Piano Forum

Topic: Arm position when practicing arppeggios  (Read 1735 times)

Offline tommichie321

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 6
Arm position when practicing arppeggios
on: January 03, 2014, 08:25:16 PM
I've noticed something strange. Whenever I play certain arpeggios (It was Cm when I noticed) my right elbow likes to flair out when I bring my thumb under. Is this normal or should it be avoided? Should I try and keep my elbows steady by my sides?

Offline hfmadopter

  • PS Silver Member
  • Sr. Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 2272
Re: Arm position when practicing arppeggios
Reply #1 on: January 03, 2014, 08:34:00 PM
You don't want to be flapping your arms like a chicken nor do you want to be clamping your elbows at your sides. You are allowed to breath ! A certain amount of this will alleviate itself as you gain flexibility in your tendons and joints but probably not completely with out some mind work to go along with it.
Depressing the pedal on an out of tune acoustic piano and playing does not result in tonal color control or add interest, it's called obnoxious.

Offline liszt85

  • PS Silver Member
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 155
Re: Arm position when practicing arppeggios
Reply #2 on: January 04, 2014, 01:15:30 AM
I've noticed something strange. Whenever I play certain arpeggios (It was Cm when I noticed) my right elbow likes to flair out when I bring my thumb under. Is this normal or should it be avoided? Should I try and keep my elbows steady by my sides?

You really shouldn't be bringing your thumb under so much that you are having to do strange things with your elbow. The key to playing scales and arpeggios is what is sometimes called the thumb over method. However that is somewhat of a misnomer. That refers to the technique of smoothly moving your arms such that your fingers come over the keys that they need to play. In the case of the thumb, because your arms are already moving to the right (when you are going up an arpeggio), your thumb is under the fingers only for a really short time (if at all it does) and so your elbows don't need to be flailing about. The only reason people tend to hold on to the note when bringing their thumb underneath to play the next note seems to be to get a legato at a slow tempo. However, with the thumb over method described above, at higher speeds, the little break in sound is not noticeable and overall sounds much smoother and less jerky than the thumb under method. So don't worry if the sound is detached at that point when practising this at slower speeds.
 

Logo light pianostreet.com - the website for classical pianists, piano teachers, students and piano music enthusiasts.

Subscribe for unlimited access

Sign up

Follow us

Piano Street Digicert