Exercise from my teacher - question to you guys

[ggpianogg]

Hi there,

I have finally found a really good teacher who I feel could carry on teaching me for a long time. I have just had my first lesson with him, and he noticed that my forearms are way too stiff when I'm playing and that I'm tensing too many unnecessary muscles while I play.

He gave me an exercise for this: a few easy (around grade 4-5 I would say) which I'm supposed to play hands seperately for now, focusing on relaxation. He told me to play the scales in those etudes in such a way that every second note I should pause, stop on the note, and make sure that I completely drop the weight of my forearm and elbow. I should continue through the whole piece doing this. And some variations of this exercise too - for example, playing 3 notes quickly and stopping (and dropping elbow weight) on the fourth note, etc.

I'm assuming that this is quite a popular form of exercies among teachers (sorry if I'm wrong), so I have aquestion, since I'm not going to see this teacher for another week.

Basically, what I would like to know is whether I should also drop my wrist when the 'rest' comes on a given note? I remember asking him this, but I was so involved in the whole exercise that I don't recall what his answer was completely, I was almost in a trance.

Should I drop the whole wait along with the wrist (doesn't seem right..), or should I perhaps keep my wrist in position, sort of have it 'rest' on the finger that is on the note the moment I stop? In this scenario, my finger is in a way the only part of me that is tense, keeping my wrist in position, while at the same time dropping m elbow/forearm completely (and not allowing it to drag the wrist with it - the resistance comes from that finger, of course).

I hope I made my question clear. Thanks in advance.

[perfect_pitch]

Basically, what I would like to know is whether I should also drop my wrist when the 'rest' comes on a given note?

No. Clear and simple. NEVER, drop your wrist!

Or as my teacher likes to call it, never 'dip your wrist'

[quantum]

There are wrist flexibility exercises that ask the student to exaggerate an up and down movement of the wrist - a huge amount more than is used for normal playing.  I don't know if your teacher is incorporating this as well. 

It sounds more like a weight exercise though.  Where you are using the weight of varying degrees to obtain a firm yet not harsh tone.  The weight can be just from your arm, or it can be directed from your entire torso, or anything in between.  In such case think of directing your weight to the key.  The sensation is still dropping, but not dropping without intention or aim.  You don't want to dip your wrist or else this dip will be the focal point of the weight, not the key.  You want to drop weight such that your arm, wrist, hand and finger direct the weight to the bottom of the key bed. 

[ggpianogg]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the clarification.

This is the way I'm doing it (keeping the wrist in it's neutral position). This, however, results in quite a bit of weight being chanelled to the finger at the "rest" points - the whole arm is dropped, but the finger is holding the wrist up, so I feel that the finger is sustaining a bit of weight - not too much, nothing painful whatsovever. Is this normal? (as much as you can say without seeing me play, that is).

Thanks

[okoie]

As you describe the position of the upper limb after the drop ,your finger at rest does the same work of a bridge pier. In fact you write:"my finger is in a way the only part of me that is tense". Ultimately this situation may be pathogenic at least for your finger(I have read your second post).
I suggest to let the stronger muscles of the shoulder girdle fully substain the weight of the upper limb.Doing so  the wirst will not drop and the forearm will become less stiff at once.

[ggpianogg]

Okoie,

I think I might have given the wrong impression in my second post. What I meant to say is that I can feel some weight on my finger because it is the only thing that is keeping my wrist from falling down. The other parts of the hand are definitely sustained by my shoulder.

Could this mean perhaps that I'm sitting a bit too low at the piano?

[timothy42b]

No. Clear and simple. NEVER, drop your wrist!

Or as my teacher likes to call it, never 'dip your wrist'

I don't know if you should dip your wrist while playing.  But the purpose of this exercise is specifically to teach relaxation.

Leschetitzky (I probably spelled it wrong) says to frequently dip the wrist while playing finger exercises to remove tension and learn relaxation. 

[okoie]

Try different higher positions of the bench and take note of what happens.May be you guess right.

