weighted hands/fingers

[quacker]

someone commented that when i played the slow and soft movements/pieces, it doesn't sound nice coz it is not "weighted" enough, or something like that.. how do i put more "weight" on my fingers ? really need help..

thanks.

[ilikepie]

My guess is, they mean your tone is hollow. When you play soft movements, maybe you tend to play the "wrong" kind of soft. Simply touching the keys without going the full depth of the keys will give the "wrong" tone. Rather, go to the full motion of the keys and get a full rich, yet soft tone.

[counterpoint]

Perhaps "intense" is a better word for "weighted". It's not so much a case of physical weight than of the feeling of a full and powerful sound, even when playing piano. If you have a clear imagination of the sound, the hands and fingers will find a way to produce that sound.

[danny elfboy]

Perhaps "intense" is a better word for "weighted". It's not so much a case of physical weight than of the feeling of a full and powerful sound, even when playing piano. If you have a clear imagination of the sound, the hands and fingers will find a way to produce that sound.

and that way will have to imply a variation/influence on the trasmitted weight.
If "feeling" a full sound allows you to create a "full" sound it still involve some concrete mechanism and can't be considered just an "illusion".

[nick]

someone commented that when i played the slow and soft movements/pieces, it doesn't sound nice coz it is not "weighted" enough, or something like that.. how do i put more "weight" on my fingers ? really need help..

thanks.

When your hand is over the keyboard without playing a note, you put a finger on a key and let your arm drop, so that the finger is now supporting the weight of your arm instead of the shoulder muscle holding your arm up. You mostly don't play with full arm weight, but that is the general principle of playing with arm weight. You can vary how much weight is on each finger with varying degrees of using the shoulder muscle to hold the arm up partially, or let go with full weight. Much easier to express oneself with dynamics with this method.

Nick

[danny elfboy]

When your hand is over the keyboard without playing a note, you put a finger on a key and let your arm drop, so that the finger is now supporting the weight of your arm instead of the shoulder muscle holding your arm up.

Not completely correct.
The fingers are only half-supporting the forearm because it is on the other side half supported by the upperarm and shoulder acting as cables keeping a bridge up.

This requires some work in finding the appropriate height at the bench.
The appropriate height allows this mechanism to function properly and can be felt as it allows the forearm and wrist to be supported and kept up by a non-contracted and totally relaxed hand and upperarm.

The wrong height requires us to raise the wrist or to raise the elbow hence when we really relax them the structure collapses and the support ceases to function.
At the right height the forearm supported by the arched finger on one side and by the relaxed and hanging elbow/upper arm on the other side just feels weightless and yet even if it is weighless and not the slighest amount of tension or contraction is involved the wrist and hand still don't collapse.

You mostly don't play with full arm weight, but that is the general principle of playing with arm weight. You can vary how much weight is on each finger with varying degrees of using the shoulder muscle to hold the arm up partially, or let go with full weight.

It's all a matter of pressure and pressure is the force exerted by a weight.
The best example is going from light blue to dark blue by changing the amont of pressure exerted on the blue crayon.

Although there are still those that believe that weight is just an illusion the proof is on the pudding.

Many don't realize that the only way to activate the sound mechanism at the piano is through depression. And depression can only occur through weight pressure falling from above to below.

So it's unquestionable that the only way to play is through weight trasmittion.
Therefore it all boils down to whether that weight comes from the individual fingers or the fingers just act as appendixes (or peripheries as Whiteside would say)

The fingers just don't weight enough and lifting a finger to let its falling weight depress a key is just strainful and awkward.

But if the fingers just act as appendixes trasmitting weight through the firming of the joints then not just the forearm but the whole upper body and sternum trasmits its weight to fingers to allow them to direct that weight pressure to the keys.

If you trace a line from nipple to nipple and mark the center of that line you can feel putting your hand on that poin the muscles there contracting and resetting as more pressure force is trasmitted to the fingers.

Whenever we have doubt about the rationality of weight trasmittiong as not just an illusion we just need to remember the structure of the arch how indeed the keystone trasmits the weight evenly among the pillars. It can be measure.

It's true that many had problems with the approach of "forearm weight" but that's not the fault of a simple and true biomechanical fact but of the limitation and flaws of such approach, relying on the forearm and teaching the feeling of weight trasmissiong as a feeling of heaviness.

