I think it is fine that people find noncontextual information very useful. That doesn't phase me one bit, it is also not surprising. People work in different ways. I however want to highlight another stance that many others also do not find it very intelligent at all. There is only a MINORITY of people who constantly reply to this thread with their opinion that non-contextual discussion is on par with contextual discussion. I can literally count you all on ONE hand! But the amount of your responses? It is almost like ants trying to shout and be noisy.
People who are trying to learn on pianostreet might be confused why they do not understand generalized non-contextual descriptions and waste much time trying to understand it. I would like to give them the other side of the story, that you do not have to understand it and that is totally fine.
If those of you who defend it so vigorously get your knickers tied up over a different stance that's your problem. I do not reply to all of those who agree with me or who disagrees, yet ALL of those who are agreeing with me get questioned and picked apart by the other team. You just can't let it go by and accept there are people who think generalized non-contextual technique discussion is silliness. It really highlights the insecurity and defensiveness of these people, very telling.
It also seems that a number of you have problems remembering what context and out of context means. I am talking about discussing technique with NO context as being useless a situation we find on the internet a great deal since we are not in a classroom situation, with a Piano or the music.
On the internet we often have the situation where one can only discuss without an instrument to highlight context or music. Only words! ONLY WORDS. Please get that through your heads.
As soon as you touch an instrument and put the words into a contextual movement at the instrument you have context. However on the internet we have many descriptions how one should move their body without any relation to an actual sound production on an instrument or with any referrence as to where that movement is supposed to be used in context to musical example. They even go so far to describe how you should touch the piano describing in as much detail as possible where posting a video or pictures would show a lot more and is muuuuch less clumsy than words.
Sure there are things you can learn without a piano being infront of you, certainly! But why don't you stop for a moment and think about what they actually are? Do they constitute a huge % of piano playing? I will answer, CERTAINLY NOT. And they will 100% be useless if one cannot find context to use them in, if you have nothing to test them and acknowledge it being useful in practice then you do not complete the circle of learning, thus it fades away into nothingness.
I already pointed out
https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?topic=50174.msg546827#msg546827that if you discussed repeated octaves for instance you need to know what kind of repeated octaves you are talking about. I rattled off many different situations. Yet there are still those who think you can discuss repeated octaves as a SINGLE technique which can be discussed and controlled in words without musical context. This is absolutely short sighted. If you generally speak about octaves it doesn't complete the picture one bit, you still will not understand them fully since the generalized description does not teach a couple of things
1) Context, highlighting many different situations the action under investigation.
2) application of knowledge, how to apply observations and FEELING them in contextual practice.
A huge hole in understanding if these are above are not satisfied.
Generalized non-contextual descriptions leave readers in the air about WHERE to apply the knowledge and HOW. It makes itself look clever speaking about generalized movements in great detail but totally miss out in completing the picture with context or application.
Speaking in generalizations also assumes that everyone reading the words will interpret the words in the same manner. This is not true. Words can be understood in several ways and when you chain together a huge amount of physical direction with words you unavoidably create a body of text that is confusing and not mathematically accurate.