"Pulling back" piano technique pros and cons

A wonderful discovery, Andrew... That is truly great news. I tend to agree with you "more" than Paul about this. Too many teachers get away with the Rachmaninoff style of teaching but the student doesn't get anything because he doesn't about the part you discovered today. And my teaching is largely oriented towards filling in this missing physical knowledge. Although we do need also to point out the window at the trees, because many times I see my students laboriously moving their arms in just the right manner, But there's no music! No, it's not about the arm, it's about the trees!!! They come to me and ask me if they are moving their arm right! It is infuriating! Listen to yourselves for God's sake, if it sounds well then you're moving your arm right! AFF

I think that what you teach, . The norms for expected technical proficiency for entrance (not mere mechanical rattling, but technique, sound, correct movement, etc.) were very high; much higher than they are today. There is also no doubt about what Rachmaninov thought concerning the role of the fingers in piano playing (see my signature). Paul

Indeed it did, and that's why I speak right at the beginning of about regaining what we've lost... Believe me, there is nothing I love more than teaching a "play the scent of the apple blossoms" lesson - it is a great pleasure and a privilege... but the student must be prepared, and I take it upon myself to give him or her that preparation - not to shortchange him or her. AFF

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. And how can I translate this way of seeing things into my piano technique? Getting away from the wall and not trying to knock it over in this case would mean that the keys are not moveable...but they are. And I think this changes the settings. Anyway...I must mention a few things I have discovered yesterday in terms of piano playing perception: my problem is related to pushing, the pushing comes from the elbow, it's more acute at the right hand (at least that's how I perceive it) and even more acute at the RH 5th finger. This finger doesn't seem to be able to "activate" without an elbow push. There is somekind of wiring between elbow pushing and finger action. If I try to stop the elbow pushing the hand looses the finger action. I play with more ease but the keys are not going all the way down and even if they do, they don't remain there until the next key must be played. If I try to activate the fingers more then the elbow starts pushing and I get what Andrew calls "unhealthy finger push".

If the elbow push leads to compression of the fingers and hindering their ability to move as a free lever then it's a problem. If the elbow push succeeds in joining the self-activating fingers to the keys so that you now have a successful, potent key manipulation, then it is a Good Thing, an integral part of your whole process. You can't just judge it as good or bad without putting it into context and analysing its function. AFF

If the elbow push leads to compression of the fingers and hindering their ability to move as a free lever then it's a problem. If the elbow push succeeds in joining the self-activating fingers to the keys so that you now have a successful, potent key manipulation, then it is a Good Thing, an integral part of your whole process. You can't just judge it as good or bad without putting it into context and analysing its function. AFF I have just been able to feel the difference you mentioned here during a table exercise. My senses actually perceive this kind of pressure you talk about as arm weight or a well-balanced arm. The other one (the faulty pressure) is perceived as stiffness or tension.

I'd start with when you're at the keybed- where it's an absolutely direct equivalent. At the moment, you play as if any activity is unnecessary at this point. Before putting all the focus into moving the key, I'd start by getting the feel of the differentiation between the equivalent of trying to knock a wall down and the equivalent of freeing yourself up by pushing yourself away from it. From there, it's not actually much different when comparing to a moving key. Imagine if the wall moved a little bit. Throwing everything towards it makes for a big impact- when the momentum of your whole body is being thrown at the wall. If you try to push yourself AWAY from a wall that has room to move a little bit, it will still create less impact and evolve into the same state where you are pushing AWAY from a stable wall- not shoving momentum into crashing against it. The key is that you start against it, but the whole action of movement to is to strive to back away. The lengthening of the arms in this situation is equivalent to the lengthening of the finger when playing. I find the objective background very useful on these issue. It's about what Alan calls collapse and what I've termed "negative movement". If the finger crumples, you transfer less energy into sound and waste more on unwanted impact as described above. If the finger gets LONGER, the arm press is only helping- not crumpling things up. That lengthening in the opposite direction is what I call "positive movement" in the finger. If you use the elbow push to help, make sure the wrist goes up a touch- so it doesn't go into a dead stop. That will always make for impact and stress- which will encourage the finger to abruptly relax and disconnect the arm. If you roll the wrist over and get the finger lengthening, you can then go backwards and forwards with the wrist (so it's not then stuck up for good) while making a mental effort to keep the lengthening activity in the finger. If you use the arm to train that lengthening activity, you can then go on to to remove the arm pressure while sounding the key and just use the lengthening action. If the arm makes the finger do the very opposite, you are training nothing but inactivity, however. The arm needs to merely add- not replace the basic positive finger action of lengthening. I'd try the basic finger lengthening exercises from my blog, to be done in the air, if you have a problem creating enough movement with this action. Also, consider that trying to brace fingers against collapse is never as effective as trying to lengthen. I offer a short proof of this at the end of my post on finger movements. In your film, you are trying to stop the collapses by tightening- but it's overwhelmingly easier if you replace that with movement in the positive direction. Tightening only reduces collapse (leaving impact and strain) and doesn't train useful movement. It's by lengthening the fingers that you learn actions that will later work just fine without arm pressures, but without that any arm pressures will just create a cycle of dependence and inactive fingers. You need to get the hand opening between thumb and 2nd, if you use the arm.

I'd start with when you're at the keybed- where it's an absolutely direct equivalent. At the moment, you play as if any activity is unnecessary at this point. Before putting all the focus into moving the key, I'd start by getting the feel of the differentiation between the equivalent of trying to knock a wall down and the equivalent of freeing yourself up by pushing yourself away from it. From there, it's not actually much different when comparing to a moving key. Imagine if the wall moved a little bit. Throwing everything towards it makes for a big impact- when the momentum of your whole body is being thrown at the wall. If you try to push yourself AWAY from a wall that has room to move a little bit, it will still create less impact and evolve into the same state where you are pushing AWAY from a stable wall- not shoving momentum into crashing against it. The key is that you start against it, but the whole action of movement to is to strive to back away. The lengthening of the arms in this situation is equivalent to the lengthening of the finger when playing. Your approach works wonders. It has never been so easy to play some drills with 16th notes at 70 bpm. However in order to cristalize (as Alan says) this technique I have to go back to slow practice again. I wonder how many months (or years...) would I have to spend practicing slowly before this lengthnening action will have been permanently implemented in my playing?

If it's any comfort to you, every morning when I go to the piano I start with extremely slow practice and I am constantly confronted with the feeling, "How long am I going to have to do this before it integrates... " I can assure you, it won't take forever, but it often seems as if it ... AFF

I'm having now major doubts whether the right hand has to apply a different (of the one used by the left one) method in order to function normally or it has just found the method that the left hand was already using instinctively... No matter how insane this might sound, I think that after so many attempts the right hand found the attack strategy that for the other hand seemed natural. I only suppose but I'm not sure...How can I make sure of that? It wouldn't be normal to play with different kinds of attack in the 2 hands unless you'd be doing it on purpose.