that there's nothing more likely to encourage inactivity of my fifth finger than if I've allowed my wrist to have come forward and up and get stuck there. When I allow it to come back, I've been finding that my fifth is put in a position to make a really piercing melodic intensity that I could not access before- because the wrist was trapped into a place where the finger had no capability of acting like that on a key, no matter how much intensity of action or sound might have been intended. What I'm looking at is the ability to go either forwards/up or backwards/down at will- without getting stuck there. I've found that the most important thing of all in this is not to be stuck in indirect paths of finger movement- otherwise you end up permanently going forwards, without any means of restoring regular alignment. It's for this reason that I couldn't understand how the floating arm could possibly function, for a long time. Indirect finger paths were not compatible with it- because they kept dragging into a forward position that could not be escaped from. Lately, by altering the path of the finger actions, I've been finding that it's possible for an extremely light arm to either stay stable, go up or go back down- without interfering with the role of the fingers. Personally, I'm convinced that Arhi's problem lies in his indirect path of finger actions and that this encourages his senses to keep reducing the intensity, rather than to bring it up to the levels he needs.

The basic finger action which moves the key is one of several types of flexion. They have in common that if the finger is attached to the key and flexes, the arm will automatically want to move forward (to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). As soon as the flexion ceases, the arm naturally returns to its neutral without you having to do anything about it. It gets too complicated when you have to take responsibility for getting back to neutral. You should move in such a way that when the movement ceases, you are back in neutral naturally, automatically. Simplify, simplify! If you are locking forward then your finger flexion goes on too long in time. As for Archi, you never told him not to activate, but what you did tell him succeeded in distracting him from activation, as I knew it would - hence his subsequent problems... You sound like you are actually discovering what I describe above, in your own way - you just describe it differently. Congrats! warm wishes, AFF

The basic finger action which moves the key is one of several types of flexion. They have in common that if the finger is attached to the key and flexes, the arm will automatically want to move forward (to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). As soon as the flexion ceases, the arm naturally returns to its neutral without you having to do anything about it. It gets too complicated when you have to take responsibility for getting back to neutral. You should move in such a way that when the movement ceases, you are back in neutral naturally, automatically. Simplify, simplify! If you are locking forward then your finger flexion goes on too long in time. Is that definitely the case though? I'm not sure if I can agree with that as what runs beneath the surface. How can the arm come back when you are doing 7 or 8 vigorous finger movements (making for the same number of vigorous reactions) within a mere second? In a run of continuous semiquavers, every release is instant anyway. However, it used to tug my wrist out of alignment more mercilessly than ANYTHING where there was space to recover the alignment with between notes. Logically, that makes me certain that the problem was not failure to release the fingers in time but simply the very inescapable existence of those reactions. What options does that leave to counter the dysfunctional wrist position? From there, there is only the option of reducing that reaction by reducing the finger intensity outright (during the action of actually sounding the keys) or accepting that you will get tugged severely out of alignment/pulling back to try to reduce that. Whatever angle you approach it from, there's no very good answer to the problem of those reactions- unless the fingers find a different way to move, that never acts upon the arm in that way! What I'm currently convinced about is the straightening activity that I speak of as the extension action of fingers. With this, there's nothing tugging you forwards to start with and the same action that sounds the key just melds seamlessly into a stable balance- without any need to precisely time relaxation of the activity. For me, this has proved to be the big missing link- although I've only just begun to realise quite how this makes for the opportunity to allow the wrist to ease itself back into alignment at any time (even in the midst of a run of frantic semiquavers!). I still have plenty of work to go, but I feel like this is an important door that has only just opened itself to me at all. Before, forwards and up was my only option. The big problem was what to do after you've run out of room to carry on going forwards and up and urgently need to get back. I'll hopefully post some videos sometime in the near future, as the difference to the alignment of my right hand has already become pretty striking. Also, I got an interesting device the other day, Amazon sends me all kinds of free stuff to review and I was offered some ridiculous sounding machine that pumps electricity through your feet, to tone up the calf muscles. I've discovered that it's phenomenally useful to do it on my hands. The electricity flexes and releases all kinds of muscles, which promotes both freedom and awareness of the hands. It's a fantastic way to warm up and loosen the muscles before a practise session.

Horowitz plays by straightening his fingers quite often, especially in loud chords.

