Once you acquire the strength to do ff and fff, decide whether you want a percussive or melodic sound.
Playing loudly is not about strength. If it were, you'd see pianists hitting the gym.
Yes - it's a lot more to do with coordination. That having been said, though, physique had something to do with Richter and Gilels' sounds - I believe that strength (or perhaps, body mass) affects sound production, but is not the primary factor.
Once you acquire the strength to do ff and fff, decide whether you want a percussive or melodic sound. For example, Bartok may require a percussive approach, in contrast to Chopin. Percussive effects involve striking the piano keys , while the melodic approach involves playing from the keys' surface. Good luck.
I tend to be percussive when playing FF.
A big sound from the surface of the keys gives more of a singing tone then a percussive hit from a distance. Having said that, the root of your problem lies with your practice restrictions. I would suggest that a keyboard with volume control and headsets would ultimately be your best bet. If you go that route, then get a weighted keyboard.
I think there are two things that might help you. The first comes from a former teacher of mine, Evelyne Brancart - on my first lesson, when she was teaching me how to use weight at the keyboard, she told me that one of the fundamental components of piano technique is "the drop." In describing to me how to do it, she had me raise one hand, and then allow it to fall to my lap, saying "no hope." After this, she had me transfer the idea to the keyboard with one finger, anywhere on the keyboard. I believe the idea was that I feel as though my hand would go straight through the keyboard if the keybed did not stop it. In any case, this came first - letting gravity do all of the work, and knowing how to uses the earth's #1 renewable resource (and it's free!).The second idea, which builds on the drop, is what Sandor calls "the throw." It's basically the drop, except using some force from the arms (or, really, the back). You can try it on the fallboard; on the keys, without regard to accuracy at first; with isolated notes, paying attention to the metacarpal ridge; with chords; with groups of notes; with groups of octaves; etc.I would encourage you to experiment with these, with and without actual music, because it seems to me that the proper combination of a founded core, the use of gravity, and a healthy participation of the fingers, one can get a rather meaty forte (& fortissimo).
"Punch" the keyboard. Forcing your arm down wastes a lot of energy and requires lots of muscular conditioning and building.Pretend your hand is playing handball and your "ball" will strike the keyboard and then rebound off the fallboard. Speed is what makes the hammers strike the strings faster, not strength. This is the general description that should make it easy. There are other smaller movements that will make it even easier and much more comfortable.
You need to experiment using the weight and support of your arms and torso. Make sure you remain flexible in your arms and wrists, avoid stiffness at all costs. It is OK to use quite some physical strength at the very moment you play the ff sound, chord or whatever, but you must release that immediately afterwards. And keep your fingers close to the keys, never hit them hard from a bigger distance. This way I can play a very powerful fff with hardly any effort.https://www.pianopage.net
Always play FF with just a tiny margin left to play accented notes just a bit louder. Even if they are not literally accented in the score but sound so in other recordings of the same piece. Always keep a small reserve. Good luck!
It is OK to use quite some physical strength at the very moment you play the ff sound, chord or whatever, but you must release that immediately afterwards.
I disagree with this. Playing loudly doesn't require any strength at all. Just listen to babies pound on the keyboard and they can play as loudly as professional pianists. It's not strength; it's speed.
The manner of movement involved in that level of intensity requires huge levels of strength. Not in the arm, but in the hand.
Also, nobody will ever convince me that a baby can play with a sonority like this:
Well duh! They don't have the hand reach.
The manner of movement involved in that level of intensity requires huge levels of strength. Not in the arm, but in the hand. Listen to the last few few minutes and the cadenza.
You certainly don't need to punch the piano, nor do you need much strength in any part of the body. I'm not one to talk about loud playing from my own playing perspective (I'm not particularly good at it), but my wife is one of the loudest pianists I've ever heard (when she wants to be) - I've heard her playing a piano directly after I heard it played by a an international soloist who, in turn, I've heard play concertos in various large concert halls. And she has trouble lifting heavy objects, opening jars of jam, etc. Nor does she appear to use much effort when she plays. It's all about coordination and not trying too hard.
He also noted the sheer amount of properly deployed physical strength required in order to present complex textures at very low dynamic levels for long stretches of time.