[counterpoint]

Although there are still those that believe that weight is just an illusion the proof is on the pudding.

 

You can easily measure the weight of the arm - if all muscles of the arm are relaxed.  So this weight or let's say the mass of the arm is a fix value, which cannot change in a short time (minutes, hours, days...)

Nicco is completely right. What we feel as "weight", is the more or less taut muscles of the upper arm: the more taut the muscles are, the lighter feels the forearm. If they are totally relaxed, the arm has its full, real weight, and that's way too much to play a piece, if it's not for example the beginning of Tschaikowsky concerto.

CORRECTION

It's too heavy even for Tschaikowsky concerto.

[danny elfboy]

You can easily measure the weight of the arm - if all muscles of the arm are relaxed.  So this weight or let's say the mass of the arm is a fix value, which cannot change in a short time (minutes, hours, days...)

The forearm and the wrist form an arch.
What can be measure is that the central weight of the arm can be trasmitted to the fingers and the keys which act as one of the pillar of the self-supported structure.

What can be measure in an arch is that the weight of the keystone changes (exerts less weight pressure in the perpendicular line going from the keystone to the ground) as the weight is being directed by the pillars to the ground.

Nicco is completely right. What we feel as "weight", is the more or less taut muscles of the upper arm: the more taut the muscles are, the lighter feels the forearm.

The upper arm should always be as relaxed as possible and contracted upper arm muscles are a common cause of strain and pain in the elbow and upper arms.

We need to remember that the whole arms are not "things" that blossom from your upperbody. The structure of the whole arm is connected to the shoulder blade and goes well into the center of the body connecting to the sternum.

In fact anatomically it's not the forearm or upper arm muscles that allows the arms to remain up and not to fall at the sides of the body but the clavicular pectoralis major
So the muscles that keep our forearms up (as in for example above the piano keys) are in the sternum and not in the arm.

So the forearm gets more or less support from those muscle (in the center of an imaginary line that goes from nipple to nipple)
One can feel those shortening and contracting as the forearm feels lighter and needs to move or to be kept up and one can feel those lengthening and resetting as the forearm is completely relaxed and all its weight is trasmitted to the pillars.

The difference in muscular support is so fast that the amount of exerted pressure weight changes in a matter of milli-seconds. Yet this leaves the upper arm free to be relaxed and mellow all the time acting as a pillar and not as an overly active segment.

If they are totally relaxed, the arm has its full, real weight, and that's way too much to play a piece, if it's not for example the beginning of Tschaikowsky concerto.

CORRECTION

It's too heavy even for Tschaikowsky concerto.

That's why it's a matter of shades.

I wouldn't remove all sternal support in other to play with a totally dead forearm as indeed it would sound like banging at the piano. But as I said in the "holding a key down after playing it" thread, the structure of the whole arm is self supporting so it can be self supported without the slighest muscular contraction and without the support of the clavicular pectoralis major. That means that after the finger hits the note contraction and support becomes obsolete and can be resetted. In fact that supported automatically disappears as the finger joints are firmed.
Of course the resetting is followed almost immediately sharing again the pressure weight with the sternum muscles.

The system acts as opposite set of muscles and it all depends on what is release and what is contracted.

When the forearm is released the sternum muscles are contracted.
When the forearm is contracted the sternum muscles are released.

Such contracting and resetting and support changes are so quickly that they may appear to occur at the same time. In fact this is what allows me to say that control over "speed" is control over the "speed" at which contraction and resetting occur.

[counterpoint]

In fact anatomically it's not the forearm or upper arm muscles that allows the arms to remain up and not to fall at the sides of the body but the clavicular pectoralis major

You lift your forearms with your chest muscles? That's interesting! How should that work?

[danny elfboy]

You lift your forearms with your chest muscles? That's interesting! How should that work?

You keep your forearms up with your chest muscles.
Imagine it like strings tied to the sternum and to the whole arm.
If the string is shortened and in tension it keep the arm suspended and if you let the string loose it falls at your side (like a curtain). Put your whole palm on the clavicular pectoralis muscles and you will feel them releasing as your arm is dead and at your side and contracting as your keep your forearm suspended. The worst problem of people getting clavicular surgery is lifting objects and keeping their arms suspended.

