Nice v of Mephisto:-)
From the camera angel it looks to me that the wrist is to high for to long. I don't think I could manage to do it. That goes for the right hand not the left.
You say this is a compensation for vigorous finger pulling?
So why is your left hand allright? There the grasping fingerpad playing is really visible.
Are you sure it's not an attempt to squeeze out a sound from that piano which it really can't deliver ?
Nice v of Mephisto:-)
From the camera angel it looks to me that the wrist is to high for to long. I don't think I could manage to do it. That goes for the right hand not the left.
You say this is a compensation for vigorous finger pulling?
So why is your left hand allright? There the grasping fingerpad playing is really visible.
Are you sure it's not an attempt to squeeze out a sound from that piano which it really can't deliver ?
I wouldn't call it a "compensation". It's just the inevitable reaction to a strong finger pull in the path I was using. Either something needs to pull back at the wrist to stop it going up or every finger action keeps pulling it higher and higher. I think the initial wrist height is certainly an issue though. If the knuckles start higher than the wrist, the wrist can be drawn forwards and down. If the wrist is just a little too high to start with, then it's going to keep going further and further forwards and up unless something can counter the pull.
I'm sure squeezing sound out is a factor. It's not a piano with a naturally big sound. However, shouldn't it be possible to perform intensely positive finger pulls (including vastly more intense ones still, when desired) without the arm being tugged around anywhere near as sharply as in that lyrical section? I'm certainly not arguing for throwing out the extreme finger pulls in all playing. I just want to illustrate that the hovering mindset is not something that works 100% of the time or in every conceivable style of action. There are some qualities of movement that it does not match up to- either in theory or observable practise. I don't personally believe that either the subjective idea of a "heavy" arm (which is NOT what I advocate!) or a weightless arm can be useful in 100% of circumstances- unless it matches with what the fingers are doing.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had the same problem- where the floating arm idea can severely conflict with intent at positive finger pulls. To my eyes, Razvan has the exact same problem in his films. His left wrist starts just slightly high and the path of his fingers continues to pull it further forwards- rather than to push it back into alignment.
His finger actions serve to displace his wrist further still, just like mine- due to the direction they are aimed in. There's a fight between trying to be light light yet not wanting to be pulled further forward and up still. I am severely skeptical as to whether aiming for a weightless arm can be compatible with finger actions that pull backwards- as opposed to those those that extend slightly forwards. Either you have to change the style of finger action altogether, or have something that pulls back enough to keep the wrist aligned and balanced without stiffness. I think this will be a lot clearer when I knock up some diagrams to illustrate the different chain-reactions that occur in response to how a finger moves. I can't stress enough that I'm getting a lot of benefit now from applying a "weightless" arm to the finger extension actions- but I think it's very important to match the right things up.
Maybe "tonus" is a better word then weight. Alan wrote long time ago about an experiment in NY where they put electrodes on pianists playing chop op10/1 and some of them had unbeleivable tensions.
Here is a good example with Gekic. He uses a high wrist mostly ONLY when over forte. And he is mixing pull/scratch/push with his fingers/pads keeping his wrists down, flexible but down.He's sitting fairly low in that position it's even harder to keep the wrist down. He does articulate but I think that his fingers mostly have contact with the keys before the pull/push even if it's not visible.It sounds like that.
Regarding the piano it's not only that we try to squeeze out volume we try to squeeze out beautiful sounds on an upright and that might be somewhat harmful to the technique-I know by sad experience...
"Maybe "tonus" is a better word then weight. Alan wrote long time ago about an experiment in NY where they put electrodes on pianists playing chop op10/1 and some of them had unbeleivable tensions."
Well, it doesn't even have to be done with weight necessarily. I think an active pull back from the arm is often necessary. It's just whatever it takes to stop the wrist being drawn forward by the finger actions and getting stuck. Something has to do that very notably in a series of extreme finger pulls. It's just whatever it takes to be balanced- but I don't think muscle tonus is anywhere near enough to do that for this style of action. Certainly not in my arm. I don't think it would terribly healthy if a truly neutral arm were to stay balanced of it's own accord. It would suggest a massive amount of habitual and unnoticed muscle tensions (or that the subconscious is finding the means of pulling the wrist straight, even if it's not perceived).
"Here is a good example with Gekic. He uses a high wrist mostly ONLY when over forte. And he is mixing pull/scratch/push with his fingers/pads keeping his wrists down, flexible but down.He's sitting fairly low in that position it's even harder to keep the wrist down. He does articulate but I think that his fingers mostly have contact with the keys before the pull/push even if it's not visible.It sounds like that."
