rsi in piano playing.

[jazzyjeff]

i am learning a new piece on piano.
it is quite an intense piece, well for me it is anyway.
but i am finding i can't play for too long as my forearm muscle in my right arm starts hurting.
is this a normal thing to experience or could my technique be wrong.
my right hand is doing a lot of stretches to reach higher notes.
the piece is by michael nyman and is the main theme tune in the film, the piano.
hopefully i can get through this pain i'm experiencing.

[bronnestam]

BIG WARNING!
It should not hurt. Pain is a warning signal from your body. Even slight pain is dangerous in piano playing, as you tend to repeat the same movements so awfully many times.

I'm talking from own bitter experience here!

First, I recommend that you rest until the pain stops. Then you start to investigate your technique very thoroughly, and of course the best is to do this together with a teacher. Play different pieces - where and when does the pain occur? In this way, try to find out which movements that really are the cause of the trouble.  It could be that you are doing something fundamentally wrong. As long as you stick to easy pieces it does not matter, but now when you try something difficult and intense, you pay the price for it. So, you have to correct it.

Play very slowly, very soft, watch your hand carefully, observe what happens in your body (even your jaws ...!)  Avoid exaggerated stretches - instead, move your hand/arm a bit more. If there are big chords that at hard to perform, simplify them in your daily practice so that you don't have to play them fully very often.

NEVER play when you feel fatigue (at least not with the hand that causes you trouble).

I play Bach's Inventions when I need to rest. They are very "kind".
 

[nyiregyhazi]

I'm 99.9% sure you're pressing the arm through a braced hand. However, the first step to sorting yourself out is learning the state of comfort AFTER the keys are depressed. Only once you're intimately acquainted with a state of true comfort there can you expect to improve the quality with which you move the keys in the first place. it's a matter of finding true stability with the lowest possible effort to create it. However relax in the wrong places and the corresponding lack of stability forces significantly larger efforts to compensate.

follow the exercises here as described and you'll quickly learn to perceive the wasteful efforts and learn to release the worst of them.

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