How much wrist action is too much?

[janice]

I have recently begun to teach again (just a few students, and that's all I want!)  A student asked me about wrist action.  I absolutely HATE floppy wrists!!  So I am having her keep them quite stiff (but relaxed).  Does anyone know of a word-picture that would explain?  What I mean is--this student understands best when told "now imagine that you are____" or "hold your wrist like you do when____"  Can anyone help?  Thanks!!

[ludwig]

There are many analogies for many different wrist techniques, when playing across the piano in big leaps and wide arpeggiated figures, the wrist joint should move sideways in a relaxed manner, I tell my students to imagine they are wiping the bench, firm so that the cloth still moves with the hand against the table, yet relaxed so it is flexible still, and can spread and wipe to every last corner. When doing staccato notes repeatedly or in a run/scale, you can tell them to imagine knocking on the door, or the actions of the hammers, and that it is necessary to have a little preparition backward movement of the wrist before hitting the object forwardly, the movement is very small but precise, there is force on a specific point (like all energy from the hammer onto a nail, or point of contact with fist when knocking on the door etc...) just like the single spot on their finger they are concerntrating on when playing staccato. When doing tenuto notes or chords, it is necessary to imagine the sound going right down to the bottom of the keys, sort of like kneading dough, there's almost an invisble resistence against the hand that you have to push right down, so the wrist cannot be floppy, instead it should work with the whole hand to get the right firmness and force, yet unlike squishing, the stiffness and tenseness does not help.... I can think of lost of other wrist techniques and analogies, but I'm not sure if this what you meant by explanations.....

[thalberg]

Ludwig, those are very nice ideas.  I like them.

[janice]

I agree!  That was wonderful!!  Thank you so much, I will definitely use those!  Does anybody have any more?

[pianonut]

some teachers use the quarter on back of hand analogy.  even if it falls off, at least an attempt is made to keep hands sort of level.  there is often a tilt to the left hand that is not in the right hand.  balancing them is what i taught (making more effort to not worry about little finger so much - but more hand position).  my little fingers are extremely short, and when every finger is evenly placed - makes for bad hand position.  just think about first four fingers and let pinky go down naturally after other fingers are taken care of.

i've not thought about this for a long time, but you could almost put your student in a wrist brace for a moment.  (i happen to have several since my son broke his wrist and then daughter sprained hers.  have right brace and left brace).  also, i've seen some pianist wrap their wrists?!  i don't think this is necessary unless you have an injury, but it could give you a 'feel' for not dropping the wrist unless you need to.

when teaching a legato touch, i used to let the wrist drop too far.  now, my current teacher says never to drop the wrist below the keys (broken wrist) as it is a sloppy technique.  you want to keep the hand in the general range of playability and not excessive moving high or low.  just minimal movements that achieve the pianistic effect you are working on.

[whynot]

I don't hate all flopping necessarily, it depends on what the person is trying to do.  But I definitely see your point.  Another suggestion is to talk about the hand instead of the wrist.  I have a few thoughts about this. 

1.  If your student has floppy wrists, that gives me a picture of someone who moves a lot on every note.  And while you could help him/her not to move the wrist so far up and down, that doesn't address the student's concept of using a whole separate motion on every single note.  So perhaps talk about using all the fingers that play within one position before moving, and making that feel like one motion.  For  example, in a (RH) C major scale, if the student  plays with 8 separate motions (big wrist flop on each one), the idea would be to reduce that to 2 separate motions or "sweeps":  one for C-E and another for F-C.  Then if he were still flopping way down, I'd probably mention it.  But my point is, I'd look for both of these problems, as they seem to go together.  Along the same lines, just having them play faster helps with this, as the arm and hand naturally coordinate a new motion on their own when there isn't enough time to do it the old way.

2.  Some music calls for relaxed weight, and other for "grabbing" the keys.  You could have the student learn how to do this other motion, in which you sort of thrust the whole hand forward while grabbing the surface of the keys with the pads of the fingers.  I'm not saying it terribly well, but there are great threads on this specific motion.  It's not for everything, but it's an important technique to know about, and it would give the student more ways to move at the piano besides flopping.   

Well, best wishes.  Give updates.

[ludwig]

Thank you Thalberg and Janice. I really like the idea of the "imagine this..." technique of analogy in teaching, kids do learn more visually at a young age, much more aurally later on, so I think visual aids are always good, explanations in words doesn't work as well, but learning by imitation and what Not to do like whynot suggested is good too