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Timothy, here were my actual impressions.One single movement out of the complex interconnected movements was shown: the forearm going up and down from the elbow joint - landing on the "support" of the finger.
Exactly.No mention of rotation? There is no way you can talk piano technique without forearm rotation.
Also, the statement that the bicep and tricep raise the forearm struck me as wrong, or at least incomplete. The tricep opposes the bicep, so I don't see how they both lift the forearm, and I'm relatively sure the deltoid has something to do with it too.
The height reached by the hand and the forearm during the negative-movement-stage will depend on the sound we are aiming to obtain from the instrument: the higher the hand, the louder the instrument will sound.
The targeting finger will act as a shock-absorber and a spring to re ignite the forearm upwards during the beginning of the negative movement (as soon as the forearm is ignited upwards, the biceps and triceps will take over)
The finger/s which needs to target becomes stiffer than the other ones which remain slightly lifted so they don’t impact on any undesired note in the landing.
All the weight of the arm is supported by the finger itself.
I wholeheartedly disagree. I think you can construct a healthy technique without putting any conscious thought into forearm rotation at all. In fact, what I see the most, is most students trying to consciously rotate the forearm instead of being supple and active in their fingers to do tremolos and other rotation-y stuff, end up tense and clumsy from this approach.
Since the body is an interconnected system rather than isolated things that move in some kind off binary on/off fashion, the deltoid might of course activate during certain movements of the forearm, but it is not in any way directly connected to this body part.
Any mistaught technique can lead to problems. Forearm rotation can't replace active fingers, but the opposite isn't true either. Without having rotation at your disposal (and knowing how to refine and time it) you limit the degrees of freedom that can be explored and actively refined.
However it is not uncommon in piano playing for the hand to lift because the arm moved as a unit, without or without the elbow joint flexing, but with the elbow joint moving forward and up. That I think requires deltoid activation.
Of course. But I don't think it's something a pianist can/should sit and think about while playing. Just decide to move your finger to a certain spot and the body will choose what muscles to activate for you (this requires practising letting your body be relaxed or otherwise some of the muscles the body might choose might be tight and block the efficiency of the movement).
Ah. You're an Inner Tennis fan, goal oriented vs method oriented.That works very well for some people, and not at all for others.
I started reading The Inner Game but never finished it, so yes and no. I've just found that many methods that intellectualizes joints and movements and arches and whatever don't work for me, because when I try to experience the things the method intellectualizes about, I end up tensing. I read "What every pianist needs to know about the body". It did more harm than good in many ways.I read Abby Whiteside "On Piano Playing". All its talk about levers and fulcrums and pulls and whatever did more harm than good.I studied 3d models of human anatomy and learned all the muscles in the arm. Good knowledge to have, sure, but it didn't help me much in what I was actually supposed to say to my body to get it to play in a way that wasn't tense.I read about arm weight, "correct position" of everything (some of it wrong!), I read about "lifting the sound out of the piano", rotation, how the movements of the fingers were supposed to look, whatever. All these things that made me actively think about doing something other than relaxing and getting the sounds I want with my finger tips just caused issues. And I see the same issues in many students. One example is a student who was told that the playing movement of the finger comes "from the knuckle", so they had been playing with tension in the knuckles in order to "feel" the movement "coming" from there. Undoing that habit has been a very slow process.
None of this works because you are viewing that information too logically and not learning how to use it pragmatically in a case by case basis.
But choosing the correct strategy requires actually allowing your brain to map yourself in relation to the piano, and this can't be done purely intuitively because you need to increasingly refine your sensations, landmarks, timing, and sequencing of events. Doing it intuitively without modeling, choreography, and navigation leads to ceilings that can take ages to overcome purely intuitively, if ever.
Learning the proper timing (and manipulation of direction) on how to destabilize and re-stabilize (in a way that keeps you moving forward) is what we aim for, and it can't be done with purely isolated thinking because everything from the floor, to the chair seat, to our fingers is fair game.
Most people can't even intuitively sit in a balanced state in a non-challenged situation. How do we expect them to do it intuitively in situations where they are being challenged upon every articulation?
If the elbow joint stays fixed in space and the forearm lifts, then I would say it is the biceps group doing it.
I read Abby Whiteside "On Piano Playing". All its talk about levers and fulcrums and pulls and whatever did more harm than good.
It's only the biceps if the palm is facing up. I think palms down it's maybe the brachialis, and Brachioradialis. (though I tell my students it's the biceps - they're only children, what do they know!).
Timothy, here were my actual impressions.One single movement out of the complex interconnected movements was shown: the forearm going up and down from the elbow joint - landing on the "support" of the finger. While the writer says this connects to other movements, the fact is that this single thing is shown.
Exactly.There is no way you can talk piano technique without forearm rotation.
I have to agree with keypeg. This leaves any rational reader with the impression that to play forte, one needs to raise the hand. This is manifestly ridiculous, for example when applied to the octaves in the sixth Hungarian Rhapsody.
When we teach this movement from stage 0, we need to make our students aware of the importance of acknowledging that distance to the key equals higher speed on free fall. Remember that in this technique we will try to rely on free fall as much as we can.
This is off topic completely, but here is something that has been bothering me for a week. I seem to remember that you also studied violin or viola at some point? Regardless: Out of curiosity I signed up for a course on teaching violin. There is an exercise where the student is to raise the violin into the air like the statue of liberty, before placing it on the collarbone. When it is thus raised, the teacher is to tap the biceps, calling it the "violin muscle". My thought is that when you raise a torch, a violin, or anything up in that position, it's not the biceps that are involved. Or are they?This has been bugging me for three weeks.
If Mr wk is suggesting the fingers/hand/arm drop from a height then he is potentialy injuring students.
He would not be unique though.That is one of the common ways the feeling of arm weight is described. I think of it as a metaphor but it is usually described as actual mechanics.
I hold the student's sleeve while they straighten their middle finger. I then drop their finger/hand/arm into the keyboard. It's important I'm there to guide, that way it's safe.
If the palm is facing the face then it is indeed the biceps but of course muscles in the shoulder are working harder to keep the upper arm in place.If Mr wk is suggesting the fingers/hand/arm drop from a height then he is potentialy injuring students.
I believe you are judging very lightly Scaramuzza technique.
Topic: Forearm Movement - Scaramuzza Piano Technique 