As always I need some time to implement your ideas..
I see what you mean and yes I feel the difference you mention playing with curled fingers. Probably what muscles are in play depends a lot on where you keep your wrist.If your starting point is tips on key low wrist no articulation the feeling is you're "lifting" the hand with the last fingerjoints.
I was probably disrespectful to Art I agree what he doses is not easy it's like he is cleaning up the keybord with an vacumcleaner it's just so beautiful and looks soooo easy. Probably the Rach#3 would have been ducksoap with that technique it's probably just a question of adding some more weight here and there.
And I agree that building up the hand without considering weight/rotation-issues etc is not productive. Since I started with the DVD I soon understood that the second finger was debilitating everything I did and now after two years this finger works for me not against and that is due to a combination of arm/finger positioning and extensive exercising with this part of the hand.It feels like there is a truly "gympart" involved the bones muscles and tendons between knuckels and wrist (interossis?) does work much better now.
Like Rachmaninoff said I have to pay extra attention to my 4th finger.And then there is 3d 2d and 5th.And the thumb!
What you're talking about in the coda in Chop #4 Ballade is a way of grasping?.Easy to screw this passage up in public I try to have only one thought there don't move your hand sideways...it's in and out and out and in.
The thirds in that passage I've lately tried to play them partly with the "curling"-technique above with some success.
When I watch them competitions today it's difficult not to think that an impeccable flawless technique is all there is and the words of Horowitz "perfection is imperfection" is more valid than ever.
"I see what you mean and yes I feel the difference you mention playing with curled fingers. Probably what muscles are in play depends a lot on where you keep your wrist.If your starting point is tips on key low wrist no articulation the feeling is you're "lifting" the hand with the last fingerjoints."
Yeah- actually I think this may be the problem with the most extreme version of moving the arm in relation to the finger. I think that it's definitely worth practising both of the more exaggerated paths, but I do feel my fingers getting really quite tired. I felt the tendons in my second fingers working rather hard. I think you have to be careful not to place too much of a role on those, with this approach- and perhaps limit the amount of time spent on the fullest natural action. I suspect that the most healthy base approach may be somewhere in the middle.
"I was probably disrespectful to Art I agree what he doses is not easy it's like he is cleaning up the keybord with an vacumcleaner it's just so beautiful and looks soooo easy. Probably the Rach#3 would have been ducksoap with that technique it's probably just a question of adding some more weight here and there."
Yeah, I'm sure he could have done it, had he worked at it- but it's just something totally different. He handles the forces even better than Horowitz arguably (as if there's no such thing about the law of equal and opposite reactions), although consistently sticking to that range would likely make it far easier than constantly varying between that sheer lightness and bigger sounds.
"What you're talking about in the coda in Chop #4 Ballade is a way of grasping?.Easy to screw this passage up in public I try to have only one thought there don't move your hand sideways...it's in and out and out and in."
In the big chords just before the coda, I mean. It's possible with pure finger action, balanced by arm release (without visible drop). To get this, I first had to take them literally one at a time and notice allow the force to push my hand right up in the air, and the stop before the next. After getting used to that force, I can now cancel it purely with weight- with no sense of fighting or stiffening at all. The hand now moves from chord to chord with very little movement, but without any stiffness. Definitely agree with the hand thing for the coda itself though. I find it's good to think of all forward/backward and (to a lesser extent) up/down in the hand, but all sideways motions stem from the shoulder (except when my fifth starts outstretched, and I want to feel how that pulls the rest of the arm sideways to meet it). It's a very simple way of dividing up the source of movements, without losing alignment.
"The thirds in that passage I've lately tried to play them partly with the "curling"-technique above with some success."
Actually, yesterday, I played through the thirds etude and couldn't believe the instant difference from this thought of moving the arm in relation of the finger. Definitely helps in those for the Ballade too. It works the muscles very hard, but the efficiency of applying the energy and the stability that each action produces are like nothing I've felt before. I think I'm just going to have to be very careful with how I pace the amount of work on this now. Mechanically speaking, I think it quite literally involves the finger moving some of the arm's mass, albeit by a tiny distance. The key's motion is like a side-effect of the finger trying to pull the arm in to meet it.