[danny elfboy]

[counterpoint]

Are you sure, this image is correct?

I don't hope, you play piano in that postion 

[danny elfboy]

Are you sure, this image is correct?

I don't hope, you play piano in that postion 

Just use your immagination and think the forearm are parallel to the ground.
Unfortunately from that angle parallel forearms would clearly look like a big dot at the end of the upper arm. But the principle is the same.

EDIT:

Look at these drawings instead:


In the first drawing I added more muscles to show that the arm muscles INDEED follow the curves of the arm structure including the shoulder blade and that go from wrist to sternum uninterrupted and indeed the sternum is the most important pivotal of the whole arm.

[counterpoint]

Sorry, this makes anatomically no sense. The muscles of the chest will not have any influence on the forearm, whatever they do, contract or relax. They have an influence on the motion and position of the upper arm, that's clear.

(If the muscles, which move the upper arms are relaxed - I hope you agree that they should be relaxed - the same muscles can not hold the forearms in horizontal position.)

[danny elfboy]

Sorry, this makes anatomically no sense. The muscles of the chest will not have any influence on the forearm, whatever they do, contract or relax. They have an influence on the motion and position of the upper arm, that's clear.

You can just feel it.
Keep your upperarm as relaxed as possible (meaning hanging but not firm)
And just raise the forearm and not the upperarm.
You will feel the sternum muscles slightly contracting if your put your palm on your sternum. If you put the palm on your triceps you'll notice they shorten when your forearm is totally relaxed and lengthen when your forearm is raised.
(in fact as far as upperarms are concerned it would be better to talk about "keeping the muscles of your forearm lengthened" rather than "keeping the muscles relaxed")

The reason is that there's a strong sinergy between the muscles as they follows the whole arm structure till the center of the body uninterrupted.

So it's absolutely not true that the sternum muscles have no role in the forearm supension since they're all connected one to another and the upperarm muscles when the forearm are suspended actually lengthen and don't shorten.

Once again in just your arm there's not the biomechanic structure that would allow you to get your forearm suspended as the sternum muscles and back muscles are needed.
In fact if you could rip off the structure of your arm you wouldn't just remove the arms but the whole superficial muscle layer in the shoulders, chest and back. Any anatomy textbook will show that the suspension of the forearm influence all those muscles.
It's like a chain and you can't absolutely have a working structure if you remove one ring of the chain. Besides whatever motions of the elbow joint (including the lever motion of the forearm) occurs at the sternum muscles.

Maybe the semantic controversy is the difference between "direct influence" and "indirect influence". The "indirect influence" muscles (in this case) can be called the muscles that assist the muscles whose function is to raise the forearm.

Another kinestethic experiment is that to put again your left hand palm on the sternum muscle. Playing a note with the right hand and contracting a lot the forearm in firming the fingers. It can be felt that when the forearm contracts the contraction in the sternum muscles disappears. Now release the contraction un-firming the fingers and making the forearm totally relaxed again. It can be felt immediately that the contraction in the sternum muscles recovers.

By the way, you're wrong in calling the sternum muscles "muscles of the chest".
Those muscles are in truth arm muscles by all means.
The skeletal structure of the arm starts in the sternum and the muscles of the arms start in the sternum. As such they are involved with the whole arm structure and support the weight of the arm. Many muscles we consider "back muscles" are actually arm muscles too.

[danny elfboy]

I'm also realizing that words can be very misleading.
We have already realized that when talking about "tension" vs "accumulation of tension".
Now it's the same we "contraction" vs. "relaxation".
The point is that there are different degress of contraction and different degrees of relaxation. The flaw is in considering relaxation as "the state of a person who fainted".