Yeah, I think the low wrist is everything when using pure pulls. Also, he's using short, sharp actions- making the reaction very brief. I think it would be more difficult to use such an action for legato- without a light arm getting displaced.
Also, when the wrist is up I suspect that it's based much more on extension. I think it's very hard to make a big sound from pure pulling actions with a high wrist. For the purest finger pulls I think a low wrist is pretty much essential. I'm suspecting that just about any movement from a high wrist that shows movement from the knuckle is highly likely to depend upon extension elsewhere in the finger- no matter how small it is on the surface. I think this is what Nyiregyhazi did in extreme.
With "tonus" i meant that weight is always there but tonus is something you can "control" it's undesirable but unavoidable. The thing is not to accumulate it. The muscles loose the feeling if the tonus is up for a longer timelapse.
The high wrist is an end result of giving the key's a bite you don't start with that position?
I can recommend a dvd from Paul wirth or wurth it's not that alan's dvd doesn't cover what he speaks of but since you "specialize" in the subject I think his approach is very interesting. It's made for children and the basic idea is like one minute but the performance of the small kids speaks for itself.
With "tonus" i meant that weight is always there but tonus is something you can "control" it's undesirable but unavoidable. The thing is not to accumulate it. The muscles loose the feeling if the tonus is up for a longer timelapse.
The high wrist is an end result of giving the key's a bite you don't start with that position?
I can recommend a dvd from Paul wirth or wurth it's not that alan's dvd doesn't cover what he speaks of but since you "specialize" in the subject I think his approach is very interesting. It's made for children and the basic idea is like one minute but the performance of the small kids speaks for itself.
I think the high wrist is related to starting only slightly too high- but then it spirals out of control unless the arm can keep pulling the wrist back. Soon it's massively too high. This starting point is related to gravity in itself though. If you hold up too much, the wrist will stay high. The simplest way to stop it being too high is to gently release the muscles that are holding/pushing it up, so gravity can take it back down. Neither excessive lightening nor allowing gravity to slump everything into collapse makes for a good starting point. Some people will need to let gravity pull the wrist down a little while others will need to float it up slightly more. It's all based on where you start from. Having said that, involving a slight forward push on some notes naturally raised the wrist to a higher starting point for the next ones. Again, I think there's a big conflict with regard to what is actually possible. if the arm is pushing forward just slightly and fingers attempt a pure pull, it's basically a given that the wrist will raise up rather quickly and continue to be raised further still. Even if you quickly release the initial push, you're still stuck there. At higher speeds, certain styles of movement have to be kept separate from each other, or there's disaster. This is the type of issue that interests me- not any old nonsense about an arm having to "heavy".
Anyway, I think it's possible to do use pulls without losing alignment but I'm realising that if you have both the extension/pure pull to work at, each improves the other. Working on the finger extension is improving my ability to start in an optimal position for pulls- as well as providing me with a whole other option.
Alan feels I'm obsessed with gravity, but I'm only interested in understanding what runs underneath the surface of typical problems with balance, so hand actions can be developed in the context of consistent balance and alignment that does not depend on any stiffness. I'm interested in making sense of how finger actions are stabilised- not any nonsense about using gravity to replace awareness of finger activity. Understanding how different the consequences of actions that involve forward/backward elements has been a huge breakthrough in this respect. Differentiating between the two makes sense of a massive number of issues- in theory and above all in actual practise. I suspect that I'd disagree with a great deal of the DVD, although I don't want to rule it out. Is it radically different from the average gravity explanation or fairly typical? False explanations of gravity are exactly what I want to get away from. I want an explanation that is direct and specific- not a roundabout way of training muscles to let go that has little bearing on what actually happens in the long run.
Well it's not radically different but I'd say less dogmatic the kids starts by learning to play Hanon without using biceps/triceps (they call them bubba and toby) and that forces them to rely on "standing on fingers/wrist action" and then transfering weight a bit like tai-chi walking. It's not the usual freefallbull but maybe there's better use for those dollars.
Okay, sounds reasonable. I don't have a problem with the concept of "transferring weight"- as long as it's not implied that weight replaces activation or that there is an extremely heavy sense of contact at the keybed. If the student understands that the concept could theoretically involve 99% support at the shoulder and only 1% at the finger, I think it's a totally different matter to when spoken of without proper clarification.
