Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Relax the hands

What means this?

In my view this is one of the many meaningless
cliches that have crept into piano speech
since the end of the 19th century. In
modern times there is a tendancy to reduce
things to sound bites: relax the hands,
feel the music, smooth legato, bad habits,
etc. All essentially worthless.

would that be why it confuses me?

I don't know if this is what you're referring to, but when trying to reach wide intervals if you strain to reach them your hand will actually contract. Instead you should expand your hand itself rather than reach w/your fingers. It works like the woven carnaval puzzles where you put a finger in each end. The more you pull to remove your fingers the tighter the toys grip becomes. In order to get your fingers back you have to stop pulling so that the toy stops contracting and releases you.

"Relax the hands" means playing without tension. I think it is important for good technique and being able to play smoothly and for long periods without discomfort or pain.

When a teacher friend of mine was explaining the concept to me, she told me I should think of my hands as dead fish flopping on the keyboard.

I wouldn't call it a worthless concept. I would say that the vast majority of problems I've had in playing pieces and/or developing muscle soreness has stemmed from not playing with sufficiently relaxed hands.

thats what i had gathered, it sjut i cannot crasp the concept

Hmmm.... try this exercise, borrowed from clinical psychology where they teach progressive relaxation techniques. You can get an idea of what "relaxed hands" means, paradoxically, by doing the opposite. Take your hand, and clench it into a fist and squeeze just as hard you possibly can. Then release the fist and tension. Let your hand flop down on the table top or your lap or whatever. Focus on the sensations in each of your fingers, one at a time. Concentrate on letting each finger lie completely at rest. To help relax your hands completely, you will need to let your arms and shoulders drop as well. Then clench your fist tight again and repeat the process. The more you alternate between extremes of tension and relaxation the easier you'll be able to identify what being relaxed feels like.

To bring that to piano, my teacher friend encouraged me to do an exercise where I would play simple 1-3-5 chords up and down the keyboard, using the "imitate a dead fish" technique. She said to just go flop, flop, flop all the way up and down the keys and not worry about if I hit a wrong note or two. The purpose of the exercise is just to get practice with recognizing what a relaxed position feels like while playing and to practice using arm weight to move the keys rather than tensing up the fingers individually.

I hope the teachers and more experienced players out there can explain it better.

If actually clenching your hand while playing is the problem, try putting a wrist weight on the top of your wrist while holding your hand over the keybd. Automatically all of the energy will be transferred to where it can support the weight. This will leave your hand in the relaxed state that you want for playing with fingers supended from the relaxed hand. After a few seconds of having the wrist weights on, remove them and you'll feel the 'up-weight' exerted by the wrist. I wouldn't practice w/the weight (although you could do that briefly), but try to remember the hand and wrist posture required to support the weight and apply that to your playing.

When you are concentrating on at the piano you are caught up in receiving feedback from the sound of the notes you have just produced, the articulation of the notes your are presently playing and scanning the text or you memory for future notes. In all this activity of hard concentration you can develop unnoticed tension throughout your body. THe tension in your arms and hands renders your playing unpredictable and uncontrollable to some small extent because you and not in the exact position you think you are and your hands are not going to make the exact motion you intend them to. Relaxing sets you back to a 'default' state.

All good ideas and suggestions. Of course one cannot play well with 100% relaxed hands, there needs to be a little bit of muscle tension for finger shaping and wrist support or the hands would literaly collapse like dead fish under the weight of the arms.

My understanding is this: When we play, muscles in the hand, the arm, the upper body all tend to tense up - muscles that we are not using to produce a sound. We must learn not only to use the sound producing muscles properly, but also relax (i.e., NOT use) the unnecessary muscles. Much more easily said than done. Absolutely essential for progression beyond intermediate level playing.

I see it as an oversimplified description of what many of us (myself included) struggle with. Palindrome summed it up pretty nicely, I think. What's problematic is that we often build up bad habits over the course of years of practice. Therefore, we may perceive ourselves to be relaxed because we are playing in a way that is natural to us, when in fact it is only natural because we have reinforced it over time to be so. I struggle with this constantly, I do many things (arching wrists for wide spans, for example) that are so habitual I don't even realize that I am doing something so illogical.

