Certain former qualified members have said that while Abby's book is good it just takes the hole weight thing a bit to far. Just use the search function.
Thanks.
Okay I have read the thread where they are criticizing Whiteside approach.
Let me just point out that many people misunderstand the concept of weight.
See the recent post in Student Corner about weight and holding a key down.
Whiteside besides is not an easy read and it's easy to misunderstand.
Anyway finger development doesn't make such sense to me since there's nothing to develop in the finger nor in the small muscles controlling them.
Whiteside points out a very important thing: piano is a percussive instrument and can be played only with a gravitational force of pressure.
Even "pushing" is just a matter of weight trasmittion.
So there must be "weight" someone that push the key down otherwise there would be no sound. Such weight can't come from the fingers because they're unadequate as a pushing down gravity force. The weight hence can only come from the rest of the body.
This makes particularly sense if we understand that the bones and muscles of the arms and those that goes from the elbows to the sternum are all arch shaped.
An arch is self supporting structure which directs the weight of the keystone 50/50 to the pillars. This indeed proves there's a concrete weight trasmitton between the torso, the forearm and the fingers and it's only thanks to the weight of the rest of the body transferred to the pillar and increasing the pressure that fingers can play the piano.
Fingers are pillars or practically dead appendix.
They are the pillars of neuromuscular impulses and pillars of the weight of the upper body.
In a way they do nothing. They just allow others body part to do their work.
It's like a too small barrier that doesn't prevent the river from flooding the city.
The small barrier didn't flood the city, the river did ... the barrier was just a mean allowing it to happen.
When they say "
enough finger-school was already being taught so there was no need to discuss it" I don't understand whay they are referring too.
Whiteside didn't discuss finger-school because nothing about it is sound or correct.
We play with our fingers just like a marathon runner runs with his feet.
The gist of it is that while the fingers can move (lifting) in playing the weight-pressure required to produce sound can't absolutely come from the fingers.
That being said I still don't believe in lifting fingers. I believe in stead that the loose wrist and the whole hand should lift while the contracted fingers depress a certain amount of note per muscle impulse, before resetting occurs.