The wrist should be allowed to remain in a neutral position, and especially in such a basic technical problem such as this one there is no need for unorthodox positions when basic technique does just fine.
Someone else already mentioned it but by using your wrist i meant the forearms too. In my case, if I just use the fingers i get exhausted but if i add a little bit of rotation with my wrists and forearms it ends up feeling a lot more comfortable.
My comment was directed at faulty_damper's raised wrist thing more than you.Most likely you try to "feel out" that you are using just your fingers, and as a consequence you restrict the rest of the mechanism in order to do so. You are wiggling around the fingers with too much effort, so to speak. They should remain in contact with the key surface at all times. If all the joints of the arm are free, at all times, there WILL be movement in the wrist, so you must allow the arm the follow the fingers where they want to go. It should feel like the fingertips are heavy and sinking down with the key while everything else is allowed to be passive and follows.If we both are able to tremolo without fatigue then we are doing the same thing even if we think about the way we do it differently. I'm giving a different perspective because for me "use your arm" always caused trouble; I would replace the finger action with arm action, resulting in tension and stiffness.
[...] produce tone. The hand allows this if think about it closing as if you were grasping an object or pulling something torward you.Imagine a dribbling a basketball. Most people are only producing tone on the down stroke. (down-down-down). However the reaction to dribble, up strokes are able to produce tone as well, and it's the alternation between the two that allows ease of play.[...]
The raised wrist is especially important to play tremolos. It provides mechanical leverage and is the easiest of all available movements.
Hi anamnesis,I think "grasping an object" is a very very good idea. When grasping, we won't - and won't want to - lose contact to the desired object, in this case: keys, and secondly, we can do this with a very high amount of control, since we have "taken", "grasped" or even "grabbed" things millons of times since our birth. Grasping is a very natural way of moving.-In addition, the "dribbling a basketball" - imagination can be of much help here, I think. Because, we can make the dribbling much faster, if we "catch" (that means: to start the next downward move) the basketball HALFWAYS on its way upwards. That's what we can do with piano keys, too, it it should be easy, and makes VERY high speed tremolos possible, if we won't let come the keys the whole way upwards each time, but "catch them" (while always staying in contact to them) BEFORE they went the whole way upwards. When we have just "caught" them, we can lead them downwards, again. And then, again, "not let them come fully upwards, again".Cordially, 8_octaves.
Well it depends on what you mean by use your arm. The mistake with arm use is to constantly be bearing down, when actually you have to learn how to play "up" with the arm.[...]Most tension caused by arm weight technique is caused by only producing tone in one direction (down), and not learning how to do it in a rhythmic fashion, cyclic fashion.
I think it's more in flux and responds to what you do at the forearm and hand. In order to take advantage of its leverage, it's going to be raised up and down via action you do elsewhere. ...