Gyorgy Sandor - On Piano Playing

[danny elfboy]

As well all know this book has been suggested as one of the best in piano technique by veterans like Bernhard and Xvimbi

So I eventually bought it since their positive reviews were a garantee to me.
But I have to say that Sandor technical instructions advices contradict totally what Bernhard and especially Xvimbi stressed so much about technique.

For example Xvimbi often resorted to Thomas Mark book What Every Pianist Need to Know About The Body cliaming it was the bible of good muscular used and bone alignment at the piano. Bernhard also praised the technique of Barbara Lister-Sink and her involvement with Alexander Technique.

Without dealing with all the contradictory advices and instruction of Sandor I will just mention what he considers "wrong positions" and "right position".

What Mark, Lister-Sink and Xvimbi and Bernhard considered a good natural position of the wrist and hand and arm is considered by Sandor too high. He instead stress a low wrist position which is what Mark and Lister-Sink call "hyper-extended wrist" and what they considered a major source of injuries.

On the free fall again (which is considered the basic form of piano playing and the most important motion) Sandor claims we should land with a low wrist completely extended and not with a relaxed hand. Considering the importance of this basic form and motion it is rather suspect that Sandor claims to do what Xvimbi, Bernhard and Mark and Lister-Sink consider a major source of stress, loss of control and eventually injury.

I'd like to know your opinion and if you have read both Xvimbi and Bernhard post and Sandor book I'd like to know how you missed how contrary to everything Bernhard and Xvimbi and their sources stated Sandor book is. 

[faulty_damper]

Sandor's book talks around the principle of technique instead of making clear (actually muddy) points about coordination.  This is how all piano technique books are written and this misleads anyone who reads it.

Lets take for example the gravity drop.  Certainly everyone understands the principle of gravity; it keeps our feet firmly planted on the ground and when we accidentally drop our ice cream cone, we cry.  So sad.  The higher the cone is off the ground, the faster it will fall meeting its untimely fate.  But how long did that take?  Certainly, a 5-year-old would start crying sooner than a 25-year-old because even though the cone hit the ground slower, it hit the ground sooner after it dropped.

So your hands are ice cream cones hitting the white ground with some oblong-shaped black rocks systematically arranged into groups of two's and three's.  How neat nature is, indeed!  In order to play loudly, those hammers has to strike the strings at a high rate of velocity or just really fast.  (I prefer really fast.)  So this means your ice cream cones has to be really high from the ground to make noises.  Great!  You'll be crying in no time at all.

But dropping ice cream cones from too high wastes energy and requires more coordination.  You have to lift your cones by either bending your elbows to raise your forearms or lifting the entire arm from the shoulders or both.  This lifting wastes energy doing by attempting to build potential energy.  Then your ice cream has to drop in just the right place which is like spitting out a window onto the street below.  In order to control your ice cream as it drops, you have to guide it through thus complicating the entire motion and wasting the potential energy as it turns into kinetic energy.  Such a feat of coordination it is.  It's better just to let the ice cream melt.

When you have lots of ice cream cones that has to be dropped in just a short amount of time, isn't it easier and faster to squat close to the ground and smash them against the ground like squishing ants?  You can even hear that crunch as their exoskeloton collapses under your finger and their guts spill out.  By placing your hands close to the keyboard you need to figure out the best way to make motions that allows you to unload, reload and unload your load as fast as possible.  The motion to unload should allow for a natural reload motion, kind of like an automatic hand pistol - once fired, the mechanism automatically pulls the hammer back into position allowing you to fire again without having to cock the hammer back manually.

I won't say specifically what this motion is but it may feel like you are bouncing your ice cream cones against the ground and hitting a black wall.  Your ice cream should return to you because it knows its right place is back in your hand ready to be licked or salivated on.  It's just like playing hand ball!

