Forward pressure while playing

[peter_gr]

As an lower-intermediate level pianist with a new weighed digital keyboard playing faster pieces for several hours at a time, I ran into various problems such as:
- finger fatigue
- nervous feeling in whole hand due to carpal tunnel stress.
- a feeling that the last join of finger 4 and second last joint of finger 5 were going to collapse.
- stiff legato playing.
- Soreness at the sides of the wrist.

Anyway the solution I have hit on is to use:
1) rotation  - Just allow the back of the hands to rotate naturally in step with the pressing of the notes.
So for example I play a passage without rotation, then again, exactly the same, except I allow the hand to move and rotate a bit. This appears to preserve whatever legato playing ability I have, but making the playing more powerful and even.

2) Forward pressure.
I have only seen this discussed at <url>https://www.jazclass.aust.com/piano/</url> and I was so impressed I bought the course, which does not add much to the free discussion and tells how to advance ones technique by playing one hour of scales per day, which I am not particularly inclined to do. I have not seen this pressure technique discussed anywhere else, and it is only mentioned in passing at the url. But I find it works really great. I think the idea is that when a finger hits a note, whether under its own power or helped by hand movement, the muscles in the finger must stiffen to keep the finger in its shape. By pressing forward, without actually moving, the muscles on the top of the finger and back of the hand partially take this force. To implement this, I imagine a point on the floor about half a meter forward of where the keys of the piano are, and play towards that, rather than vertically downwards. There seems to be a sweet spot at about 70 degrees downwards. Less than about 60 degrees causes slipping.

Besides this I aim to keep my wrists reasonably, but not rigidly, straight in the horizontal plane, to avoid wrist and carpal stresses.

I had a look at people like Horowitz and Lisitsa on youtube and they do not appear to be doing this forward pressure thing even subconsciously. They appear to do their legato off the pads of their finger with the hands held fairly low to the keyboard. I honestly do not like the look of that, as there must be some upwards bending on the tip joints.

Anyway, I'm interested in other viewpoints particularly on this forward pressure technique.
Thanks in advance.

[brogers70]

I know this may not be a very helpful answer, but you really need a teacher who can see what you are doing and show you how to fix any problems you are having. You are clearly serious and have thought about this a good deal, but this sort of thing is so hard to talk about without showing the movements that you're liable to end up with a heated multi-post argument here that won't be very helpful either. So some face to face lessons would be a lot more help, even if you can only afford a few.

[indianajo]

A teacher would not be a bad idea, but:
I was told to select a high enough bench so my elbows were above the keyboard.
Let the wrists be fairly straight but the whole arm-hand unit be slanting down a little with the hands being the lower end.
Fingers in the natural curve, so the muscles in the arm are pulling the fingers towards the hand to push the keys.
You will see similar descriptions in modern ergonomics for industry text books.  Typing 5 carbon copies on a manual typewriter is not all that different than playing piano.  A lot of study has gone into the typing problem, that often causes carpal tunnel.
Furthermore, the people that I have met in industry that were diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome, were suffering from numbness in the hands.  
I do not exert forwards pressure.  I am 63 years of age. When I practice too much, I get soreness in the muscles in the bottom of the forearm.  Sometimes when I play a lot of octaves and more, I get soreness in the tendon on the outer side of the thumb.  None of the symptoms you are writing about.
Soreness in the muscles is a result of any strength training on any group of muscles. I view muscle soreness as a sign I have effectively maintained my body recently, not as a symptom to be avoided.  At 63, if you don't have soreness in the muscles sometimes, you are losing muscle mass, rapidly.   The pallitive for sore muscles is stretching the affected muscles before exercising again.  I learned some hand stretching routines in the industrial ergonomics handbook.  In 6 years, my piano teacher never said anything about the importance or desirability of stretching.  Be aware, causing pain or jerky ballistic movements are not the goal of any stretching.  The goal is to slowly return shortened muscles to the legnth they were before strength exercises shortened them.  Again read an ergonomics handbook at the library.  

[nyiregyhazi]

I've written a number of posts that talk about the idea of aiming a little forwards in the finger. this one speaks about it in terms of how it cures collapsing joints but also deals with other related issues.


https://pianoscience.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/collapsing-fingers-simple-illustration.html

[nyiregyhazi]

Fingers in the natural curve, so the muscles in the arm are pulling the fingers towards the hand to push the keys.
You will see similar descriptions in modern ergonomics for industry text books.  Typing 5 carbon copies on a manual typewriter is not all that different than playing the piano.

do you not see the contradiction? nowhere is it more important to lengthen out fingers than in typing. if you don't, trying to pull the fingers towards the palm would not even send the key down. on the piano it's not impossible, but it would cause substantial slippage with every key depression. it also drags the wrist forward and out of alignment.


the only way for a pure pull to work is if the fingers are extremely flat. if you play from a natural curve, you're undoubtedly using the forward action without realising (particularly if you find the sensation comparable to typing- which is simply impossible without it). the link in my above post has much more detailed evidence (including an illustration of the severe tension that is caused if the fingers fail to also lengthen out while pulling from the knuckle).

[rmbarbosa]

You may wish to do a very easy experience: let your hands fall into the keyboard without any resistence, as if they are dead... do feel the absolute lack of muscule tension... then, press the keys with your fingers with this complete lack of tension. And you`ll feel that it`s possible to play without pain and without the danger of tendinitis. Also the piano will thank you with a better sound. Piano is flexibility, not force. Our hands must be like birds, even in FF. In FF, we must use the weight of our body, not the tension of our fingers. Be free. Play free.
Best wishes
rui

[nyiregyhazi]

You may wish to do a very easy experience: let your hands fall into the keyboard without any resistence, as if they are dead... do feel the absolute lack of muscule tension... then, press the keys with your fingers with this complete lack of tension. And you`ll feel that it`s possible to play without pain and without the danger of tendinitis. Also the piano will thank you with a better sound. Piano is flexibility, not force. Our hands must be like birds, even in FF. In FF, we must use the weight of our body, not the tension of our fingers. Be free. Play free.
Best wishes
rui

you may not realise it, but everything you said there depends 100 percent on the forward action mentioned. relaxed fingers buckle. you can either collapse uselessly and lifelessly on to the keys, land stiffly or lengthen the fingers out through depression in order to prevent buckling. The only issue is that the poster perceives what he is doing, whereas you do it on instinct.

 personally, I never had the instinct - which is why the approach you detail actually caused tension in my own playing for a great many years. The brain will not tolerate fingers like jelly when you try to play fast. Those who do not feel the forward action on instinct are left with but one choice- tension. it doesn't matter how relaxed you strive to be. once you try to play fast, if you don't know how to lengthen, the one other option is stiffness.