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Topic: Wrist Circles  (Read 5597 times)

Offline ramibarniv

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Wrist Circles
on: January 21, 2008, 10:03:35 PM
Hey all,
Long time no post... Have been to New Zealand, the States and Israel of course. Leaving again for the States tomorrow for some concerts and teaching on both coasts.
Anyway, I just sent it to a piano Egroup upon someone's request and thought I'd post it here too, just in case someone is interested:

It is hard to try and teach this technique via email. I can give the basic ideas, but without face to face contact, or at least a set of accompanying relevant pictures and diagrams, not to mention monitoring how the student understand it, it is not guarantied to be very effective.
Before we do the circles we need to first master up and down movements of the wrist and 2 note phrases, 3 note phrases, etc.
Before we do that we need to master just sinking with the wrist into one single note and releasing it = one note phrase.
The idea of the wrist circles (some like to call them ovals) is to draw circles with your wrist as you play.
Your starting position is a leveled wrist, somewhat lower than your hand knuckles, forearms are more or less parallel to the floor and aligned with your hand/fingers.
The direction of the circles which you draw are always the same, the wrists go first down then outwards, up and back inwards, etc.
This means that the right hand goes counter clockwise and the left clockwise.
When your played notes move up on the keyboard (pitch wise), your right hand will do the bottom half circle and the left will do the upper half circle.
When your played notes move down your right hand will do the upper half circle and the left will do the bottom half circle.
For practice one should exaggerate the wrist movements. Once it is really mastered, it becomes a second nature and the movement can be large, or very small, almost not detectable by a spectator.
Try it with a 5 finger position doing a pentascale up and down.
For better hand position, I recommend all such exercises to be played with the right hand about one octave higher than middle C.
You can try it with a 5 finger position doing a triad arpeggio in root position.
Then you can do it with just 2 notes, one at each end.
Then you can do it with just 2 notes, one at each end, but far apart (leaps).
I'll be happy to answer questions about it, as much as I'll be able to understand them and reply them.
Best regards,
Rami
https://www.youtube.com/user/barniv
https://ramisrhapsody.tripod.com/

Offline Bob

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Re: Wrist Circles
Reply #1 on: January 22, 2008, 03:25:05 AM
Hey... I've got a thing I do with wrist circles.  All white keys.  Ninth chords.  Works well to loosen things up and make sure you're using the wrist motion instead of having them tighten up.  Sounds very similar.
Favorite new teacher quote -- "You found the only possible wrong answer."

Offline ptmidwest

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Re: Wrist Circles
Reply #2 on: January 22, 2008, 03:39:17 AM
Maybe you can put it on YouTube so we can see examples?

Offline ramibarniv

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Re: Wrist Circles
Reply #3 on: January 22, 2008, 10:55:10 AM
Maybe you can put it on YouTube so we can see examples?

Sorry, I can't, I don't have the time. But you can watch me play on YouTube and get an idea.
Best wishes,
Rami
https://www.youtube.com/user/barniv
https://ramisrhapsody.tripod.com/
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