In both the above mentioned techniques of of making hammers strike string really fast, the point is to make the strings get struck by hammers really fast, NOT do something fancy with your arms.  There are easy and difficult ways to do the same thing.  If you want to borrow money from a friend to buy ice cream, you can (1)ask him to lend it to you, (2)wait until he isn't looking and steal his wallet, (3)pull out a gun and mug him, (4)or something fancy like buy him dinner, take him out to watch a movie, sleep with him, make him fall in love with you so he'll marry you... and then, whatever money he makes is yours, Yours, YOURS!!!  But I think this last attempt should be the last resort because you'll wait years before you'll get to eat ice cream.  Or maybe he'll just buy it for as desert on your first date?  You have to figure out which works the best depending on how badly you want ice cream.

The technique of playing loudly is not as complicated as the above four possible steps.  You need to consider if getting married is the best way to do so or just asking for it.  It depends on your needs.  Just be sure you know the consequences of marrying your friend for ice cream.  You know, the inlaws?

[gerry]

Whew, faulty-damper - I want some whatever it is your on (he said after downing half a quart of Dreyers caramel swirl)

[danny elfboy]

Thanks faulty_damper for your explanation.
I guess that what you mean by the cone returning to you is what Barbara Lister-Sink in her video "Freeing the Caged Bird" calls "hand that is like a falling brick transforming itself into a ping pong ball on contact"

But you have to say about Sandor suggesting a very low wrist in raising and in landing when it is known that this causes compression of the wrist nerves and the carpal tunnel and is mentioned on Mark book and Lister-Sink video as one of causes of injury.

For example this pic shows what Sandor consider the only correct landing position of the wrist. I have drawn a purple line where according to Lister-Sink and Mark and Fink the arm should be when it free fall on the key.



What Sandor is doing in that pic is known as hyper-extending the wrist which is also known as a serious cause of injuries among pianists.

And he is doing and promoting that on lifting too. Again the wrist is hyper-extended and is disaligning the hand with the arm and compressing the nerves of the wrist.



What is ironical is that the position with a relaxed wrist that Lister-Sink, Mark and even Liszt promote is considered by Sandor a no-no to avoid absolutely in favour of wrist compressing.



My doubts on Sandor advices remain but even greater are the doubts as to how Xvimbi and Bernhard could reconcile Mark, Lister-Sink and Fink with Sandor when Sandor promotes the opposite in many instances expecially when he deals with technique and positions that the former consider absolutely dangerous and harmful.

[faulty_damper]

My experience with Sandor hasn't been very beneficial in terms of actually playing the way he prescribes.  But I have to say that he was very influential for the development of my own technique because I tried what he said and figured out it wasn't the best way to do the same things - I found far better ones.

I have never found any use for the way he prescribes the gravity drop.  It's practically useless.  It's practically useless.  It's practically useless.  Why?  Because it's not practical.  There are many examples in the book that shows when the drop should occur.  Yet they are all impractical.

Not only is it not practical, it also ignores the roles of the fingers as an active part of rebound.  As an example, a contraction of certain fingers after contact can launch the hand toward another part of the keyboard at incredible speed.  This aspect is entirely ignored probably because Sandor wasn't aware of it.  In fact, I don't know anyone who is aware of it.  But to follow Sandor means wasting a lot of energy to reload your ice cream high up into the air.

I can't say that Sandor was mistaken by adopting such a low wrist position nor can I say that it is the most effective and efficient for him.  I can only say that what works extremely well for me looks nothing like the way he does the same thing and my way is much easier.  My wrist never looks like the first picture immediately after contact.

If you try Sandors method, you may find a certain awkwardness to it.  In fact, you may find a better, more comfortable, easier, and faster method to do the same thing if you just experimented with it.  It's called practice.

If you are attempting to learn "technique" from a book, you will probably ignore the physical sensations from your body as you play in order to make it "correct".  This is dangerous.  It seems that such books about technique misleads the student into thinking there are right and wrong ways to do something and that there is only one acceptable method to accomplish the same task.

It should also be acknowledged, as Bernhard and Xvimbi mentioned, that writing about such things are very difficult.  I agree.