"Pulling back" piano technique pros and cons

Just a few thoughts. I think it's useful to cross-reference the objective with the subjective here. Understanding the objective issues doesn't necessarily make for the solution to them, but referencing subjective approaches to the underlying objective issues strikes me as invaluable- speaking as someone who has had the exact same problem. I've since got to the point where I can look at myself in the mirror playing long stretches with a "normal" looking aligned wrist and a great deal of what has taken me there has been starting from objective issues and using them to consider the wide range of more subjective approaches that might help out. I think this is very revealing. 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. To be honest, it doesn't make much sense to me as you phrase it. Objectively, only one of two things (or a combination of both) can account for that impression. Either your finger is not creating enough length or your arm is so badly held up in a bunched position that even a fully extended finger cannot go far enough. I'd pay urgent attention to finding out which is the case. If you go slow, it should always be possible to find the point of being properly connected- unless one or both of these is extremely severe. If you're held up forward, you need to release back into a more normal wrist alignment- but weight will not activate the finger for you! If you are bunched up, you both need to release back into alignment and perceive the finger lengthening that will keep you balanced properly from then on. If you're not, you simply need to do something to train your fingers to lengthen out further. On the same grounds, if you are getting bunched up forwards still, there are only two ways to deal with that. Either you have to eliminate the force that drags it forwards altogether (by aiming actions in a path that aims mildly forwards, rather than one that pulls backwards) or pull back against that force. Since I realised that fingers can move in a path that does not drag the wrist forward, I've gone away from the active pull- but it remains the case that if you're bunched forwards you need to get back again . Whatever subjective method you use, you're going to have to be able to get the wrist back into regular alignment. Only gravity or pulling back can make that happen. I don't personally share Alan's view that either would be a problem (considering that it's either use one of these or accept finding yourself trapped in a forward and up position, without any evident means of departure) . For me, thhe key is that once you're back again, you immediately work at eliminating the need to resort to them in future. The only rational way that can happen is if the fingers stop acting in a path that drags the wrist forwards again- otherwise it's a permanent cycle of getting dragged forwards and countering it either with gravity or pulling back/being trapped awkwardly forwards. Only once the fingers stop pulling you out of alignment, can the necessary activities that are aimed at keeping the wrist aligned be dispensed with. The thing I realised that was absent from my vocabulary, lately, was a SLOW movement that brings the wrist down while playing a number of notes with the fingers. I could only bring the wrist back quickly, between longer notes. This meant that any time I was already forward in the middle of rapid notes, I was absolutely screwed unless I at least attempted to pull back enough not get dragged further. However, I now realise that it's essential to be able to do a slow down motion of the wrist, WHILE playing many notes in succession. Try playing five successive fingers slowly in a movement that starts with a low wrist that drifts slowly up. The fingers create all movement- with no downward arm pressure. But now also try playing five fingers slowly in a movement that starts with the wrist forward and up but very slowly releasing backwards, until in a standard lengthened alignment of the wrist. I feel that the latter of these is what you are missing. Until I had access to this style of movement, there was no escaping that forward position if it occurred. Now, I have a means to return to normal without anything abrupt and without a significant pull back. It's more a simple release of unwanted muscular holding than it is of pulling- but remember that every key must be moved by a lengthening of the finger, just the same as when doing the forward and up movement. I'd got lost in the forward and up movement and needed an opposite activity not to get trapped. Also, a mirror is invaluable. If you see yourself bunched up forwards stop IMMEDIATELY and restore healthy alignment of the arm and wrist behind that finger. You can't do this is in performance, of course, but it's essential to break the habit of just pressing on once the position is dysfunctional. You need to feel the release of the arm that puts you into better alignment, coupled with the quality of activity in the finger that keeps you secure enough in the keys to do so. From here, no additional pull or release of weight is needed . It's just about doing enough pulling/releasing to put yourself back in a functional positional and then making sure that the fingers do not follow the type of path that will drag you forwards. If you get that right, the gravity/pull issue can now be totally done with. If you get it wrong, the only way to stop the loss of alignment is to come back to that for a moment and then make an improved attempt at finding that angle of finger action. It takes time and perserverance, but you have to be able to observe when you wrist alignment is going off track and take immediate action at the root of the problem (ie the finger's path of action)- otherwise everything else that follows does more harm than good. Every time my wrist got into the bunched position, there was nothing very useful I could do with my fingers at all and struggling on always did more harm than good. You need to wipe the slate clean at this point and start over from the beginning, with more awareness of how to activate the fingers confidently but in a path that is NEVER dragging you into a bunched up position, by even a trace.

