The other day one of my students who is by now already VERY familiar with all my ideas about hand activation, structural function etc, brought me Chopin Op. 10 #5 (the Black Key etude) and yet again he had no real sound, the playing was uneven, his thumb chronically raised and tense. I obviously needed another strategy to help him get what he already knows.
I squatted down on my haunches and started trying to walk around the room – with some difficulty of course. I told him, “This is your fingers on the keyboard.” I then very slowly and dramatically straightened my legs to raise myself to full height. “This is what they need to do as they play. On each and every note your finger should feel this inside it.”
He instantly got it. His sound improved, the musical flow suddenly had a sparkling, vivacious regularity and verve, and his hands suddenly looked capable.
I reinforced the visual image by standing near a wall, beginning to lean towards it until I was falling towards it, then catching myself by sticking my arm out against the wall and straightening it to push myself upright again. I was like a pendulum but with my feet attached to the floor and my upper body swinging, my arm pushing against the wall each time to swing me upright.
This image helps because it is more fluid – I’m not continuously attached to the object I’m pushing against, but refresh the feeling of ‘push’ each time I come into contact with it. Perhaps this is a little closer to the state of affairs in our fingers as we play…
I told him not to play fast for now but to only go as quickly as he could while maintaining this tangible inner ‘feel’ of standing up on each note, of pushing up from the key bottom on each attack. This was great because it stopped him feeling that his attacks were physically ‘down’ into each key; instead each attack became filled with a vital ‘up’ feeling. The ‘down’ generally contains an insidious hidden collapse; the ‘up’ effectively prevents any such thing happening.
I never said a word about his chronic raised thumb, which I have focused on previously. I picked that particular strategy because it seemed to resonate with his self-experience, how he experiences himself as he plays… We’ll see if it bears fruit!
AFF
Tags: classical piano technique, craft of piano method, Feldenkrais & Piano, hand arches and piano technique, lumbricals in piano technique, piano lessons, piano pedagogy, piano teaching, Piano Technique, thumb and piano technique