perfect technique

[birba]

Fast articulation, but slow speed to keep the playing mechanism relaxed.

[outin]

Super interesting.

Obviously that is your experience and i wont argue with it when i have a lack of understanding about what makes your brain muscles behave differently to the norm.

It does seem so backward though. I find the practice involves a myriad of tempos, but the exact execution simply must be done slowly at one point or another.. it has to be learnt at a pace where it can be focused on. Past a certain tempo it needs to have been ingrained into your brain. Otherwise you practice slight (or significant) physical errors.

I was actually referring to physical exercise in general, not just piano playing. Not sure what you mean by brain muscles?
If you are talking about learning, I agree, of course one must do slow. But for me to get rid of the spasticy and hypertonia requires to do fast exercise.

It's not just my experience, the "backwards" way of how the muscles behave is typical on this condition. How it afttects the playing of course is something I have to figure out. I think the biggest problem probably is that the condition of my muscles change so much from day to day and this might be the reason why I have trouble with inconsistency and muscle memory. It is like playing with different hands and body every day, if you get what I mean. I practice and learn something today and then the next day I need to learn it again. Also the height of the bench and how far I sit seems perfect one day and then the next day it feels totally wrong. On a really bad day the task of lifting my hands on the keyboard takes all the strenght I have...

[ajspiano]

I was actually referring to physical exercise in general, not just piano playing. Not sure what you mean by brain muscles?

It's not just my experience, the "backwards" way of how the muscles behave is typical on this condition.

lol - I meant brain and/or muscles..  left out a slash.

Yes I meant your experience as someone with the condition, as opposed to someone without it.

[chopin2015]

I was actually referring to physical exercise in general, not just piano playing. Not sure what you mean by brain muscles?
If you are talking about learning, I agree, of course one must do slow. But for me to get rid of the spasticy and hypertonia requires to do fast exercise.

It's not just my experience, the "backwards" way of how the muscles behave is typical on this condition. How it afttects the playing of course is something I have to figure out. I think the biggest problem probably is that the condition of my muscles change so much from day to day and this might be the reason why I have trouble with inconsistency and muscle memory. It is like playing with different hands and body every day, if you get what I mean. I practice and learn something today and then the next day I need to learn it again. Also the height of the bench and how far I sit seems perfect one day and then the next day it feels totally wrong. On a really bad day the task of lifting my hands on the keyboard takes all the strenght I have...

I understand you need fast practice, but you still should try slow practice when physically possible, to build the muscle memory(i dont do it much, myself, haha). Or learn how to do fast practice efficiently, which should take a lot of time as well. Damage to the muscles such as tension and cramps destroy muscle memory. I dont want you to hurt your self! Things can get worse, you could get numbness very easily.  Theres nothing worse than never getting feeling back...

[outin]

I understand you need fast practice, but you still should try slow practice when physically possible, to build the muscle memory(i dont do it much, myself, haha). Or learn how to do fast practice efficiently, which should take a lot of time as well. Damage to the muscles such as tension and cramps destroy muscle memory. I dont want you to hurt your self! Things can get worse, you could get numbness very easily.  Theres nothing worse than never getting feeling back...

I actually have no idea how "normal" people feel and whether I have numbness or not. But I don't think I am in danger of muscle damage, with fast practice I don't mean anything extraordinary, just repeated action to gradually soften my limbs

I think the correct medical term for what I am talking about is myotonia, It's not tension and cramps like what people generally have that are caused by damage or overusing the muscles.

[ajspiano]

I actually have no idea how "normal" people feel and whether I have numbness or not. But I don't think I am in danger of muscle damage, with fast practice I don't mean anything extraordinary, just repeated action to gradually soften my limbs

I'm totally stabbing in the dark here, but a bit of reading suggests that you may be less likely to sustain performance injury than the rest of us because you may be unable to over exert yourself in the same way..  depending on the severity of the condition...

Sounds as though fast and vigorous warm up would have to precede your slow work. So that the muscles are properly 'loosened' and you can actually practice the proper release of the muscles during slow practice..

..and that the following day/session you would have to limber up again before the same muscle memory patterns could be activated.