The secret to fff is not immense hand strength. The secret lies in using your body effectively. I once took a lesson with Janice Weber (BU) who worked with me over half an hour or so to get me to play loud with a good full piano sound. I weigh 220lbs and my hands are pretty strong. However, my fff wasn't great (not loud enough and not sonorous enough). She got me to be aware of my entire body and how it could be coordinated to produce a better sound at the piano. In the case of fff, one important aspect is to be able to use your back muscles as well in the process. It isn't easy to explain, someone needs to show you how to do it. All of these are issues better worked out with a teacher rather than discussed on a forum where you might get a lot of inaccurate information from other amateurs, which is why I've stopped asking for technical advice on forums. So go talk to a teacher if you REALLY want to know how to produce a sonorous fff.
It's simply not necessary to use your back to play loud. I'm not denying that it's a perfectly valid option some of the time, but it's not the big secret. Anyone who is of average strength or above has strength in the abundance in the back. The biggest issue is of whether the hand hand can actually transmit it without wasting most of the energy on impact and whether the hand is also strong enough to produce a big sound without a big active down force. If the hand merely stiffens, voicing is impossible. If the hand collapses, the bulk of the energy hits the key bed without passing through to the hammer. That's why the hand must be both strong and capable of properly coordinated movement during big chords. Leaning in with the back works if the hand instinctively discovers the need to push back against it and start trying to expand in response. If you don't chance on that instinct, by using the strength of the back you merely subject your hand to help to greater stress and impact. It's not that it's in any way difficult to bring the strong back muscles and arm into it but rather that it's difficult to learn how to pass on their strength by a sense of expansion, rather than drooping or stiffening, in the hand. Even if you learn to pass on force from the back in slow chords, it won't do any good for trying to play big chords fast. The only way to do that it is to keep active muscular pressures from the arm and back well away. All it needs is a mild sense of leaning in to start with and the rest is all about making room to expand the knuckles up and away from the the piano - rather than squashing down into every separate chord by piling on force and thus stressing the hand more, yet to less effect.
The second idea is what I described in my first post (what Janice Weber taught me). The first idea of the drop is something that I worked on with a teacher in Vienna (Blazenka Arnic). That really freed up my left hand. I used to feel tension in that arm before I spent a month practising the drop with my left arm. I now play absolutely tension-free in my left hand (tension-free in piano language doesn't mean zero tension, FYI because zero tension would mean a collapsed hand, and that isn't what you want to do). I need to do the same work with my right hand now. So taken together, these are precisely the ideas that I've got from reputable teachers from different parts of the world. Make of it what you will.
Dropping is pretty useless as there is no control.An ff can be executed with the fingers already touching the keys, and the hands seem to explode away.
What marik1 mentioned (...)
Perhaps you could demonstrate this lovely, sonorous FFF of yours over in the audition room?
The problem is that this mysterious state the hand where the tension is exactly correct doesn't exist. Nothing is perfectly stiff. Even the most rigid hand collapses a little. There is no magic state of tension that is tense enough to withstand incoming force, yet not too tense for comfort. It's far simpler than such fantasy. A hand cannot collapse when it's moving in the opposite direction. Relaxed fingers fold inwards, thus to avoid collapse altogether they must be expanding outwards in the opposite direction. It's really that simple. See the middle of this post (where I compare genuinely free arm drop with wrist droop and an arm drop with the actions that are necessary to land softly into balance, without any bracing, dropping or hard landings):https://pianoscience.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/introduction-to-three-core-posts-on.htmlI spent years on the dropping and pushing approaches with no real success, until I realised that the hand was the missing link. Teachers spoke only about the arm drop itself but told me nothing about the importance of the simple hand action that is needed to release the arm safely. I could play loud, but I wasn't in proper control and I was causing too much impact. Dropping can be effective but it's the action of the hand that is the common link in all truly versatile techniques. Dropping can add to good hand use but it cannot compensate for a lack of it. Fortissimo is all about knowing how to expand the hand from a free arm.
the dropping exercise had to do with teaching the hand what it feels like to be relaxed.
If you weren't in such a hurry to talk about what you wanted to talk about anyway, you might have noticed that I wasn't talking about dropping as a technique for producing an f or an ff or an fff.. the dropping exercise had to do with teaching the hand what it feels like to be relaxed.
Topic: How to do effective fortissimo 