It's definitely not moving the entire dead weight, but I think it's a little like doing one those assisted chin-ups in the gym, where you only work against some proportion of your body's weight. The arm has a simultaneous role of providing the weight that you act against, whilst also providing the assistance that stops that full weight overworking the finger. I think this explains why some people are so in favour of feeling weight whereas others look at it more from lightening up. But they're both part of one single issue. Looking at it from this perspective, I think the physics behind this is even clearer now. I'm more certain than ever before that it all adds up. If the fingertip does not slip across the key, how could it possibly not be involved in pulling the arm (unless the arm were held absolutely rigid, as if locked in an immovable vice)? How could the arm stay comfortably still when a finger exerts this pull on it- other than by using it's mass to resist that force. By trying to use the muscles to pull the elbow backwards, instead of merely releasing? Seems highly unlikely, but I can't see any other explanation for balance while using the natural path of a finger, except use of weight.
Oh the chords before the coda yeah chords like that are a pure delight to play now with the "stand up" technique of Alans. When it comes to similar stuff like the beginning of Chop sonata#3 etc only problem is to restrain oneself from impressing with this large compact sound!
Thats a very instructive description of what you mean with cancelling the force by weight I really see what you mean. Visually thats also pretty impressive producing huge soundmass without apperantly doing anything!
There is a backside of involving "muscels" the way we discuss especially with age and that is you have to warm up properly and even with this momental nervousness can occur and reduce blodflow. It might sound crazy but I like to have a kind of alternative "technique" if this occurs and that is beeing aware of the the possibility to play with a kind of rotational movements if you see what I mean.
There is a backside of involving "muscels" the way we discuss especially with age and that is you have to warm up properly and even with this momental nervousness can occur and reduce blodflow. It might sound crazy but I like to have a kind of alternative "technique" if this occurs and that is beeing aware of the the possibility to play with a kind of rotational movements if you see what I mean.
interesting. I see what you mean. If i try to play the whole of op. 10 no. 2 say, it always reaches a point where i could struggle on, but the quality of movement is no longer good. At this point i usually stop immediately. If i ever got around to doing a concert again, the thing i would dread would be that feeling where slight imprecisions (perhaps caused by cold hands say) have led to accumulated stiffness. i could imagine a worst case scenario where you start just a little off your best and it actually makes the movements get progressively worse, making it really hard to ever get things comfortably flowing.
However, i must say that i'm much less worried about this (especially as I have no intention of ever attempting op. 10 no. 2 in public). The idea of pulling the arm from the finger (rather than moving the finger relative to the arm) has made such a huge difference to the way the muscles are working. I've hardly had issues with cold hands at all recently. While it can take a little while to hit full comfort, it's definitely taking less and less time. If anything, I think the intensely you are used to using the muscles, the less you need to do to get them ready. If anything, I think I'm much less likely to have to resort to emergency adaptations. In the past, the whole thing was basically a big 'emergency' technique. If nervousness reduces blood flow, I think that the more intensive actions are exactly how to bring it back again. Not that rotation in itself is a bad thing, but if goes to the level of compensating for very little finger action, I think that would actually perpetuate need for an emergency state, rather than get things going. In the past, I think some of my most normal movements shut off the blood flow to my fingers. However, I now feel that more intensive actions actively bring blood to the hands. I look at it more that way- as something that decent bloodflow, rather than something that demands it.
Your "weights" are still on my mind I clearly see the sensory educational part but I'd like to bother you with yet another reflexion.
I had som really interesting exchange with Bob before on this forum and in a thread he described the forces involved in pianoplaying speedy passages does increase forces exponentially far away from the downweight of 50gr. I've never seen a quantification of these forces but it's easy to imagine for any pianist.
So maybe under certain circumstances like in fast passageplay over the whole keybord like the Rach#2 sonata the weights you add are just to tiny to make any impact at all? And the weight of the arm just to small?
