Here's a preview of the first part of an up and coming blog post, regarding an extremely broad and wide-ranging issue in technique. Any thoughts?
An arm that is balanced in mid air always requires more effort than an arm which is well connected to the piano. However, it goes without saying that non-legato and staccato playing requires plenty of time to be spent making no contact whatsoever- which makes it extremely important to minimise the effort involved in this state. Firstly go to the hovering arm, supported by the shoulder with the hand an inch or so above the keys. After trying to find the most comfortable balance, slowly make small movements left and right, trying to explore what lets go as a result of being in motion. Gradually make them smaller still, until you feel that you are ALMOST moving. This may sound barmy, but the brain automatically tends to clench muscles unnecessarily if you intend to be still. Even by imagining that you are moving, efforts which do not directly contribute to balance will tend to get out of the way. At the least, you need to feel you COULD be moved, if someone prodded you even lightly. If not, you are not balanced but tense. Try the same thing up and down and again look to get to the point where you are ALMOST moving, even when the movement fades down to nothing. Also, in each of these exercises explore just how slowly it's possible to move without feeling a stop start quality. You may not be able to move ultra slow without feeling judders and bobbling in the quality, to start out, so find what flows first (but without any sense of coasting on momentum). Over time you can explore going slower and slower until nobody but yourself would even know there is movement going on.
I call this "stopping without stopping" and the concept can be applied to countless aspects of piano technique and to human movement in general. If we start with a goal of stillness, we work far harder than if we start out with smoothly continuous movements. That is why the old balancing a coin on the hand idea can be disastrous. The ability to do that needs be earned by gradual refinement of movement- you cannot usefully start out by deciding to force yourself to be still at any cost. Equally, excessively big or fast movements easily destabilise- causing alternation between erratically uncontrolled jerks and tightly held positions. Continuous flow of movements (even if so small that an observer will have no idea that they are occurring) are at the heart of success.
Finally, try circular movements in either direction, starting bigger and reducing the size. Can you feel extra smoothness and release compared to when you changed direction directly? Even if you did it sensitively for the first two exercises, there will a sense of a stop if you directly reverse direction. This is a huge issue in piano technique. You don't need the massive visible circles that some promote (which can risk promoting instability, rather than aiding balance) but just a slight curve should be present in any change of direction. Try going back to sideways/up and down movements but round off the edges. Any direct reversal is like driving a car forwards and then suddenly going into reverse gear. Instead of that, picture a marble rolling around a u shaped tube, to send its momentum back in the opposite direction via complete continuity of motion. This both promotes freedom in slower music (where pianists typically get tense due to constant stopping of the arm) and makes outrageous speeds possible in virtuoso repertoire, where there is no time to slam on the breaks and then come back in a literally identical path. Can you feel how even the stationary position becomes freer, if you slowly refine these movements into into a miniscule remainder? Over time, even if you do intend stillness, it will begin to be freer- but please don't assume that doing this exercise once will magically give you impunity from now! I recommend actively looking for these subtle ongoing movements in literally everything you do at the piano for a considerable time, before putting any faith in your unconscious to know what is best- especially if this is concept is new to you. If you're typically very still, try looking to add small steady movements of the arm to everything (consider that going up and down once per note is neither small nor steady!). If you typically move a lot, look out for the places where moving too much actually interrupts the continuity and gives a stop start feel. See if you can feel how more refined movements will actually smooth things over and take out the hitches (not to mention the fact that they allow far more consistency and precision in how the hand contacts the piano).