The more efficient your playing technique is, the more you will have the sensation/impression of relaxation. I don't think this can be easily achieved when approached through a relaxation (negative) route, but it can be achieved through the nurturing and development (positive) of sound basic technique.


John

There were a lot of things I wrote here and then deleted.. I think I'll settle for this: if you consider those things worthless, do explain for me two things..

1) Why do you find them worthless? Is it because you don't understand the reference the catch-phrases are implying? Or are you employing them improperly? I'll leave room for 'other' if you'll explain what 'other' is...

2) What is meaningful to remember what you need to be doing at the keys? Would you prefer a 30-page dissertation on every little thing you do at the piano? Or would you rather five or six well-planned words that catch about 80% of the problem?

I'm interested in a response, not an argument..

Chopinmad, when I watched Barenboim playing the Beethoven sonatas on PBS, one of the things that struck me was how elastic his hands seemed - at times they looked as though they were totally separate lifeforms moving over the keys and quite dramatically changing shape. If you missed seeing it, try to get hold of the DVD (you might be able to rent it from the library) - I think it would give you an idea of what everyone's talking about.

Donna

I think relaxation comes automatically as you get familiar with an exercise or a score and have the (correct)basic technique.

If something is technically too demanding, then it is difficult to relax.

And then, some heavy physical exercises including static hand work, like hitting nails, and rowing, not ot mention wall climbing, are very counteractive to piano playing. They might increase the static powoer of your arm and hand muscles, but spoil the flexibility, speed and sensitivity of your whrist and fingers.

All these suggestions are of purely helpful intent, thank you. Although it is very hard, on reading them through one after each other, to have a clear idea of it as there are so many things are being said. Of course, I'll read through them again and again.
I conclude thus (bear in mind I'm aware of how wrong this conclusion is, built from my own misleading expericences and maybe not comprehending your advice, I am just trying to allow you to see it as I do, and so realise where I'm seeing things wrongly):

That this relaxation technique is a manner of holding your hands so that the only tension in them is that of holding the wrists so that the wrists dont drop too low. This means it can only be achieved through the fingers "knowing" the exact positions to move to, i.e that the fingers are in contact with the correct keys before depression. This means that the notes must be practised with some tension, so to guide the fingers to the right keys, and when that process becomes natural, it is possible to play the piece effortlessly, that is, with relaxed hands.
That would mean the more sufficent your basic technique (I am not sure myself even what I mean here, as the relaxation is part of the technique, but basically I'm trying to explain the technique as in the ability to have your fingers knowing their way around a piano subsantially, and all arpeggios etc. easily mastered) is, the easier it is to enter this "relaxed hands" period, as the notes are seemingly substantially easier to hit.
It is gained, (after mastering the notes) by simply letting your arms be weightless, and just the tiniest thought of moving them into a certain position means you are reminded of a certain procession of notes and so they can be played conmpletely effortlessly.
Putting it like this would mean it is gained by mastering the notes, meaning it's just a natural occurance once a piece has been learned, and is not a prior problem which should be dealt with or dwelt upon, which is wrong because after experimentation there is certainly a possibility of having MUCH more relaxed and so efficient hands.
I find, however, how to place or position my hands while relaxing them is difficult, as I'm unable to tell how much tension I'm supposed to apply to keep the wrists sufficently arched, and where to drop or turn my wrist, and so the relaxation of the hands becomes ever more confusing. I dont know whether or not I'm wasting time trying to practise it, as it may be too difficult to achieve without a proper teacher. It certainly is a technique which has particularly rewarding effects however, otherwise Liszt and Mozart and such wouldn't have been as great pianists at such early ages; they must have practised the piano with perfect technique so to make the quickest progress possible. Of course mental skill would help as well.

Altogether very confusing!!! I'll read into it and read into it and read into it when I'm not practising, and hopefully something will click into place!

Thanks for all your replies!

I would recommend that you read "On Piano Playing" by Abby Whiteside. She repeats herself a lot but there is tremendous information in this book about relaxation - not only of the hands but the wrist and arm as well.

http://www.abbywhiteside.org/pages/books.htm

I once heard said that most tension in playing the piano originates in the shoulders. Agree or disagree?

I try to keep in mind not to add undue tension all the way from upper body, shoulders, arms, wrists, and hands doing a checklist of these things while I am practicing.

