Building blocks of good piano technique. Bits or the whole dedicated lessons only to scales.
Born in Montreal in 1955 Alan Fraser studied piano but also delved into composition, cello, classical singing and had several stints as a pop musician. Alan’s main pianistic influence was the pioneering research of Phil Cohen who studied alongside Ronald Turini, Andre Laplante and Janina Fialkowska with Yvonne Hubert, who had been Cortot‘s assistant in Paris. Alan spent several years with Cohen after an apprenticeship with two former Cohen students, Alan Belkin and Lauretta Milkman.
Alan is busting the myth: opposition, not flexion
Changing the angle of the hand does not help muscles and they stop working.
The thumb carries the hand. Springiness!
The structure needs to be elastified
The springy thumb is powering the whole motion
The springiness of the thumb is what gets us through
Open the hand and get "springy"
is the functional hand!
The sliding is designed to get rid of the remaining crampedness
When you swivel you, rob the thumb of it's power
pronation and supination w/ small hands
We are working on left hand arpeggios
The thumb needs to do this amazing carrying job
The thumb should not be dysfunctional
The true point of unstable equilbrium and the mental image we need to cultivate
Alan is working with a young pianist and explaining the importance of standing
The functional hand can not collapse in fast tempo
By activating hand's hip joint all the way
Inspired from Louise Robyn, Chicago pianist and teacher
A short segment on scales and the whole hand drop issue
Very basic, yet very important exercise
What to do if your scales sound broken up? Structure up!
and use them to play not only scales, but everything really
