Playing to the bottom of the keys vs 'keybedding'

[rc]

Keybedding is putting unnecessary weight on the bottom of the keys after they've been depressed.  Pressure after the string has been struck makes no difference on the sound, so I had been thinking that the best policy is to put as little pressure on the keybed as possible.

...But this led to shallow playing, and I hear often that I'm not playing to the bottom of the keys.  I do at home, where I'm adjusted to the weight of the keys, but then when I'm on a different instrument this often leads to playing 'over' the keys - dropped notes and an overall lack of control.

So in my lesson we cover things like weight transfer from finger to finger, and as I practice this it occurs to me that there is a certain amount of weight being left on the depressed key (fitting with this definition of keybedding).  This doesn't feel tense, more like the fingers are helping support the arm, keeping the fingers firm and a 'grounded' feel with the keyboard.

My thought is that this description of keybedding could be misleading.  What are your thoughts?

[moscheles001]

Lister-Sink and Chang talk about this. In her video, Lister-Sink shows how little weight is needed to hold a key down. I think you're right about the finger on the sustained note: once the note is sounded, the finger's job shifts from applying the force needed to sound the note, to the least amount of force needed to keep the key down. Your term "grounded" is very apt; if you think of it that way, you're likely to reduce the pressure to the minimum needed so other fingers can use the force they need.

I was terrible with this when I first started the Bach Sinfonias. I was so unused to playing more than one line with one hand that I held the keys down as if the piano would explode if I let them up.

[rc]

Thanks for the comments Moscheles,  it's reassuring to hear some confirmation.  I guess this is just another illustration of how putting these ideas into words can go awry

I did the same thing when I learned my first (only) sinfonia too, I knew something was wrong when my arms felt like they were burning   After fixing it, I was delighted to find that I could actually pull off a sinfonia.  Something about Bach pieces, maybe it's the difficulty, is that I find it easy to get completely absorbed into them.

[thierry13]

My former teacher said : hit-relax, it should be instantaneous. You hit the note with necessary gesture/sound/force, and then you relax to the point where you use minimal strength to keep it down.

[rc]

One of the points my teacher made is that if I relax too much the last joint of the finger collapses (do you know what I mean? I can take a picture), which doesn't effect the current note at all, but is a weak support of the hand which gives less control to the next finger strike...  When it's flimsy like this, there's less of a support from the keyboard and I think the rest of the body has to work harder to compensate for this lack of control.

The collapsing finger seems to be only a specific relaxation - only the tip of the finger.  Being such a subtle thing is probably how it's escaped my notice.

[0range]

...But this led to shallow playing, and I hear often that I'm not playing to the bottom of the keys.  I do at home, where I'm adjusted to the weight of the keys, but then when I'm on a different instrument this often leads to playing 'over' the keys - dropped notes and an overall lack of control.

It sounds like your problem is not whether or not to put additional pressure on the keybed after you've played the note, but rather, adjusting to different pianos and their actions. This is one of the reasons why so many concert pianists play exclusively on one piano. (no sh*t, sherlock, huh?  )

[rc]

True, playing on a different piano gives a different response, but we should be able to play on an unknown piano and not have dead notes throughout the first pieces, no? 

It could also be that I'm usually practicing on a digital, which has a tendancy to sound the note no matter how I play it.  So maybe it was allowing me to not even have to press the key all the way to the keybed, which the baby grand wouldn't let me get away with.

The concept I was given to practice was a slow deliberate weight-transfer from key to key, which implies there's as much pressure as the weight in my hand on the keybed.  In the next lesson I didn't have any dead notes.

[lostinidlewonder]

I find sometimes I will press harder down on notes but feel the gradual release of it using them as pivots to a new position. I guess you are not necessarily pushing down on the note harder, but you have a firm position on the note so that you can feel it leaving the hand as it acts as a guide to the new position.

Sometimes you might find yourself holding down a note, then find it acceptable to push off from it to let our hand jump up to a higher position rapidly. So you actually push down harder on a note that is already held down because it acts as a point of reference to your large jump.

I am sure there are more instances where it is useful to push down on a note or at least feel its release in a more gradual manner rather than just removing it or always making it a minimum.