I might guess if you are trying too hard to hold your wrists an exact certain way for things, you may be tightening your wrists.

Relaxing the hands means telling them every day that you love and appreciate them, and, occasionally, buying them dinner or taking them to the movies.

lmao subwoofer.

thanks fot eh book reccomendation Tenuto.

Relaxed hands. . . does it mean you cant play forte with them, or is the speed of the fingers impacting the note the same?

You use the arms the supply the strength.

If you are having problems from failure to relax they are best assessed in person by a teacher. When we talk about hands not being relaxed we aren't suggesting that you can't exert effort when it's appropriate. I have a tendency to grip the steering wheel when I drive. It may be appropriate to grip the wheel when parallel parking (w/o power steering), but to grip it all the time is not good. It's the same with the piano. There's nothing wrong w/using appropriate force, but to clench you hands all the time is counter productive (and dangerous to the health of your hands). You default posture should be one of relaxation w/the hands suspended over the keybd.

after eperimentation however ive found its better: only working for a couple of days on the process and already i felt LH octaves being able to be played quicker and with almost no effort.
i by now really think its essential, and am gonna read into it lots.

I do not find the relaxed playng term worthless, quite the contrary. Also, not only hard exercises cause tension in the arm. Try playing the very first Hanon exercise at 108 and see what happens to your arms...

I find myself be able to relax "consciously" with
the hand and fingers, ie everytime when I sense
tireness in hand, I will "consciously" relax the
muscles ... it has now become a habbit. I am not
exactly sure what I am doing is the correct
procedure but it helps.

However, the forearm and upperarm are the areas
which I have yet to further develop that
consciousness and more importantly be able to
control it, ie relax them.

I find that when playing long running appreg and
octaves passages, I cannot achieve full relaxation
of my fore- and upperarms, I am working on it.

Drumour wrote I think Drumour's statement is true. Yet it can be profitable sometimes to practice relaxation deliberately. Some good instructions can be found in Chuan Chang's book Fundamentals of Piano Practice, readable online at
http://members.aol.com/chang8828/contents.htm
in particular, see these parts:
chapter one part II.14 how to relax
chapter one part II.10 gravity drop, chord practice and relaxation
chapter one part III.1 tone, rhythm and staccato

I don't (yet) have an advanced technique and sometines the idea of relaxation at the keyboard has seemed distant and out of reach. But Chang makes one aspect of it very easy to grasp: the priciple of not using unnecessary pressure on the keybed, and using only the required amount of weight to hold the keys down.

The tension/relaxation polemics have been around for a good few hundred years. Much of the confusion is contributed to by the pronators (the muscles in the lower arm you use to turn a door knob). They are so strong that their feeling of tension overwhelmes much of the attempt to relax the hand. Whereas you can flop your hand from your wrist, dead fish like, onto the keyboard, no reasonable pianist would relax the pronators. Being unreasonable though I DO, and I suppose I'm coming out a bit here. If you do not pronate, your fingers sit on the keys obliquely and your knuckles slant downward. So what?

that is the msot useful post i find!!
if these 'pronators' are always tensed as you claim they are, then the hand is always in the correct position, as in wrists not drooping, but then you can still relax the forearms, and fingers you could say (althoguh thats hard to think of), what i mean is you can keep your hands in the right place, but relax evrything else, so yuor fingers are almost flopping on they keyboard, but the wrists are still cocked, as the muscles used to turn door knobs are tensed.
after even more experimentation i feel that is so far the most effective way to play.

Hmmm, I think I get that. By just KNOWING where the required tension is you can isolate the feelings. Certainly the fingers must be dead (as they look when hanging from your side. Don't forget the shoulders. Many teachers, including famous ones, teach you to raise your elbows. This involves strong shoulder muscles which again adds to the tension. If you want to get as close as possible to a relaxed state, your elbows need to hang from your shoulder and therefore touch your side. If you don't want to play this way (I do) that's up to you but it will help you feel a more relaxed state. Another tip - always reach for notes using your finger tips. Many learners reach with their whole arm when 'going for' a note. Something else - when you brush your teeth (or drink a cup of tea) does your elbow stick out? It doesn't need to.