I'm not so good at sensing what I really do but with stuff like that I have a feeling that I use the triceps/biceps and that power comes more from the shoulder and that this power is way beyond armweight. I'm not speaking about big chords but fast long runs, even in pp up and down. I'm not speaking of a constant tension but momentarily tensions/releif were the forearm is "locked" but flexible. In your terms I would say that I cancel the counterforces from the shoulder and that the "cansellation" I could get from a heavy arm is just to small.
What do you say?
Your "weights" are still on my mind I clearly see the sensory educational part but I'd like to bother you with yet another reflexion.
I had som really interesting exchange with Bob before on this forum and in a thread he described the forces involved in pianoplaying speedy passages does increase forces exponentially far away from the downweight of 50gr. I've never seen a quantification of these forces but it's easy to imagine for any pianist.
So maybe under certain circumstances like in fast passageplay over the whole keybord like the Rach#2 sonata the weights you add are just to tiny to make any impact at all? And the weight of the arm just to small?
I'm not so good at sensing what I really do but with stuff like that I have a feeling that I use the triceps/biceps and that power comes more from the shoulder and that this power is way beyond armweight. I'm not speaking about big chords but fast long runs, even in pp up and down. I'm not speaking of a constant tension but momentarily tensions/releif were the forearm is "locked" but flexible. In your terms I would say that I cancel the counterforces from the shoulder and that the "cansellation" I could get from a heavy arm is just to small.
What do you say?
I think the thing about using upper body pressure, is that it tends to land more heavily and with more impact. The finger is aligned to pull the key, especially when starting very flat. However, if you seek to channel energy through that with the arm instead, you're much more likely to have to fix that structure in place, to channel a force from further back.
I think it's okay to use pressure, as long as you have a means of making the transmission direct but the immediate aftermath indirect. It's like how a flat finger action is very useful. The tranmission is almost perfectly in the line of the key, but it almost instantly becomes much more indirect- putting further motion onto the forwards/backwards plane, not the up/down one. I think that any arm pressure ought to bear this principle in mind, if it's to be healthy. With good finger action, you add backward motion of the follow through. The finger is felt to act towards you, not straight down. Here, you could use a 'forward' push - in which the wrist goes up (not willfully, but as the result of the finger remaining on the same point of the key, as the arm goes forward). That can actually be a very direct transmission of downward energy through the finger- without forcing a stiffening action.
I think that the indirect follow through is a key things to bear in mind, if you don't want the ugly tone that comes with jamming the key into the keybed. However, I wouldn't do it to the side. 'Elbow out' is basically the same thing- where you stop the hand jamming down hard. However, you don't need the sideways part of the motion. That just complicates it and make the hand likely to collapse. Two planes of motion are all you need. In the same way that I can now feel a vastly purer natural finger action (yet see the finger appear to move only perfectly downward) I think that you can also internalise the forward push that will produce a big tone, without either jamming into the keybed hard or necessarily doing the enormously pronounced follow-through. I'm wondering if this is the case with some of Horowitz's and Nyiregyhazi's movements- where it appears solely direct. Perhaps they do have an almost invisible way of directing the follow-through off-line, rather than into the key bed. Again it's that issue of do you try to move everything in the path of the key, or do you find a much more sophisticated way of using a more natural action to produce a downward resultant force. As a good example, think of the sheer ineptitude of the motion that some people attempt to get a big sound with- where they lift the wrist and then collapse it down through a chord. I can't believe that some people actually believe that this is to be taken literally (rather than an exercise for release). It's the most extreme example I've seen where thinking 'the key goes downward so move in that direction' causes problems. Mechanically speaking, it's so obviously short-sighted that I can't believe that anyone ever seriously thought it might be a good way to transmit energy. It just collapses one of the most important pivots of all and directs most ofl the energy away from the keyboard- into impacting on a very sensitive area.