But relaxation is not necessarily the absence of all contraction or tension.
Relaxation can also be considered the "equilibrium" of contraction or tension.
That's what I mean by a "relaxed" upper arm anyway and in saying so I'm not only talking about muscles but bones and joints too.
There three states of upper arm tension:

1) raising the shoulders and therefore the upper arm

2) pointing the elbows out forming "wings" with the upper arm

3) tightening the upper muscles as when "showing the biceps"

What I refer to as "relaxed state" involves the absence of these three states but doesn't involve the absolute absence of muscular contraction and would create the "equilibrium state"

What helped me realize the semantic problem here due to the lack of more terms to define the different definitions of relaxation or contraction has been this claim by the Andover educator Thomas Carson Mark:

Rather than resting on a support the arms are suspended out to the side over the core of our body. The analogy of a suspension bridge can be illuminating.
The vertical tower of the bridge supports the whole structure. It bears the weight of the structure and delivers it to the ground. But although the tower supports the roadbed, the roadbed does not rest on the tower or anything else. The roadband is supported by the cables; that is, it's suspended from the tower by means of cables.
Our arms are analogously suspended from our core support (my addition: the sternum or torso) but the differ from the roadbed in being mobile in various ways.
So imagine a more complex suspension bridge with cables below the roadbed as well as below.

Tension on the cables below would move the roadbed lower, provided the upper cables could stretch by the proper amount. Similarly, tension on the upper cables would lift the roadbed, provided the lower cables could stretch enough. In this way the roadband can move up and down.

Nevertheless we can imagine that there is a position of aproximate equilibrium where all cables support the roadbed in such a way that tension on any cable is minimal.

This kind of equilibrium is my definition of the term "relaxation".
Keeping in mind the image of the bridge, let's hypothesize that one cable gets broken.
What we can clearly imagine is the other cables suddenly "feeling" more tension as the perfect equilibrium is broken. The imagine is very vivid and we can indeed clearly image how perfect tension removes tension as paradoxical as it may sound and how uneven tension creates tension. (the paradox comes as I said from the lack of more terms to define the different qualities of tension)
In the same way we can imagine how the dome-roof of a temple being supported in equilibrium by series of column (if it could have sensory awareness) would feel weighless and untensed. And we can imagine how removing two colums would suddenly break this equilibrium and the roof-dome would suddenly feel tensed, contracted and would be aware of more tension in certain columns.
Another example is the balance of our standing still body.
We can feel no tension as we stand still perfectly balanced but if we try to shift the weight of the body from the both leg evenly to just one leg we can feel tension and contraction increasing thorough the whole body.
An important aspect of equilibrium is that it entails anyway concrete weight and its bearing, delivering, sharing, directing and changing.

Speaking of "upper arm relaxation" I imagine those three states listed above interfering with such equilibrium as one muscle, group of muscles, bone or joint pulls the arm out of that equilibrium when balanced tension becomes tensionless.

[danny elfboy]

Lately I have been into controversies due to semantics of what relaxation really means (to me and in my posts). I've found certain visual analogies (the bridge) very useful in explaining what I mean by relaxation.

I want to add a further analogy which I found really brilliant.
Abby Whiteside used this visual analogy to explain "relaxation".

She said to imagine the "relaxed state" as gently cupping the palms of the hand to cradle a little fragile bird and imagining to have to move your body and your cupped hands in a delicate way not to hurt the little bird.

I find the analogy really brilliant because you can try it yourself, cupping your palms imagining to cradle a young bird. Now imagine you have to move with this bird in your cupped hands and your movements needs to be relaxed and smooth.

You can indeed feel the relaxation in your hand, fingers, arm and upperarm.
You can ask someone to touch your muscle and he would feel the same relaxation.
You can also observe how in trying not to hurt this little bird there's an equilibrium in your state of relaxation and your bones alignment.

Now imagine you have to rock you palm-cradle to soothe the bird like you would do with the cradle of a baby. Notice how the movement is jerky if you're tensed and rigid and notice how to obtain the correct delicate soothing swinging motion you need to release all that rigidity, relax the arms and let the upper arms hang loosely from the shoulders joints. Feel how relaxed and tensionless the swinging is now and how relaxed, tensionless and in equilibrium your body and especially your arms and hands are.

But yet there's muscle contractions there.
Because if there wasn't the arms would just fall as dead at the sides and the little delicate bird would just fall at the ground and break all its bones.

Imagine now to clench your fists because you're very angry with someone or something.
All your body is in tension and you're almost cutting and piercing your palm with the nails of your curled inward fingers. Clench your teeth strongly. Feel the arms as stiff, tightened and tensed as possible. Ask someone to touch them to feel indeed the tension, the rigidity of all the muscles.

Then think again of the delicate little bird to cradle in your palms.

What I mean by "relaxation" is cradling the bird and yet it does involve muscular contraction.