Not sure if I will add much that hasn't already been said in various forms, but here goes:

"Relaxing the hands" is just a simple way of addressing a complex issue. Obviously there must be tension, or the fingers won't hit the right keys. But it must be the right kind of tension, at the right time, with relaxation in between. For instance, when you play consecutive octaves, there must be a quick release of tension in between each one, or tension will build to unsafe proportions. The way to overcome too much/wrong tension is to practice very slowly, consciously trying to release the hand and wrist in between each octave. It is exaggerated at this point, but as you build up speed, you will build in those periods of relaxation (as opposed to building in tension). You will not be able to see it necessarily, but it certainly frees up the hand.

Also, previous posts about arm weight is important to understand as well. Power and control comes from the body -- it is a system of levers that go from the waist to the shoulders to elbows to the wrist to the fingers. Levers make a job much easier, and the more levers in a system, the easier it gets. So by using arm weight, one can get the power and energy needed for such difficult passages. Using gravity like this will help to produce volume while striking the keys as opposed to trying to use sheer muscle strength to create sound which creates undue tension. This is then balanced by the above-mentioned release of tension as the body resets for the next note.

This will no doubt horrify the purists amongst us; however, after a long, arduous practice session, it helps to wash the dishes in the sink in warm water and Ivory liquid.

Follow up with a little Vaseline Intensive or Aveeno, or some lovely designer lotion...

You have then killed two birds, etc....

I can't agree enough with Morodiene. Notice it's your body that resets (not YOU). Like an elastic band, your muscles should return to repose between every note.

There is a good book on the subject by Gyorgy Sandor: On Piano Playing, Motion, Sound and Expression. It goes into detail on hand structure and proper technique for almost any application you can think of.

http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Playing...mp;s=books&qid=1180631109&sr=8-1

A couple of years ago it was a revelation for me that playing difficult pieces on the piano need not be physically tiring. Removing this constraint allows you to play with much more focus and control.

Um, this seems rather backwards - why would you put strain on your fingers to reach the notes from a slightly off position, when you can just pick them up and put them where they're supposed to be?

Kisch, may I quote Rameau? From his 'Methode sur la Mecanique des doigts sur le clavessin' (Paris. 1724) "....A larger movement is only admissible when a smaller is not sufficient: so long as a finger can reach a key without any other movement of the hand than a slight opening or stretching, one is not allowed to make a movement which goes beyond what is necessary..."

Im not exactly sure how to answer now, but, after reading Chopin's book (Pianist and teacher), it seems all piano playing is to do with relaxation, he even forbids one of his pupils to practise more than three hours a day, and emphasises only on relaxation, his elbows also, were always tucked in, and didnt move form his sides, just as keyboard klutz suggest. HOWEVER, chopin didnt play much forte, even playing passages hed arked himself forte, hed sometimes play pianissimo, although i still think the same relaxation process would be applied to fortissimo playing whenever possible, although naturally there would be more tension.

keyboardklutz, we need to take Rameau's quote in its context. Clavecin translates to harpsichord, and along with the organ and the clavichord this was the most commonly used keyboard instrument of the time. The piano was in its very early stages, and in addition to its not being in common use the action was totally different. Harpsichords do not have the dynamic range of modern pianos and from all I have read the proper technique is to move the fingers only when possible. Modern pianos are so totally different, with their range and heavy actions, that Rameau's quote isn't really helpful.

Shosti, keyboard action is irrelevant to Rameau's remark. Fingers must always be on the relevant keys BEFORE key depression (if you wish I could garner a dozen references for this). Rameau is talking about HOW you get there.

Where we may be misunderstanding, and to help Chopinmad's last post, is how to apply force once the finger is there. I play mostly with a clavichord touch (so much so I'm thinking of buying one, any suggestions?) but for accented notes I use arm weight/muscle dropped, and then flopped into the keyboard. Once the finger is on the key the wrist goes all the way up, drops stiffly (for a micro-second), then instantly flops. This still meets Rameau's criteria but with added wrist movement. Lastly, there is also an up movement for staccato which can be loud or soft. All three touches begin with the totally quiet hand.

Chopinmad, re-reading your previous posts: Don't confuse the pronators/supinators (knob turning) with the set of muscles that move your wrist up or down (whatever they're called).