There are 2 points I'd like to make on what you write. Please take this as gentle remarks. No critics, no advice of the type "do it like this". 1) Where you are right now, you shouldn't think so much. Most of what is written here is experience and awareness of very advanced people, which may not open doors for you. I thought you were having lessons with Alan, so I gave you something to play with that would never interfere with what you did with him, at the same time hinting that you should wait for your teacher (Alan that is). It seems now that you are working with somebody else, which is OK, but which may confuse your mind even more. 2) Where you are right now, you shouldn't think so much. What you need is simple exercises with a simple movement where you don't have to think at all; just be awake and aware, doing exactly as your Teacher says without distracting yourself from that. No goals or expectations; just do it and wait for the results to come. You describe a problem with your wrist and arm forward, backward, etc. My advice (without interfering with what anybody else here has said) is: take those elements (wrist and arm) out of the equation and practise the finger pull only. How? You probably know those roles inside Aluminium Household Foil? Use one to put under the hand where your knuckles are and practise the gentle finger pull with your arm lying on the table top. NO FORCE, no hitting down! Don't do it fast. Just simple up and down, up and down from the knuckle joint within a convenient range of movement. Your finger lifts slightly and is more or less straight, then comes down (drops) more or less bent with a charateristic soft sound I have no word for in English. This will certainly "awaken" your fingers and your mind gradually. As to the ratio of table/piano practise: 10 to 1 for the time being. When at the piano, you can skip the finger lifting. Just play close to the keys with a beautiful tone image in mind, somewhere in the mf range. Paul

I don't know... All these responses to Archi are probably good... But in my experience the right "exercise" given in the wrong situation is the wrong exercise. And how can we tell from this distance what Archi needs? I taught Archi maybe 3 1/2 years ago - I remember what we did then, and I am convinced this would still be the best regime for him now. But when I gave him that regime, it came out in the form of exercises, exercises like the ones you guys have offered. At this distance I don't know if those exercises are the right ones any more. But I know the underlying rationale is still right. The underlying rationale is: get skeletal. Acquire the quality of skeletality in your playing. Connect yourself to the key skeletally. First, return to a bone connection to the key. Use the mashing exercises in All Thumbs to establish this starting point. Then build up your hand, not by pushing or pulling but by letting your hand skeleton instinctively find the way to manipulate the key. Let the main part of your hand mash itself into the keyboard while one or two fingers or thumb manipulate a key or two in as many different ways as possible. Give yourself a skeletal-sensory bath. Help your hand acquire its own wisdom. AFF

I'm sure it is. I hope I kind of reflected that through my messages. At the level of where Archi is, consistent practice in one direction and without distraction is the way to go. Other people, however kind their intentions, mostly cause confusion because 1) some types of awareness get spoiled as soon as you start describing them and 2) words themselves are often inadequate, especially if levels of awareness are too different between the people that are trying to communicate. Paul

Additionally and 2 All: The student-teacher relationship is just too intimate to meddle with. I face that problem all the time. Because of the nature of what I do, exclusively people from other teachers come to me for comfort. This means I have to find ways to make them able to do what their teacher says and without him noticing that they have consulted somebody else. For example: If the teacher says: "You are not able to play better because you don't listen to what you are doing" and the student is not able to get better results next time, then my solution would be to have them practise on a dummy keyboard without explicitly going into technical details, without explicitly telling them what to do, how to move, or what to listen for. And would you believe? This works! They are forced to be aware, but the awareness is their own, so there is no conflict... Paul

Your finger lifts slightly and is more or less straight, then comes down (drops) more or less bent with a charateristic soft sound I have no word for in English. This will certainly "awaken" your fingers and your mind gradually. As to the ratio of table/piano practise: 10 to 1 for the time being. When at the piano, you can skip the finger lifting. Just play close to the keys with a beautiful tone image in mind, somewhere in the mf range. Paul Do you mean that for each minute of piano practice I should allocate 10 minutes of table practice? And regarding that tone I have managed to obtain it for a few times. You can hear the difference even if the master volume is very low. But the arm needs to be very balanced and you have to activate the key very carefully, feeling its weight. Just as Nick Op or you (I can't remember) has said, it's hard to obtain the same results for 2 practice sessions in a row. I feel my finger action problem even now as I'm typing. In that day when I obtained the beautiful tone my fingers activated the laptop keys very lightly. This doesn't happen right now. My fingers don't have a clear and stable sense of what is "enough". They either activate too hard (without stoping when the key reaches the bottom) or they activate too soft (without getting the key fully down). This problem seems to occur only by the right had.

Arhi, have you considered that, several years on from your last lesson with Alan, it might be time to have another one? For a long time I relied on advice on these forums (which has been to a consistently high standard, for me), but having a lesson (or three) in person with Alan was something else entirely. Of course, I don't need to convince your of this. Since I had those lessons with Alan, though, I've found it immensely useful to make contact via Skype lessons - it gives both you and him real time feedback and I'm sure that way you could work together to figure out what kind of help you need now.

