Hey Kreiser, you had better watch out. You might get yourself BANNED talking like that. "Monkey howdy-doo"!!! I'm shocked.

Thanks for re-quoting it.
I hadn't really looked at the 'content' of that post and probably some other people didn't either....

Interesting thread here. Of course there is no one single approach or technique, but there are plenty of concert pianists who have used and benefited from the Taubman technique. They don't talk about it for clear reasons: ego, not wanting to discuss their technique, not wanting to reveal injuries, etc. How do you know what technique someone is incorporating or not? A lot of elements are simply not visible. There is no camp or cult as it has been suggested in this thread. Use whatever works for you, but let's not be blind or suggest that people that use the Taubman technique can't play with control, ease, power, and color. It's simply not true.

From what little I've read about the Taubman, it seems like practical common sense -

"The premise of the Taubman approach is that all technical problems at the piano can be solved. Intelligent, informed practice is the solution rather than repetitious grinding."

Yes, indeedy, but what good teacher of any method would disagree? And isn't this true of anything in life - thinking about why you're doing things is better than blindly repeating the wrong action?

Karl's enthusiasm reminds me of myself after I read Abby Whiteside - I more or less thought I'd discovered a new religion, when in fact I'd just been made to notice a few bad habits.

I need to resurrect this thread!

I just started with a new, wonderful, teacher, Frank Levy (http://franklevy.com/) and he's teaching me the Taubman way.

I had reached a plateau, never able to get much velocity on the Chopin Etudes (for example). We're dissecting them, starting with #1, playing it unrecognizably slowly, with care to get every rotation, hand position, "in and out" and shaping of the hand and wrist correct.

I have to say, I'm becoming a believer. Maybe it's not the rotations exactly, but taking the time to analyze every movement, making sure you're not wasting energy, not putting undue weight on the key after its fully depressed, and considering on what spot on the key your finger should land is the only way to push yourself out of a rut.

I've started to shoot videos weekly of the state several of the Etudes so I can monitor my Taubman progress over the course of a year; I'll put them up on YouTube after a year or so, so you can see the transformation.

thats not taubman technique exactly thats just proper playing :L pleasel et this thread die

Yes -- and excellent teaching.

I thought what he said was basically the basics of playing, making sure every single movement is as economic as possible then when you get on to doing advanced stuff which requires a heck of alot notes it all comes out much easier

except the concept of the "Rotation" is unique to Taubman. I've had other teachers come close: they'd say it should be as if each finger drops on the key, and when the finger is all the way down it should have no more weight than is required to keep the key down.

But that advice is hard to put into practice at performance tempo. The "rotation" concept, when put into practice, can be integrated into your playing at any tempo, and achieves a similar result.

Not exactly. Tobias Matthay (teacher of Dame Myra Hess) made forearm rotation a central tenet of his teaching in the early 1900's.

Exactly!

The rotation thing is very old, and very common. Taubman takes it and makes a fetish of it.

If one isn't making a fetish of it, it's not Taubman.
Although of course I imagine the Taubman people would want to put it a little differently.