Yes! Keith Hill http://keithhillharpsichords.com/ makes the most wonderful instruments you've ever heard! I would consider his pianofortes as well.

Morodiene.
you're making me laugh here-I almost spilled my beer due to the laughter...
Explain to me how gravity creates a big sound?
Fast hammer speed creates big sound.
Speed of the depression of the key creates big hammer speed. How does vertical weight have anything to do with this?

Keyboard Clutz said:
"Shosti, keyboard action is irrelevant to Rameau's remark. Fingers must always be on the relevant keys BEFORE key depression (if you wish I could garner a dozen references for this). Rameau is talking about HOW you get there."

I like that kind of talk!

Where did I say gravity creates a big sound? I said

Quote

So by using arm weight, one can get the power and energy needed for such difficult passages. Using gravity like this will help to produce volume while striking the keys as opposed to trying to use sheer muscle strength to create sound which creates undue tension.

Please be sure to read carefully before you comment to make sure you understand what was said.

The harder a key is struck the bigger the sound. Using gravity (i.e., arm weight) as opposed to trying to push your arm down will release undue tension. It is basic physics: why work when gravity does the work for you? Also, tension can be caused by continuing to press the keys down hard in the aftertouch. When using arm weight, there is less chance of this, reducing injuries.

Mr_Kitty, I find using arm weight (gravity) works like this. Allow your arm weight to drop (from touching the key(s)) into the key(s) adding muscle force as you go (if it's a big accent). This allows gravity (a natural force) to guide you, even if only momentarily. You and the audience 'experience' nature. Japanese buddhist temples seem to have it sussed. Listen to these: Hokku , Kaichin

Mr_Kitty: I have a question. If it is the speed at which to strike the keys that determines how loud the sound is, then how would you play fast pianissimi? I played a scale just now on my piano, fast and forte, and then fast and piano. The speed at which the keys were depressed did not change, but the volume did. The way I changed the volume was I struck the keys harder for the forte.

Morodienne, oh my goodness! Please allow me an answer. The piano mechanism is such that once the hopper (which pushes the hammer) flicks out of contact with the hammer, the hammer is in free fall (like a ball that has left your hand). Nothing can affect it before it hits the string. According to the laws of physics it in a state on entropy (it is loosing speed).

The only force you can have applied is its mass times its acceleration (F=ma). You could not have altered the weight of the hammer so therefore all you could have effected is the speed of the hammer (even that is out of your control just before it hits the string).

Pardon my ignorance about how the piano works (I never took a piano tech course, and no one has ever told me otherwise), but you are saying that in order to produce a forte, one does *not* strike the key harder?

striking the key, and I do hope you don't mean from any height, will overcome the inertia quicker which will result in the key being depressed quicker, the hammer going faster and a louder sound. Striking though, is a bit too dangerous for the fingers.

I play with my fingers resting on the key and then pressing down. That's what I mean by striking. It's hard to explain such specifics online, I can see . But then I still don't understand how one plays fast and quietly? The key must be pressed quickly for the tempo, which if I'm understanding you correctly, means it would be louder, not quieter.

You cannot affect the mass of the piano's action but you can affect both the mass and acceleration that you exert using your self. That's why arm weight can give you exactly the same accent as a fast finger movement. Or a slowly controled arm movement the same as a slow finger. The number of different combinations for the same effect are quite enormous.

OK, but then wouldn't using arm mass actually be slower then finger mass because it takes more to accelerate the arm? (I never was very good at physics >_<)

The combinations are many. We use ours ears to get the effect we want in the way that depends on our training. The psychology (what we think we're doing and what we intend to do) is much more important than the physics.

Deleted post (wrong physics; forgot about F = ma )

the sound is created by hammers hitting the strings, and as its always the same amount of hammer hitting the string, then the only possuible factor is the speed at which the hammer hits the string.
that means, for forte palying the hammers move faster than they would for piano playing.
the hammers move in perfecy accordance with the keys, so the faster you want the hammers to mvoe, the faster the keys have to move. gravity doesnt supply enough speed for forte playing , i dont think, try dropipng anything onto a key, which you deem its weight is the same (or geater even) as your finger, (or thumbs even). youll see it doesnt drop at enough speed to move the keys fast enough for forte playing. that means gravity is not enough for forte playing. so the mre volume required, the more tension, which is why chopin played so much quietly.
(its hard to judge whats the same weight as your finger though)

I think Chopin played quietly for other reasons. I can't believe it would have been beyond him to play up a bit.

on reading chopin pianist and teacher, i gather he was entirely intent on the relaxation of the hands. he says he diditn liek the sound of forte playing calling it dogs barking, but, i think he just didnt feel relaxed enough to enjoy the music when it was forte, as he did when paino, because of the immense relaxation in his arms.