Edit:
It reads as if while most of us experience tension as a result of overexertion, you are far more likely to have limited activation of your fingers caused by a mental block as such, so over exertion is unlikely... unless you really force something, which may explain your experience with the 5th finger.. in that keeping it down resulted in a problem. I suppose you kept it down by activating it and fixing it there rather than taking away the unnecessary lift.

Not sure if that means its harder for you to fix that issue or not, could still just be a differnt thought process required. Hmmm.

[ajspiano]

I suspect that either way you're going to have a lot of hurdles if you try to tackle bigger repertoire.. especially highspeed intrincate passage work.

On the flip side though.. While many of us have to do a lot of work minimizing and making our movements more efficient..  you may get to skip some of that because you wont be able to do some of the bigger unnecessary movements anyway..

I really want to see you playing now

[outin]

I suspect that either way you're going to have a lot of hurdles if you try to tackle bigger repertoire.. especially highspeed intrincate passage work.

On the flip side though.. While many of us have to do a lot of work minimizing and making our movements more efficient..  you may get to skip some of that because you wont be able to do some of the bigger unnecessary movements anyway..

I really want to see you playing now

As soon as I manage to make a video where I am presentable I will post... 

I somehow suspect that it might be better just to forget about fast repertoire...after all I don't even like that type of music much. At this age I won't have time to learn all the repertoire anyway, so why not concentrate on something I am not so bad and what I like

[ajspiano]

Don't you particularly like chopchops 2nd finger cruncher?

[outin]

Don't you particularly like chopchops 2nd finger cruncher?

I have no idea what you are referring to

[ajspiano]

I have no idea what you are referring to

Etude 10/2

[outin]

Etude 10/2

That's the exception of the rule

[unholeee]

Don't you particularly like chopchops 2nd finger cruncher?

aha ode to chopper reid.

[ajspiano]

That's the exception of the rule

You'll need to fix the 5th

[outin]

You'll need to fix the 5th

When I'm retired

[chopin2015]

As soon as I manage to make a video where I am presentable I will post... 

I somehow suspect that it might be better just to forget about fast repertoire...after all I don't even like that type of music much. At this age I won't have time to learn all the repertoire anyway, so why not concentrate on something I am not so bad and what I like

Your body would know best! And it seems to work out for you and your preference.
You could still do etudes, since there are slow, musical ones...chopchop has some...haha

[outin]

 unless you really force something, which may explain your experience with the 5th finger.. in that keeping it down resulted in a problem. I suppose you kept it down by activating it and fixing it there rather than taking away the unnecessary lift.

This is exactly what caused a lot of problems in the beginning of my lessons...my teacher would ask me to not lift my shoulder for example because she sees me tensing it. But I didn't really do anything and the only way to stop "doing it" was pulling my shoulder down. This of course created double tension... The other good example was relaxing the wrist when I have played a chord...Since I could not do it I just made it look like I did, creating tension somewhere else. So while it may look to an outsider that I am more relaxed, I am actually double tense. We have learned to deal with this issue better now...
There's no way I could do the exercise needed to really get to the relaxed state during the lesson...So it has become a pattern that we give up trying (me telling her that it's impossible   ) and then I learn to do the thing she tried to make me do afterwards at home on 1 or 2 hour sessions just working on some little thing...

I must be a rather challenging student...

[chopin2015]

This is exactly what caused a lot of problems in the beginning of my lessons...my teacher would ask me to not lift my shoulder for example because she sees me tensing it. But I didn't really do anything and the only way to stop "doing it" was pulling my shoulder down. This of course created double tension... The other good example was relaxing the wrist when I have played a chord...Since I could not do it I just made it look like I did, creating tension somewhere else. So while it may look to an outsider that I am more relaxed, I am actually double tense. We have learned to deal with this issue better now...
There's no way I could do the exercise needed to really get to the relaxed state during the lesson...So it has become a pattern that we give up trying (me telling her that it's impossible   ) and then I learn to do the thing she tried to make me do afterwards at home on 1 or 2 hour sessions just working on some little thing...

I must be a rather challenging student...

Hahaa
That sounds interesting!
Besides, if you are explained something and are given some time and freedom to think and try it on your own, it usually works better for the studenr. That's supposed to be normal thinking and learning capability, 2 to 3 days to learn something. At my lesson, I am told to try something and I only do it once or twice but I seem get it there. Then at home it's a little different and I sometimes can't do it. That sucks! Lucky you I suppose!
X)