Anyway, I'm not opposed to using any arm pressure. I just feel that every pianist ought to know what can be done without it. For an individual chord, I can honestly produce a pretty big fortissimo without any tricep activity at all now. I've checked by touching it with the other arm. There's literally no push whatsoever, but merely an interaction between the fingers and the stabilising mass. It's what Alan calls "standing up", but I'm starting to think of it as more like a 'chin up'- where you also think about how it tries to move the arm behind it, rather than focus exclusively on the standing action in the hand. That doesn't mean I'm against the idea of ever using a push, but I think that the less you need it the better. I think that depending on arm pressure actually limits the development of the mechanisms that reduce the need- so you can stuck in an inward spiral. When you learn how to do the interaction instead, you are still perfectly capable of introducing pushing if you choose to, but it opens a whole lot more options. The more you can do in the first place, the less you need to add anything on top. I think that even those with the most slender arms are capable of producing fairly big sounds this way. But if you start pushing as normal from day 1, you might never develop the interaction between direct finger action and corresponding release. I doubt where many pianists have come close to unlocking what is possible without a push (except those who resort to the drop, instead, perhaps). Remember that if you are not using the full weight of your arm, you are exerting a cancelling force which is basically upward. If you do not release that, you are working upwards and fighting against that when you push downwards. It makes no sense to me to use muscular pressure, when there is a free force available to you by release of effort. I know this is what people usually talk about to endorse big drops, but the same applies from what appears to be nothing but a small finger action. If you aren't using the free force that comes with release, you're pushing to a cancel force that you've created yourself when all you had to do was let go of it. Of course, if that's not enough then push for more. But I think that very few pianists learn to use the full potential of release, before they start pushing against a force that contains a notable component of their own making.
Oh, and going back to the wrist weights- it basically made me more aware of what level of activity is possible from the hand, when you give it a counterweight. I haven't used the weights so much recently, but by putting yourself in a situation where you realise what an impact a change to the counterweight makes, it's far easier to get on with understanding the role that it plays. The hand is felt to do the work (the arm's muscle are felt to withold the extra weight more than anything)- but it's only because of all that mass that it CAN put so much more into each key. It made a big sound vastly easier to achieve- even though the finger itself works hard to get that. From there, I realised that, instead of having a heavier arm and holding back a lot of it's weight, I could just use my normal arm and let go of practically all of it's weight. Why push, when you have yet to do that?
EDIT- Actually, it occurs to me, by the way, that a lot of this is based on sitting reasonably low. The lower the wrist starts and the flatter the finger begins- the more the interaction can make a big sound with mere arm release instead of willful pressure. With a high stool, I think that pianists would have to be vastly more dependent on muscular arm pressures. The actions no longer start direct, before become usefully indirect post strike. That start indirect and become even more indirect, limiting the potential for the fullest and most efficient transfer. I'm also starting to think now that high stools are conducive towards falling into the trap of exxcessively focussing on the path of the key. The higher you sit, the more indirect natural actions would seem and the harder they would be to incorporate. They can actually be used still, despite being more indirect than from a lower stool. But that makes me think that those who sit on a high stool are even more liekly to 'correct' the path of motion the key, rather than find a way to incorporate the natural inward functions of the finger and the forward (rather than downward) push of the arm.
Actually, it just occurred to me that the push seems to required straightening- possibly even more than the downwardly aimed finger action. Try doing Alan's exercise where the finger tips stay in the same place, but slowly push forwards. Aside from the very interesting sensations this provides, it's notable to observe that the fingers will curl up. So this kind of forward push may very well involve some degree of straightening action, rather than use the inward strength. I think it might even be best utilised with a fully straightened finger, like that of Nyiregyhazi- so as to avoid wastage in the joints.
I haven't really thought much about the pushing actions for a while, as I've been going so far out my way to see what I can learn to do without using them. However, I'm realising that this forward push actually makes it rather hard to utilise the full strength of the grasping action. Just because I can't do it, doesn't make it impossible, of course. Maybe I'm just not used to timing it yet. However, if I try to use a powerful grasping combined with a push, I find myself both losing the sense of high quality energy transfer and landing rather heavily and uncomfortably into the keybed. I'll have to experiment and think a lot more, but I have a feeling that there may be some kind of mechanical problem with combining the two things. I have a feeling that pushing simply destabilises an important pivot and reduces the ability to use a healthy hand action.
