Piano rotation, playing for 5 years.. not knowing what it was and now...

[ancientsolar]

and now, playing a single Octave in C Major seems difficult with rotation.
This meaning the use of single and double rotations to hit keys.

It appears to me it is an art in its own right to get the balance between finger and wrist rotation work to make the scale happen in a smooth way.

If using just a semi tone * white to black note to white note etc * the rotation is easy
but a white note to white note seems difficult.
In my limited understanding this would make Mozart Scale passages near impossible to achieve using this technique ?

Despite many youtube videos on this technique in my search to find techniques to diminish tension.. I am still left feeling lost and tense :/

Please help

[faulty_damper]

I'm confused by what you mean about rotation.  When I hear "rotation" I think forearm rotation.  But forearm rotation isn't necessary in the octave example you mentioned.

[ancientsolar]

Well this is exactly what I need help with.

=9m5s

This particular part of the video is where I acquired the panic!

[nyiregyhazi]

I went through a spell of trying rotation that did more harm than good. It can discourage finger movement and promote fixation to transmit arm power. That's too slow to work at speeds and simply awkward and cumbersome. Since then I discovered that rotation is useful when you always generate more finger movement than rotational movement. Then you are learning something with a direct similarity to the way fingers move keys at high speeds, rather than a completely different thing altogether.

[falala]

Well this is exactly what I need help with.

=9m5s

This particular part of the video is where I acquired the panic!

That video is the biggest load of bullshit I've ever seen. Please expunge it from your memory and get back to some approach to playing the piano that actually makes sense.

How the hell is one supposed to do any of that double rotation guff when actually playing a scale passage at any kind of speed? It always amuses me when people post videos like this that demonstrate their point at very slow speeds, note by note, and then DON'T demonstrate it at an actual meaningful speed with musical flow. Why? Because obviously if you saw this guy, or anyone else, playing a scale at speed, all you would see would be fingers going up and down and a wrist flexing horizontally.

Some choice pieces of BS:

10.10: "And this is what spares me from having to load all the power and speed just into the finger and the knuckle which again, look (plays) really really terrible because they're NOT DESIGNED TO PLAY THAT WAY."

LOL. So now human anatomy was "designed" (does he mean "evolved") to play the piano - an instrument which as far as we know was invented an awfully long time after the pleistocene era - in one way and not another. And all the great pianists who since time immemorial have achieved all sorts of wonderful things by moving their fingers up and down, have actually been somehow contradicting their "design" but somehow getting away with it.

11.38: "The deal with Franz Liszt: He was so good, and he was so natural at the piano, that he did not have to do this kind of careful analysis of motion. He was BORN DOING IT."

God give me strength. So this dude expects up to believe that Liszt miraculously emerged from the womb playing the piano, and that's the only reason why he didn't need double rotations in his scales? What kind of crap is this? Who the hell is "born" playing the piano? And how does that somehow negate the fact that people have been playing the piano with their fingers for centuries, and the vast majority of them DON'T get physical injuries from it?

Show us a video of someone actually using rotations in fast scale playing in context, with some explanation of what difference it makes and what the advantage is, and there might be something to consider.

[awesom_o]

I am amazed that this fellow is a professor of music.



Stay away from Cedarville University!!!

[faulty_damper]

He claims 2 is the middle.  This is just WRONG!  The central axis CHANGES depending on the angle of the wrist.  It can be 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 all depending on the angle of the wrist and how the forearm is rotated.

Should I really watch the whole thing because it sounds like he doesn't know how to play the piano.

As for using rotation in fast scales, he does specify that the video doesn't address it:
"Please note: In this video I do not address the issue of using rotation in fast scales. That topic will require a separate video. I will try to make it soon."

[j_menz]

the piano - an instrument which as far as we know was invented an awfully long time after the pleistocene era

Not quite so long as you might think:

[nyiregyhazi]

He claims 2 is the middle.  This is just WRONG!  The central axis CHANGES depending on the angle of the wrist.  It can be 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 all depending on the angle of the wrist and how the forearm is rotated.

Should I really watch the whole thing because it sounds like he doesn't know how to play the piano.

As for using rotation in fast scales, he does specify that the video doesn't address it:
"Please note: In this video I do not address the issue of using rotation in fast scales. That topic will require a separate video. I will try to make it soon."

If you watch his performance videos, he's pretty polished but certainly not a technical high flyer. He plays comfortably but in a very limited range with nowehere near enough finger action to throw off passage work with ease. His rachmaninoff g sharp minor prelude is nicely faked but loaded with emergency rubato and too slow.

The point about two is kind of interesting in a way. If I watch my hand it LOOKS like the centre,. However rest your arm on a table and you'll see that the centre is 5 and all else revolves around the forearm bone (sorry, I never remember if  this radius or ulna). Nobody should pretend 2 is the middle until they've learned that everything else rocks around 5,or it will probably promote stiffness.

The sad thing is that the big bullshit isn't his. It's Taubman stated second hand. I saw a horrible golandsky film about scales recently with a student. The student was spectacularly visible as someone who struggled by trying to literally do double rotation when speeding up. To see how she never honestly stated that rotation had reached its limit really alarmed me deeply. The student could go no further without actually appreciating the need to place finger movement above rotation and to stop rocking onto braced fingers. Golandsky just used bullshit nonsense talk to coax what was missing via slow subjective processes - without ever being willing to grudgingly admit that literal double rotation is bullshit if applied to fast passages and that it was time to move on. She found any excuse to pretend it was still a matter of rotation while secretly having to stop the student trying to do so much of it it via vague language that never acknowledged rotation was no longer what made for key movement. It actively promotes tension after you reach the limits, because nobody can rotate so far at such a high speed.

[faulty_damper]

It's funny how I already knew how he played just by watching his rotation video.  You could tell that he didn't use his fingers as much as he should have.  And he sounded like he took Taubman's approach and rehashed it as his own verbatim.  I'll have to take a look as his performances just for fun.

[nyiregyhazi]

The

It's funny how I already knew how he played just by watching his rotation video.  You could tell that he didn't use his fingers as much as he should have.  And he sounded like he took Taubman's approach and rehashed it as his own verbatim.  I'll have to take a look as his performances just for fun.

I stress that I'm a big appreciator of Alan Fraser. However it's interesting that he also recites an objective error from him in another film. Although an architectural arch is strong, the mechanics of the hand arch are totally different. Although it is the strong way to stabilise it's not for the same mechanical reasons (mechanics mean that an arch in architecture is strengthened by downward pressure, but a hand is actively weakened by pressure on the "keystone"  which means nothing to a layman but which makes a world of difference to anyone who is aware of the unusual mechanics behind a self supporting arch). I was held back until I appreciated the difference- which is that a hand arch must be active in the hand to be stable and that no amount of downward pressure can strengthen without the hand taking the lead. In architecture, completely inert stones become strong in response to mere gravity- which is really the opposite to the primary message I since learned from Fraser. His message of the hand taking the lead and weight coming second came to completely overwrite the mistaken impression I got from his flawed keystone analogy, but that's exactly what this guy had copied (minus proper attention to the finger movement). I pointed out the error a few years ago and he censored my comment on the film.

I'm afraid he's a bullshit monger who regurgitates work of others, including the warts and without any significant personal understanding of the positive points. I too expected the results in his performances, after seeing his teaching.