Maybe you want to do a bit more research on this. Relying on one book, though I know it's a good one, could lead to a rash judgment.

But what about the dead weight of your arm? Sure, you can lift the finger high and drop it on a key and see what happens, but lift your whole arm and let it fall and hear how much more sound you can make with that. Now, I'm not saying one must play flopping like a dead fish all over the keyboard. But using gravity to maximize your acceleration (as I now understand it) makes a lot more sense.

if youre gonne make an effort to move your arm down at the same speed as gravity would do then i suppose yes it definitely should be encouraged.

its an interesting book, and im not judging anything, more suggesting?
im going to research more into it soon, it is really quite unbelievable how many people seem to have been awestruck on his playing, and genuienly finding nothing more beatuiful.

The volume of the note depends on the quantity of momentum (the product of mass AND velocity) transferred to the key, not just the velocity. A small mass at a given velocity will make a quieter sound than a larger one at the same velocity - it will be slowed down more as it hits the key, before the hammer even moves.

I'd place my money on his medical history.

Oh dear. The mass of the action is static.

what does it matter if tis momentum, the mass is the same, unless youre talking of different pianos now, and i spose chopins pleyel had an extremely light action, does that mean lgith key??? that would mean more velocity for the same sound as a heavier one wouldnt it?

I mean the mass in motion that hits the key, which varies with your technique of course.

Fraggle, it can't. The mass is the mass. Does a ball get heavier after it's left your hand?

Does this help?
http://www.musicplay.com/action/action.html

I think I see the problem here:

When the key is struck, it does not instantly start moving at the same velocity as the mass that strikes it. It will be accelerated to the velocity that conserves the momentum of the system which will only be the same if the total mass set in motion is the same as the mass striking it. See?

@keyboardklutz

It can! If you just move your little finger to hit the key then that`s less mass than bringing your whole arm down.

See?! A ball traveling at 50 miles an hour is just that. One traveling 20 miles an hour is just that. The hammer is in free fall as soon as it looses contact with the hopper. No mass has been added or taken away, as with a ball in the air.

/head hurts

I still say wahtever technique gets you to the point where you can be as expressive as possible without causnig injury to yourself is the best one, which may be finger for some, arm for others. I'm not even totally convinced that they are different concepts of the same technique for many people.

I think I`ve lost my way in this discussion :-) The point of my original post was to illustrate that it`s not just how fast your finger hits the key but also the mass of your finger that determines the volume. I don`t think this is quite what you were debating now though?

We've been there, done that. I thought I was going mad for a moment there!

I did read the thread but I must have missed a page :-)

aah i see youre saying the whole momentum being applied onto the note is applied onto the hammers, and the initial momentum depends on the mass involved in hitting the ntoe, i.e finger arm
?

aah i see youre saying the whole momentum being applied onto the note is applied onto the hammers, and the initial momentum depends on the mass involved in hitting the ntoe, i.e finger arm
?

I think you have that sorted. But as I said above - It's what you think you do and how you use your ears that are the most important elements of piano playing.

The momentum of the playing aparatus (hand, finger, arm, nose) does not typically get transferred to the hammer. A lot of the energy is disipated at the keybed, and in the players joints as heat, or as rebound.

ocd

Agreed, I ignored the losses in my description.

Rate Member posted June 04, 2007 11:37 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think you have that sorted. But as I said above - It's what you think you do and how you use your ears that are the most important elements of piano playing.

AGREED!

how exactly do you do that though?
blimey im bad, cant use my ears and if i could couldnt use my hands to imitate it!

Many pianists, certainly a lot of children, play mechanically. Yes they hear the sound but after they've made it. When you whistle a tune you don't mechanically make the sound and then listen. The sound is contemporaneous with your intenton. As in a dialogue. Mostly you carry on a conversation with utterances that are contemporaneous with your thoughts. There are several ways it goes wrong in piano playing.