I'm feeling as if I can get a lot more action by simply sticking to the fingers working with the arm's mass as counterweight. Trying to push actually detracts from the quality of the grasping action. It's making me think that relying too much on pushing, could even result in an altogether different use of the hand, if you rely on it as your base technique for big sounds. Lots of stuff to think about here. I'm still uncertain as to exactly what's going on, but I'm going to have to experiment with various things and see if I can figure out how it actually fits together. However, I'm wondering if it might be the case that with a lot of finger involvement it's far better to avoid pushing? Whereas if you want to push, the finger is better off simply chanelling the arm's energy through a solidified structure, rather than trying to play an active part?
EDIT- I think I've got it now. The forward arm push would have the knuckles moving forward and away from the point where they are poised for the most direct line of transmission. And moving this pivot (via the arm instead of the finger) would tremendously weaken the action from it, even without reducing the directness of the path. When operating against a counterweight, the arm's weight pulls the knuckles downwards and backwards. It's this opposing force that gives the knuckles something to operate vigorously against. Move it forwards, and the fingers are basically robbed of their counterweight. I'm pretty confident that it would make sense that this would actually be a major mechnanical hindrance, if you want to apply energy from there. I think it's a case of either move within the hand against a counterweight, or get the fingers still and stable enough to merely transmit force from further up. Just a theory, but I think that seems to make sense. Either keep the hand stable enough to transmit from above, or generate a big action in the hand itself, without trying to press AT ALL! I don't think vigorous hand action and arm pressure are a good mix- certainly not for big chords, at least.
Sorry for all the meandering. I realise now that you could of course use the finger based action with a kind of push. I always think of the forward push, for constructive arm pressure. However, you could use a push in the same way you use gravity, to add to it. If you pull the forearm down from the elbow, that would make sense- if it's in the exact same path as the gravity acts when you release. It would give the fingers even more to work against, compared to full release of the forearm's mass alone. However, I'm not convinced that this is necessarily needed very much. A big danger is to simply try to prod down through a key, rather than as a way of giving the finger a counterforce to work with. That would lead to the kind of heavy direct contact that I mentioned. In that case, I'd definitely favour the forward push, unless you really want a hard-edged sound for an effect.
Do you find it hard work to operate the fingers against the heaviest possible release of the arm? Would you really want to give the fingers even more than that to work against, much of the time? Personally, I'm working my fingers harder than ever before and I'm very rarely needing to release anywhere close to as much weight as I have available. I think that moving away from downward finger movements and switching to the more extreme natural actions has meant that the fingers can work much harder, with more weight to spare. Useful as they have been, I currently don't need to add wrist weights to feel my fingers are working hard, at the moment. The idea of the finger pulling at a little bit of the arm's weight has them working really well. While I see great value in analysing the interaction between finger and counterweight, I can very much see where Alan is coming from when he talks about moving as if the arm has no weight. Although I'm finding it useful to focus on, that has led to me using a much lower percentage of available weight than before, in achieving the interaction. I think that a small amount of release goes a lot further, when pulling the whole arm via the finger's most natural path, compared to if you are moving the finger in the key's path. When you go more in the path of the key, the muscles do not interact with the weight of the arm so much. Maybe this is why slender pianists are more inclined to use flat-fingered technique, but those of a hefty bulk tend to use more exaggerated curves?
Thanks for the detailed answer. I have since two weeks tried to sit higher I usually sit low always struggling with the pianochairs.I have a portable chair. But this has as I understand now provoced more use of shoulders and upperarm. Probably a good exercise but as you say maybe harmful to some functions. Maybe I just confuse using upperarm muscles with moving the arm in another way when high-seated.
Well it's back to the drawingtable thank's again.
