Low effort balance in piano technique

[nyiregyhazi]

Hi,

I just completed a new blog post, on connecting the hand to the keyboard with low effort. It's all about feeling which activities are useful and understanding how to use them to free yourself of wasted efforts. I hope that it would be useful to anyone suffering from discomfort while playing.

https://pianoscience.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/achieving-effortless-balance-within.html

One of the main goals is provide a rational understanding of how to synthesise the benefits of a weighted vs floating arm and to perceive which aspects of each are useful (and which can be detrimental). Any opinions or observations are greatly welcomed.

[pts1]

N:

I read your essay on the floating weight/arm weight conundrum and agree (I think) in your conclusions.

As and observation -- not a criticism -- I think its too detailed and will lose the reader.

I think one are you could emphasize a bit more is what I consider to be critical.... IOW, get this wrong, and nothing will ever work.

And that -- along with posture -- is bench height, i.e. where the elbow is in relation to the keyboard.

For me, the perfect height is a bit higher than the level of the keyboard. This allows my forearm and hand to be at a very slight angle downward -- very slight -- which relieves most of the effort of elevating the forearm and hand to playing height, i.e. on the keys.

Once you get the posture right along with bench height -- elbow height to keyboard -- one has
the optimum set up to achieve the balance you're speaking of. At this point, it takes almost no effort to hold the forearm and hand at/on the keys, especially when the lateral movements of the arms are added in order to go from once place to another.

IMO, "weight" is really a misnomer and the old "weight school" has done more to physically either ruin or frustrate pianists to the point of quitting than any other single thing.

Ironically, and stubbornly, it is still taught -- i.e. the hand and fingers carry the weight of the arm in order to get a full rich sound -- which is not only the sure road to ruin, but hogwash from the get go!

As I mentioned yesterday, and as you know I am sure, the mechanical fact is the only thing that produces sound from the piano is the rapidity with which the hammer is catapulted into the string.

After the sound is made, all the weight in the world resting on the key bed yields nothing, and is an utter waste of energy.

I think a much better or at least more accurate visualization or metaphor, is that the forearm (and hand) act as "shock absorbers" for the energy the finger imparts into the key.

IOW a quicker more vigorous pulling down of the key (forte) requires a bit more shock absorption from a "floating leveraged stability" of the arm than a less vigorous key pull (piano).

This is achieved by adjusting the sense of light pressure on the top of the forearm behind the wrist about a third of the way toward the elbow, an adjustment which changes continually depending upon what's being executed by the fingers, position of the hand, and so on. 

So everything is subject to a kind of floating leverage, and its not really dead weight or anything like it.

Of course all of this must be learned by experience and feel, and is really, really difficult to talk about in such a way as to avoid misunderstanding due to semantics, terminology, and so on.

[nyiregyhazi]

I basically agree with you- but I don't personally want to take a restrictive view on stool height. I wrote about stool issues in some depth in the post that I linked within, with a weight-regulation exercise. My feeling is that approximately level elbows (to the keyboard) are a good guidelines, but it's possible to find alternatives that are a bit higher or lower. I think the floating arm becomes all the more important with a low stool (and also all the more difficult to do- rather than simply lock the arm into a held position). However, I take Horowitz as an excellent model and he was on the lower side. He got the combination just right. I will say that I've found it useful to sit a touch higher at times recently, but I end up banging the nail of my second finger. There's a feel that I've been learning from sometimes sitting higher, that makes me much less likely to subject myself to either excessive weight (or excessive holding up of the arm) when going back to slightly lower positions.

I don't want to go totally against arm-weight schools- as I feel it's so easy to misunderstand the idea of a light arm without referencing the two. There are so many ways to end up locking it in space- so I wanted to illustrate ways to experience the large ranges of possibilities between dead-weight and lightness (with an illustration of what the arm and fingers need to do, if you're to succeed in keeping good balance when lightening). I do feel that weight is an essential aspect of connecting to the keyboard well (and will be adding types of subtle circles that constantly alternate between a slight down from the arm and a slight up) but it's definitely not the whole story and it definitely isn't what provides significant energy for key motion in regular playing.

Also, I take your point about it being somewhat in depth, but it's aimed at people who have a serious interest in exploring what is possible and how they can improve themself in a significant and lasting way. I'm not totally opposed to concise advice, but it tends to be difficult to give anything other than superficial snippets of information that are all too easily misunderstood. Without going into the deep explorations in the exercises, I don't think a rational summary of the concepts would translate into any practical benefits. One thing I've found recently is that countless pieces of advice I'd known for years that had proved useless are suddenly useful. A lot of concise explanations only help if you're lucky enough to have an existing feel for a particular part of the puzzle. While I suspect that a lot of people won't have the patience for an in-depth approach, I'm trying to make sure that none of the absolutely vital issues gets left out- in a way that could render everything else potentially worthless.

[pts1]

Well, I think you're making an admirable and extensive effort to make an extremely complex and difficult task more readily available to the aspiring pianist, whatever their aspirations may be.

Let's face it: to learn even just the mechanics involved to be able to develop a half way serviceable piano technique is an almost impossible task for most people.

Since you mentioned Horowitz and bench height of "low sitters", there is the "king" of low sitters: Glen Gould.

You probably know this, but Gould did not always sit nearly on the floor. As a teen there are pictures of him sitting on normal piano benches with his elbows at "proper" height.

It so happened that somehow he suffered debilitating back injury and was forced to sit lower and lower as his disability progressed, which is why his father made his chair that he used exclusively, and took with him everywhere.

I do not think it was an act of eccentricity but of necessity.

But by the time he injured himself, he already had one of if not the most formidable technique in the world. Horowitz, of course, had a truly unique sound like no other, but Gould had finger technique Horowitz could only dream of.

I think it was because Gould already had his technique when he was young that he was able to successfully transition into progressively awkward bench heights brought on by his impairments.

Here's a recording someone posted today of the etude Horowitz said he could not play.

This had to be an early Gould recording since he rejected Chopin and other romantics not long after he was in his 20's as I recall. HA!

An amazing performance with clear, crisp individual pearl like sound strung together in an amazing melodic line.

[ Invalid YouTube link ]

[pianoplayjl]

That explains it. I've always wondered why Gould sat so low. I always thought of him as an old loony(no disrespect).

JL

[j_menz]

That explains it. I've always wondered why Gould sat so low. I always thought of him as an old loony(no disrespect).

JL

There's a whole lot more to be explained beyond the chair for him not to be "an old loony". But then, there's nothing wrong with being an old loony - I'm gonna be one when I grow up.