My fingers don't have a clear and stable sense of what is "enough". They either activate too hard (without stoping when the key reaches the bottom) or they activate too soft (without getting the key fully down). This problem seems to occur only by the right had. I think this is definitely revealing. It's impossible for a finger to overdo it, if it moves in the right kind of path- or, at least, the result of that is that would merely be the knuckle that carries on going up. I go into quite a lot of detail in this post: but essentially it's the same as when you lean against a wall and aim to straighten your arm. If your body is repsonsive, that pushes you AWAY from the wall in a perfectly healthy way. Only if you apply force from your whole body (as if to try to knock the wall over) do you end up in a position where you will be straining yourself. You need to find the path of movement and the responsiveness in the arm, where any additional activity frees you up and AWAY from the depressed key- then you can do it in a way that requires no repression at all. Any repression will spoil your contact with the keys. I have a slightly adapted version of Alan's standing up exercise on a table, where the nail starts directly face down with the knuckle directly over the top. Then you gently push yourself up, without any active arm pressure until the finger has finished the job by reaching full length. It's an easy way to feel the path and quality of movement in a completely confident and unrepressed manner. I see many students who start style of lengthening movement this but give up halfway through- assuming the job is done because sound has occurred. At this point they totally relax the finger and the arm locks into that bunched forward position with effort. If you are not finding a way to keep the finger activation going, I'd definitely zone in of that. If the finger relaxes without creating quality contact, there's no way the arm can hang back in alignment.

But in my experience the right "exercise" given in the wrong situation is the wrong exercise. And how can we tell from this distance what Archi needs? Although it's difficult to be 100% sure, the problem he describes and that I saw on the videos strikes me as remarkably similar to the one I had. I think there are many different exercises that can work, but I feel sure that success will be dependent on whether whatever he does involves a quality of finger action that does not drag the wrist forward and the ability to let the wrist go slowly down as well as up, whilst in the midst of a series of notes. This was definitely my own problem- I had no means of restoring a regular alignment without an abrupt movement. When I was lost in the constant up, I did not have so much as an available option for getting back in a simple way. When my wrist was getting locked forwards, it definitely interfered with the ability of fingers to work properly. My fifth remained very weak- because it was usually so poorly set to get on with moving the keys. Although the finger activation did improve, in itself this never automatically triggered better wrist alignment. I had to tackle this issue of the wrist totally head on. Only the realisation that I needed to be able to to gradually return the wrist while also playing as normal started me getting to grips with that issue. From there, the different style of interaction between finger and arm has made a HUGE change to the quality of activation in that 5th. It no longer feels like it's having to stretch its limits to reach out into the key as the norm (which made it very hard not to push from the arm for extra tone). It feels like its perfectly setup to create considerable tone, from an advantaged starting position. I agree entirely with the importance of the skeletal connection, but approaching this from both ends strikes me as the only way to get that wrist straightening itself. Its as true that the bunched forward position limits the ability of the fingers to activate properly as it is that inadequate quality of finger activity limits the ability of the arm to be connected well to the hand. All you have to do is get better wrist alignment in the first place and then it's possible to devote the rest to making sure the hand maintains it, rather than than conflicts with it. With the 5 notes played in both ups from the wrist and downs from the wrist, the up forces the fingers to be proactive as you describe. With the wrist going up, nothing but proactive fingers will move the keys at all. With the wrist going down, it's possible that the fingers will indeed be more reactive than proactive. However, as long as they are learning to be proactive when the wrist ascends, they are learning what they need to be ultimately become proactive in both scenarios. The down of the wrist is the only possible way to recover a bunched position, so I discovered that it's nothing short of necessary to be able to function from either side. When locked into the forward and up, it didn't matter how good the connection between my fingers and the keys was- because I simply wasn't capitalising on the opportunity that was made available to enter a better alignment. Although the down can be associated with the worst of arm-weight, not learning how to bring that in (with the proactive fingers from the up) was simply a gaping chasm in the limits of possibility. I don't think anyone can function to the full without learning how to have both options open to them. I'm even quite heavily in favour of Grindea's flop as a learning exercise. I think that a bunched wrist is such a big limiter on what the fingers can do, that it's vital to nip it in the bud- merely to be in a position where the fingers have a chance of operating effecticely.

I think the answer is right here ( beat me to it because I was out for some time): Arhi, have you considered that, several years on from your last lesson with Alan, it might be time to have another one? A lesson through skype would be a good option. Preferably with your "old" master. If he's too busy, you could try one with (Andrew that is). I don't do messengers (personal computer security strategy), so that option is out. What you need to get out of your vicious circle, downward spiral or whatever is one-to-one help to get you back on track. To get sound out of a piano, taking dust off a key with your fingertip is already enough, so this is something that really *can* be solved. Good luck! Paul