it's very easy to demonstrate....

[leahcim]

"....very difficult to describe in writing"

That seems to be the line that sticks out the most in the various threads that have covered arm weight / motion and / or tension when playing.

So I'm not going to ask for them again....but I've been banging my head against a brick wall with this [which at least is repetitive motion that hurts when you're doing it right ]

I know the notes on the piano, I can read the music [at least I can read pieces well in excess of my ability to play] so I've resisted getting a teacher for a while, but 99% of the time I just know the stumbling block is the physical way I'm playing and recently that's causing pain in my right arm as well [the muscle on the inside of my elbow]

I've messed with the bench height , got tape measures out, stuck mirrors next to the piano, stared at photos / watched videos of people playing, asked a few who have supposedly had lessons and read copious amounts of, quite often contradictory, prose on the subject from the vague "relax, get comfortable..." to the musically anatomical "The wrist bone's connected to the..." and so on.

Some of which has helped - it's not all been negative, I'm playing better than when I started.

"Ok, so get a teacher then" - yep, firstly I want to see if I can find one who is reading from the same page -  I'm a bit of a cynic and when I ask people I know what their teacher says / said [whether that was many moons ago or last week] they tend to look at me as though I'm from Mars or say "I just play" or perhaps they had an initial mess with the bench at their first lesson and a comment about relaxation, comfort and Tone - which sounds like a evening in a jacuzzi with a saleman from Lenor "Hey Anthony" "Relax, call me tone, dude"] so I want to avoid that and obviously I can talk to them as well, but does anyone know a good teacher in and around Bedfordshire they can recommend?

Secondly, is this a realistic goal? - My idea is to have [either daily / weekly] lessons more or less focussed entirely on physically playing and once I'm happy that my Doom 3 playing arm is safe [or I run out of money - which is another concern unfortunately - otherwise I would just get a teacher long term] go back to teaching myself so if step n of the internet forum method de jour says "play HS and find the motions that are comfortable" I'll have a bigger clue what, for me, those motions are - at least for lots of pieces at the level I'm playing at currently.

Lastly Bernhard mentioned here a fair time ago https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,2079.msg17335.html

It is difficult to write about this, and it is even worse to try to make sense out of what someone has written. This needs hands on approach. You must find someone who knows about these matters to see you playing, check what is inappropriate, demonstrate the correct way, and guide you so that you can do the same. It is whole body re-education and be prepared for it to take some months. If you live in the UK I can suggest some names.

I do, and please do - as this sounds what I'm looking for [and if you already have mentioned them somewhere else, apologies, I've just started reading the board]

Comments and opinions welcome...

[jeremyjchilds]

Very basic thing to get started. Tension will not allow your hand to play with arm weight. The most sure sign is that your shoulders are creeping up towards your ears.

Other than that, call up teachers, and tell them exactly what you have told us...

[tinkertanker]

"....very difficult to describe in writing"

That seems to be the line that sticks out the most in the various threads that have covered arm weight / motion and / or tension when playing.

So I'm not going to ask for them again....but I've been banging my head against a brick wall with this [which at least is repetitive motion that hurts when you're doing it right ]

I know the notes on the piano, I can read the music [at least I can read pieces well in excess of my ability to play] so I've resisted getting a teacher for a while, but 99% of the time I just know the stumbling block is the physical way I'm playing and recently that's causing pain in my right arm as well [the muscle on the inside of my elbow]

I've messed with the bench height , got tape measures out, stuck mirrors next to the piano, stared at photos / watched videos of people playing, asked a few who have supposedly had lessons and read copious amounts of, quite often contradictory, prose on the subject from the vague "relax, get comfortable..." to the musically anatomical "The wrist bone's connected to the..." and so on.

Some of which has helped - it's not all been negative, I'm playing better than when I started.

"Ok, so get a teacher then" - yep, firstly I want to see if I can find one who is reading from the same page -  I'm a bit of a cynic and when I ask people I know what their teacher says / said [whether that was many moons ago or last week] they tend to look at me as though I'm from Mars or say "I just play" or perhaps they had an initial mess with the bench at their first lesson and a comment about relaxation, comfort and Tone - which sounds like a evening in a jacuzzi with a saleman from Lenor "Hey Anthony" "Relax, call me tone, dude"] so I want to avoid that and obviously I can talk to them as well, but does anyone know a good teacher in and around Bedfordshire they can recommend?

Secondly, is this a realistic goal? - My idea is to have [either daily / weekly] lessons more or less focussed entirely on physically playing and once I'm happy that my Doom 3 playing arm is safe [or I run out of money - which is another concern unfortunately - otherwise I would just get a teacher long term] go back to teaching myself so if step n of the internet forum method de jour says "play HS and find the motions that are comfortable" I'll have a bigger clue what, for me, those motions are - at least for lots of pieces at the level I'm playing at currently.

Lastly Bernhard mentioned here a fair time ago https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,2079.msg17335.html
I do, and please do - as this sounds what I'm looking for [and if you already have mentioned them somewhere else, apologies, I've just started reading the board]

Comments and opinions welcome...

I know that I'm going to begin to sound like a doctor now when I'm not but you may be getting golfer's elbow and need to do a bit of physio to put in right (as well as correcting your technique to prevent it from coming back). See my other post here:-

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,11230.0.html

[leahcim]

Thanks for the replies.

I read your other post - It's not serious, it disappeared in a couple of days of avoiding the piano, and I think it's probably more to do with use of the computer [because I can, and did, play with my left hand for hours at end, the same things I play with the right, without a problem]

Having read through another heap of old posts I found a few things that have lit lightbulbs - the main one being that I wasn't playing well into the keyboard.

But every enlightenment still raises more seemingly contradictory stuff - If I play deeper into the keyboard it definately feels more comfortable, B major is fine, but I can't see how a C/F major scale and the typical stuff that you play in those keys fits into that as my fingers seem to collide with the black keys and each other where there are 2 adjacent white notes.

Do I play in front of the black keys in that case, or do I learn to move my fingers over the black keys and play between them? That's just about killed every supposedly trivial beginning piece and basically brings me to a standstill, I now have no idea how to begin to play what I couldn't play very well before ]

I pulled 20 lessons in keyboard choreography [looking at his wrist position it's either all black magic -or I'd expect the recommendation to be to burn the book, since his wrist in the photos is more often than not below his forearm, his hand and the keyboard and he shows a golf swing with the wrist swinging up then down to play notes] and the Fink book [which isn
t designed for reading but even wading through it it's so completely different from the former that it seems pointless following both - irrespective of whether both are right or wrong]

Consider the questions above rhetorical [or therapy ] I'll get a teacher and I'll just do what they say - irrespective of whether it contradicts everyone else and it'll probably work because a lot here seem to be playing - if it hurts I'll save the last bit of movement in my hands to sell everything on ebay