[perfect_pitch]

I don't know if you should dip your wrist while playing.  But the purpose of this exercise is specifically to teach relaxation.

Yes - and that can be done without dropping the wrist lower than the hand.

[lostinidlewonder]

What notes and fingering are you playing in your exercise?

[ggpianogg]

What notes and fingering are you playing in your exercise?

It's H. Berens Etude Op 85 no. 12 (Allegro non troppo). I play according to the fingering in the sheet.

[rmbarbosa]

You may feel what`s relaxation is by letting you arm fall into the keyboard like is the keyboard doesn`t exist, if the keyboard isnt there... Try it

[ggpianogg]

It feels great! although I do drop my wrist then so that it is resting on the edge of the keyboard.

[lostinidlewonder]

Never heard of this composer (does he write for exams?) do you have snippets of the sheet music you can share?

[ramseytheii]

This is an interesting topic!

It seems that the exercise you have been given, is designed to develop a feeling of repeated motion coming from the forearm.  You should be warned that the actual experience of playing scales, is far removed from the exercise you are doing; that perhaps is a warning also to teachers - ideally exercises should match real-life experience, not use an unrelated format to teach a principle.

But may I suggest that your mental focus shifts from your body parts, to the actual key you are pressing.

What does a tense forearm, or tense anything, result in?  It will result in an uneven, unattractive, uncontrolled, and monotonous sound.  There is a certain value to be gained in identifying the prime culprit, but all our efforts, I believe, should be in results, not processes.

A way to loosen your technique, then, would be to concentrate on varying key depths.  You could identify the point of escapement, and try to play your repertoire depressing the keys half-way, but making no sound.  Then you could try to play it depressing the keys enough to make hardly a whisper of sound.  And so on and so forth.

All technique should come from desired results; that is a principle from which we should never deviate.  The definition of the results is up to us: the realization of the specific markings a composer wrote is only one of many possible definitions. 

Since the art of piano playing lies in touch, all efforts should be directed at how the keys are depressed.  This will automatically effect your physiology. 

In my opinion, it is irrational and possibly harmful to focus on the movement of a single muscle.

Walter Ramsey

[ramseytheii]

Also, I think the best way to develop a loose, free piano technique, is to practice polyphonically. 

When we direct certain lines to be prominent over others, we force a specific and unique distribution of weight that is not controlled by physical means, but by musical intentions.  This automatically and unconsciously leads to freer muscles.

Walter Ramsey

[ggpianogg]

Thanks for all the hints Walter, I'll do my best to test out your approach and see where it takes me.

lostinidlewonder, I will try to scan this piece of music today and post it here.

[ggpianogg]

Hey,

I've scanned both pages of the etude, unfortunately I placed the pages upside down without knowing it so the scans are also upside down - you will have to rotate them in your PDF viewer

[pianisten1989]

No. Clear and simple. NEVER, drop your wrist!

Whaaat?!
For someone who's playing Brahms Paganini-variations, I am kind of disappointed... To use the word "never" in technical discussions...!?
Everybody is different, dammit!

My former teacher told me to drop my wrist quite a lot (among other things). Thx to that I can practise 10 hours a day, without having even slightest pain, what so ever.

I'm curious though.. What does your teacher tell you to do? Be totally still in your wrist, or what?

[ggpianogg]

I decided to post a few pictures of my position by the piano. You might wonder why I didn't ask my teacher about it, well, my first lesson with him wasn't actually a lesson, just a quick meet to so that each of us can assess what the other was like. So we kinda just played at his "backup" piano just so he could quickly see what I could do, so we didn't really get in to stuff like position at the piano, etc - I'll definitely ask about this on our very next lesson. For now, I'll ask for your help

Sorry for the quality of some of the pictures, these were taken with a phone so the quality can really suck at times... tell me what you think of my position. I've experimented with a few, but I feel that each of them is not that ideal for relaxing (perhaps I'm looking at things from the wrong angle, not sure yet). I know my back isn't too straight here, it's mostly cause I was looking to see if my friend was holding the camera correctly and I was kinda gazing down after that, so don't worry about that. Any tips are highly appreciated.