If the activity is 'pushing the buttons' (as some of my pupils have put it) then the sound becomes secondary. Most important is how your teacher refers to your playing. I was an oboist before a pianist. In an orchestra each conductor will ask for a different interpretation. For this one you play a certain passage soft, this one loud, this faster, slower. One thing you never do, and you can ask any wind player or singer, is blow less to play softly. You play softly. Or blow hard to play loud. You play loud. And never a thought is given to it.

Some piano teachers will talk about your performance mechanically. They will say 'too heavy with the thumb there' What?! What has the thumb to do with sound? 'trill without allowing the keys to rise completely' (I been told that by at least 3 good pianists). Yes you can get the effect mechanically, but why interfere with a body that will do it for you? All you need do is hear the music how you want it to be. This is our great struggle. To have an imagination to equal the genius creator of a work, that is our labour. The body, as long as your posture is good, will do the rest. Just think, when did you last have to work out the force and arm leverage needed to throw a ball x distance?

You see, genius pianists go straight from the page to the sound. They bypass the body. Makes you weep don't it?

Some people throw very badly and need to be shown what to do...

Likewise, for a lot of people, the body doesn't do it for them.

I have a theory that much of what is called 'talent' is actually a shorthand for 'stumbling across a suitable technique'. As several recent threads have demonstrated, there isn't a whole lot of consensus even on what muscles we're supposed to be using to play the piano.

I took a leap forward when I read Abby Whiteside. I took another leap forward when I realised she was only half right. Everything I learn about technique helps me express myself better, because I never had the luck to be able to just do it intuitively.

Some people, probably quite a lot, when left to 'let their body do the rest' will end up just tying their flexors in knots.

keyboardklutz: well said! Often, you must simply go for the right sound, and figure out how to make it. This is where the practice comes in, so that you can bring about the right sound. It has to be sound-oriented, and not visually oriented (reading the notes and pushing the right buttons). Once a person learns the correct notes, then you are able to walk through the door into making it a piece that expresses something.

Kisch, I teach a lot of children. The range of intuitive use of the body is remarkable. You find those who are natural athletes are natural musicians (from a use of the body aspect). How to get that intuition back for all is the problem.

Now to show my age! When I went to school our desks were slanted toward us. This was a design millennia old. We were also encouraged to stand/sit up straight. (I use 'point your breast bone to where the ceiling meets the wall') Alas all this is gone and our children suffer for it.

Abbey Whiteside is very good. But you know there are at least another 200 books on technique? A good one, I nearly agree with, is Townsend who was one of the first to write about use of arm. If you Google "william Townsend" pdf you should find it.

i always have trouble with my posture and where i sit. i feel im never in the right place. ive ended up marking the floor so to keep my stool in the same place, but its awkward playing on alien pianos.
i sit with my stool at its lowest point, (ill check later how low that is), and my knees just under the piano. i can reach sitting like this both ends of the keyboard without leaning to one side, even on passages where the (RH) fourth finger comes over the thumb by some distance, like a Db major arpeggio for instance, where the thumb plays F and the fourth finger plays Db, it is still smooth coming down at speed at the very end of the keyboard. same process goes for the LH.
i dont know how to hold my back up and etc though, i have a very unorthodox techniqe; soemtimes my neck hurts playing easy songs!!
sometimes i get pains in the tops of my arms as well, by the shoulders, but i think thats form being too tense, from faulty technique.

hopinmad can you not point your breastbone to where the ceiling meets the wall?

I suffer from ill-at-ease at the piano as well, though I get better and better. It doesn't matter how experienced/good you are, playing is a constant seeking out tension to then release it. Often while playing certain types of passage my elbow attempts to rise up. I notice this after a beat of two and without a second thought release it.

There are natural players who feel at home at any piano. For me somehow, I memorize the piano I'm learning on as well, so that my memory is impaired when I have to play a different one. I think it's a touch of autism. Or has everybody this problem?

im not sure, i definietely feel i know my own piano and know the exact pressure of the keys etc.
ill try pointing my breastbone to the ceiling/wall point, interesting.

(by the way im "chopinmad" but i messed the login)