This question can only be answered in a useful way if you can decide what “technique” is.
Here is the Oxford Dictionary definition:
Technique: a way of carrying out a particular task, especially the execution of an artistic work or a scientific procedure. A procedure that is effective in achieving its aim.
I like this definition: Technique is a way of doing something. I see severl consequences:
1. Different ways of doing something are possible, but some will be so clearly better that we can speak of “good technique” and “bad technique”. But we must always remember that such terms are relative.
2. Some ways will actually not result in something getting done. Such “techniques” are neither good nor bad, they are simply unworkable, and they are not technique at all.
3. A way of doing something superlatively well may turn up to be a very bad way of doing something else. In fact it may be positively unworkable, and end up being no technique at all.
4. From all the above we must conclude that:
a. Technique is always specific to what you want to do.
b. There may be more than one technique for the same task, and they may be compared and ranked – if you can decide on what outcome you desire. For instance, you may decide to rank techniques in terms of efficiency, or in terms of elegance (aesthetics). There is no guarantee that the most efficient technique will be the most elegant. But there is nothing forbidding it either.
c. Different tasks will necessarily require different techniques.
Now consider the story of Dick Fosberry.
If you watch any Olympic games before 1968, and watch the high jump event, you will notice that every competitor runs towards the bar and dives over it facing forwards.
It is a way of jumping over the bar. It is a technique. How did these Olympic athletes, trained and improved their technique?
First they had a very clear aim and a very clear way to decide what was improved technique: the aim was to jump over the pole, and how good their technique was, was measured by how high they could jump over the pole. It is this sort of simplicity that leads to improvement. And that is how you go about it: first you must learn the technique. You must learn how to run to the pole, how to give impulse, how to go over the pole, and how to land on the other side. You must loose your fear of hurling yourself over the pole. You must visualise each minutiae of the several movements involved. This is the investigation phase of training. Once you get it all sorted out both in your mind and in your body, you must now concentrate on tiny details. The smallest unnecessary body movement may cost you some fatal centimetres when negotiating the pole. You must use your whole body in a co-ordinated manner. Your coach will watch you like a hawk, film you, discuss the minutiae of your movements so that they become ever more likely to give you an edge over the other jumpers. And of course, your genetics (the physical edge you are born with) are taken for granted. Some body types are simply not made for high jump, and even if you had perfect technique your body would never allow you to excel (this is what is commonly called talent). Of course it is all right to dedicate your life to high jump and perfect your technique to the level of an Olympic athlete. But if your genetic goes against you, you are unlikely to get gold. Of course if you are not interested in competing, and you just like high jump, then that is perfectly all right.
In any case, once you get the co-ordinates of your technique perfect, then you repeat it over and over again. But it is not enough to repeat it. You must have an aim. You must want to get the technique better, and for that you must have a way to measure if it is indeed getting better.
In high jump, as I said, this is pretty straightforward: your aim is to jump over the pole, and you know you are improving if you keep jumping higher and higher. There will be a point where you cannot possibly jump higher, and that is when you decide that your technique is good enough. So it seems that at this stage, the only way you can jump higher is if you would somehow get a different body. But there is another way to improve your results: and that means changing the technique. Read on.
In the 1968 Olympic Games at Mexico City, American high jumper Dick Fosberry, was to change sports history. After training in secret, he run towards the bar, and to the amazement of all, turned around and jumped backwards, falling flat on his back on the other side. Everyone laughed at such ludicrous move, and it was immediately nicknamed Fosberry’s “flop”. But it was Fosberry who had the last laugh: he had cleared the bar for almost a foot above the previous high jump record!
Now I can think of few movements more unnatural than backwards jumping. Yet, by the next Olympics every single competitor in the high jump was jumping backwards. And they looked perfectly at ease with it. They had practised relentlessly until they could do it with grace and ease. In fact, since 68 no high jumper will consider jumping forward, to the extent that now jumping backwards seems to us completely natural.
Now you are back to ground zero: It is not anymore a question of improving on a technique that you have figured out. Now you had to start from scratch and master a completely new technique, and then improve it. The motivation to do so was simple: the results of jumping backwards were outstandingly superior to jumping forwards.
So I repeat: you must have a way to evaluate the results for your technique. You must decide on a clearcut criterion to do so, otherwise, you are just going to get thoroughly confused.
Now how can we relate this to piano technique? It is all exactly the same. Piano technique is simply a way to do something.
So the first step is to decide what is this “something” that you want to do. Scales are different from trills and are different from chords. Each will have to be done in a different way, with a different “technique”. So if you want to improve your technique, your first question should be, technique for what?
The next step, you must figure out the way to do what you have decided to do. Over the past 300 years, the technique for playing scales changed dramatically. Pretty much like the high jump technique changed dramatically after Dick Fosberry jumped backwards. So you must get acquainted with the latest technique to play scales. And then you must learn this technique, since you cannot improve on something you have not mastered.
Then you need a criterion to decide if your technique is improving. Is it how fast you can play a scale? How legato? How musically (and you will have to define this very comprehensive and ambiguous term for starters)? How comfortably and tension free? You see there is no guarantee that the same technique will be good for all these criterions. You may have to develop a different technique for each of these purposes. Pretty much like Dick Fosberry’s technique would be pretty useless in a hurdle race.
Once you decide what you want your technique for, and learn it, and once you can come up with a criterion to decide if you are improving or not, then you are set. All you have to do is repeat the technique, each time aiming at improving your past run. Simple isn’t it.
This seems completely obvious to me.
It is also totally obvious to me that any sort of exercise will only improve your technique to play that exercise. So make sure you know why you want to improve your technique for playing an exercise.
By the way, playing hands separate with your body immobile will really develop and improve your technique for er… playing with your body immobile! I challenge anyone in this forum to give me a single example of a music passage where it is necessary – or even desirable - to play with your body immobile.
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: technique