(click picture to enlarge it).






P.s. to those who might be wondering - I'm switching from this digital piano to an acoustic. This new teacher I just met made me realize how digitals are reall "crap" when compared to acoustics. I've basically already sold this digital (guy is coming on saturday to pick it up) and am getting most likely this Yamaha upright instead:https://tiny.pl/h761b

I got the digital first cause I was worried the neighbours would go nuts, but somehow, after seeing first hand the differences between a digital and an acoustic, I just don't care about the neighbours anymore...

[perfect_pitch]

Whaaat?!
My former teacher told me to drop my wrist quite a lot (among other things). Thx to that I can practise 10 hours a day, without having even slightest pain, what so ever.

I'm curious though.. What does your teacher tell you to do? Be totally still in your wrist, or what?

She tells me that the wrist should be level with the hand to support it - but obviously not to be tense. She only tells me not to drop the wrist below the hand's height.

And I'm pretty sure that dropping the wrist is generally a pianism 'no-no'... so I thought it was valid to put the word NEVER in that statement.

[pianisten1989]

Oh, okay... Well, I've never heard anyone saying it's a no-no, and I use it almost in every piece I play...

[lostinidlewonder]

Thanks ggpianogg for the scan here are some of my ideas.

He gave me an exercise for this: a few easy (around grade 4-5 I would say) which I'm supposed to play hands seperately for now, focusing on relaxation.

Because of the basic pattern nature of this etude it is not a bad idea to play hands separate. It is not the type of piece which requires two hands to work as one as such and separate hands will work without inefficiency.

He told me to play the scales in those etudes in such a way that every second note I should pause, stop on the note, and make sure that I completely drop the weight of my forearm and elbow. I should continue through the whole piece doing this. And some variations of this exercise too - for example, playing 3 notes quickly and stopping (and dropping elbow weight) on the fourth note, etc.

I believe this tactic only works good (playing in groups not the dropping bit although I do find application of that when one tries to memorize notes, just to go through a routine and test if they know the notes not actually practice the technique to play with relaxation.) with linear direction scales not so much what you have in this piece which has turns within scales.

To approach this etude I would accent the first note of each group of four notes, do this by raising the finger I think that is a better description than saying drop your hand, but you may use hand weight as well, whatever works for you (but because of its scale nature I would prefer simply raising the finger to accent), this will allow you to feel the beat nature of the string of notes and allow the muscular/sound memory to be acquired more readily. You may pause at the end of every 4th note as long as you like (although determining a set period that you pause is best and then reducing that to nothing is your aim and still maintain the relaxed playing you achieve when the pauses are included.), during this controlled pause do not creep to the next position, measure it with your eyes the move there immediately. Don't do anything strange like dip your wrist as it is unnecessary and would be impossible to do if you played the piece as it should be. Movements you do should relate to what you would do if you play the piece with mastery.

[ggpianogg]

Thanks a lot for your time and advice, lostinidlewonder. Actually, a lot of what you said was also described to me by my teacher (even though I didn't mention it in my original post), so the two of you are on a similar track, I guess

[lattlay]

She tells me that the wrist should be level with the hand to support it - but obviously not to be tense. She only tells me not to drop the wrist below the hand's height.

And I'm pretty sure that dropping the wrist is generally a pianism 'no-no'... so I thought it was valid to put the word NEVER in that statement.

I've also heard that you should never drop your wrist below your fingers, but I do sometimes anyways.
I don't think there is anything wrong with it if you can control it and it's not uncomfortable (although if you are just starting piano then it is better to learn to not drop your wrist).

It's similar to the other pianism 'no-no' of playing with straight fingers. If you can pull it off then go for it (I occasionally play with straight fingers for certain pieces), but learn to play the 'correct' way first IMO.