"Pulling back" piano technique pros and cons

The two hands have different sets of reflexes, so when they are doing the same thing they may feel like they are behaving very differently. My left hand is a lot more sluggish than my right, so many times I must exaggerate certain movements with it - the "rearing horse" movement of the 2nd finger for instance. AFF PS Don't mistrust yourself so much!

The two hands have different sets of reflexes, so when they are doing the same thing they may feel like they are behaving very differently. My left hand is a lot more sluggish than my right, so many times I must exaggerate certain movements with it - the "rearing horse" movement of the 2nd finger for instance. AFF PS Don't mistrust yourself so much! Yes they are definitely doing the same thing. I was able to observe and feel the whole process on a table exercise. Andrew's approach gave yours even more potential. I don't know how on Earth could the right hand fingers only pull while the left hand fingers pulled and also lengthened. I mean...it was you that teached both of my hands. Last night I was able to play drills at speeds I have never imagined. Also the Waltz sounds completely different now. I can't believe my eyes and ears... However I think I must also pay attention to the right hand stability. It still doesn't look so as the left one...its movement is a bit untidy...I can feel it in my right elbow...it should remain stable...as the left one does...instead it keeps pendulating here and there.

Good to hear that it's going well. The extension activity is very strongly implied by Alan's Tai Chi walking exercises, but I found that getting a full conscious awareness of precisely what type of activity makes them work has been a major factor in my recent developments (and that additional ones about the arm that have been coming were also entirely dependent on getting to grips with this issue first). When going on "feel" alone, I realise that I was too caught up in the pure pulling from the knuckle. Conscious ability to separate the two different actions into two totally separate categories has given me something that aiming at a subconscious "feel" alone never quite achieved. Having an objective understanding of the differentiation between the movements (and in particular about the limitations of using the pure pulling action compared to adding a little straightening in other joints) has made for a lot of breakthroughs that work on "feel" hadn't been able to open up. I'd consider going back through the Craft of Piano exercises with awareness of the two contrasting styles of finger activity and think about which is being involved in each exercise. I suspect that you've mostly been doing the ones that pull back indirectly, without balancing things out enough with the "standing up" type exercises- which can create a habit of dependance entirely the indirect line of pull, and cause associated problems. Since I've had awareness of that newer extending action of fingers, many exercises have felt very different and also much more direct in terms of how they can go on to be applied to the piano. Previously, I'd tended to feel that something like Tai Chi walking with near vertical fingers was more of a didactic exercise and that pulling the fingers would be the normal action for use in piano playing. Recently, I've basically reversed that mentality altogether and switched to the idea that pure grasping actions are largely didactic and that its actually lengthening out the fingers to create key movement/stability that is the "normal" action in standard playing. Aside from making it easier to move the keys from the fingers, this has virtually sorted out my issues with the crooked wrist altogether now. It's basically been awareness of this one simple action that has unlocked the ability to get the fullest amount possible out of Alan' s other exercises. I don't intend any criticism of Alan's approach, but I do find that it's a very helpful add-on to have objective awareness of both the two different actions and how differently the reaction forces affect the behaviour of the arm- in order to ensure that the full range of options is available and that you don't get caught up in only one side. This has removed a big impediment to my ability to acquire a "feel" for what works most naturally and allowed me to get back to a much more subconscious style of "feel" based learning. EDIT- just to add one thing about the differentiation- a good exercise is to do the standard whole finger pull from the knuckle on a table top. Once the knuckles have been pulled up by dragging the fingers back towards you, can you feel how any further literal inward activity is just wasted effort that would be best viewed as tension? HOWEVER if you relax completely the hand falls back down! At this point, to find low effort balance you need to SWITCH between the whole finger inward grasp and the extension activity. If you do that, you'll finish in a very low effort balance. Some people may switch roles purely by intuition, but it's not guaranteed to happen. When using purer pulls, I think there are many cases where the finger needs to swap to the lengthening style of activity for balancing (meaning its the same action as if you started with a bent finger and lengthened the finger to push the knuckle up and away from it), otherwise there is a lot of wasted effort. For me, understanding this activity gives a key step in understanding how to get to the state that Alan calls "skeletal" balance. I believe that this balance is essentially founded on a very gentle remainder of the lengthening activity- which creates extreme stability from a very low level of muscular contraction. This extra awareness of what generates the balance has made it much easier for me to get the low effort stability.

By the way...I have been playing piano for a while now and I wonder which is the autentic normal action? Does one regard direct attack as "standard"? I action the key down but just a bit towards me...is this ok? Your exercises helped me discover my biggest problem...what makes my playing uncomfortable is the right elbow push. This happens as a compensatory muscle activity. As the right fingers lacked extension the reaction force was not absorbed so the elbow tried to keep them in contact with the keys by compressing the whole structure. I wonder if this has also something to do with the swinging motion which I experience in the right elbow when I play at higher tempos.