By the way, Andrew, have you read ? I would be very interested in what would change in your practice and perception from reading it. I have lots I want to say in response to your posts but I think it would be a far more efficient mode of communication if you would just read the book so I don't have to restate here everything that's already in there. AFF

? I would be very interested in what would change in your practice and perception from reading it. I have lots I want to say in response to your posts but I think it would be a far more efficient mode of communication if you would just read the book so I don't have to restate here everything that's already in there. AFF I have to admit that I've only actively been through a few of the exercises in detail so far (which I very much liked), although I've looked through rather a lot of it. Just coming up to having plenty of spare time in the holidays though so I'm definitely planning on working through a good deal more. I feel as if I'm much more generally in tune with the general issues of what you're looking for in terms of hand movement and support in general, since I changed my style of hand movement, but I'm keen to try out the specific details plenty.

Sounds like you are already making great strides. Enjoy and keep me posted about any insights that crop up. AFF

Yes, the reminder from the chapter about a lesson we had is probably what has stood out the most. The thing about getting the fingers active prior to sounding keys has made a huge difference. I know you don't like weight thinking, but using this as my yardstick for perception of weight and finger activity in a unified whole has been making a collossal difference. Many sensations can come and go in a way that conscious thoughts or intentions don't necessarily have any direct control over. However, if something goes wrong, I can always come back to the concept of feeling my arm resting down through the finger against the key surface and the finger trying to press the knuckle back up. When I get into this "primed" position before depressing the note, it's simply impossible to unwittingly be using too much weight or the key goes down by mistake. If anything is going wrong, I can always come back to this in slow practise and find positions where my fingers are primed to move the key properly. Not thinking about weight at all brings back old habits and I don't really know what I'm doing. Whenever I feel results sliding, looking for that preparatory link between finger and arm provides the specific antidote to the instincts that want to go back to reliance on arm pressure instead of finger action. Although it's often the finger that behaves too lazily to make the primed position, I still find many places where I need to get a feel of my arm trying to rest against the finger on the key surface(but with small enough pressure not to depress it by even a mm) in order to get the finger primed for effective movement. There's something in the arm that needs to let go a lot of the time- not to produce a large downward force, but to get the finger properly primed for its best possible quality of action.

s take on pulling the arm back instead of letting it roll forward... I can't find the thread so am starting a new one to address it... Andrew, lengthening the arm by rolling the hand forward is crucial for you, because it addresses your hand's chronic inactivity. Most of your observations are correct but I am always a little leery because I feel that all your investigations miss the main point. You have to do all the stuff you do because you don't address your particular central problem, a lack of activation in your hand. When my hand works from the inside in a way that naturally and potently generates its arch, I almost inevitably roll forward and up - for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Thus my arm automatically lengthens. If you are pulling back your arm to establish key contact, then you are forcing your hand into activation to save itself from being pulled off the keyboard. It's just another version of the arm weight fallacy (in arm weight technique as it is mostly practiced, the fingers are not proactive but reactive. Rare is the pianist who has evolved to the sophisticated, subtle organization which overcomes this barrier to empowered playing). You've got to do something to get yourself out of your vicious circle compensation strategies. You have to make your hand more proactive. This leads me to another point: sometimes I am disturbed when I see your posts confusing other forum members. For instance, what you advised a couple of years ago was fair enough, but he needs first and foremost to activate his hands. In the one time we worked together, this was the constant theme. He was nowhere in this department, and in one week he made huge strides. But he didn't understand his experience well enough for that new ability to crystallize in him, and so your later, on-forum advice threw him off. And I don't think he has ever gotten back on track since. This saddens me. AFF Yes. Alan is right but somehow what Andrew later told me helped me too but also made me experience some setbacks. For instance after that "pulling back" advice my right hand went crazy. I realised that I kept unconsciously use the right shoulder joint to pull the arm back. I managed to overcome this faulty reflex but now my right hand doesn't have enough weight. P2u's advice were good too but I can't manage to obtain the same results for 2 days in a row. When I use Alan's pulling the right wrist is being constantly dragged forward. When I try to atack the key more directly the lack of arm weight doesn't alow me to press the key to the very bottom. This is happening only by the right hand. The left one seems to had learnt what Alan told me and is working by itself. How on Earth is it possible to use pulling at both hands and obtain satisfying results only by one? I am going to record Chopin's Op. 69 Waltz no. 2 in B minor which I'm working at the moment and the video will probably make my problems and the stage I am at more clear. The teacher I'm working with since September has also told me that my fingers are still very lazy and this reflects itself in my tone and nuances.