You SHOULD Be Playing PIANO With Your WHOLE Arm - Here's Why

In this video we discuss how to find the correct balance between arm weight and finger motion.
You SHOULD Be Playing PIANO With Your WHOLE Arm - Here's How
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[@thewoodnote7660]

Yes, it does make sense. You really know your shit. There's only this video and one or 2 others that I've found on TH-cam that really go into this fundamental and imperative aspect of playing. Thank you! Thank You!

[@jozam11]

Hi!. Great channel.
If someday you need ideas for new videos, consider "How to know if you are using arm weight". Or "Tips to know how it feels to play with arm weight".

[@20praxis21]

Aging and injured pianists rely "heavily" on arm weight to attack keys firmly and accurately. In an earlier video on octaves you demonstrated an exercise to assist in playing intervals, which also requires the use of arm mass in free fall. Muscle "tonus" is the balance between arm weight and supporting finger action. I have heard of other exercises that help players gain the sensation of arm weight/relaxation.
Thank you again, Craig, for your piano health videos. You may not realize the number of people who get much of their piano instruction and guidance from the web, especially during this pandemic. I know the remuneration is not usually equal to the work put into each video.

[@lizweekes8076]

Thanks Craig 🎉

[@leonardomartin6053]

I've been looking EVERYWHERE for this information. This video has explained it the best by far, thank you so much for making this video, this has helped me tremendously!

[@winsomebye8835]

Glad to see you posting again! Excited to learn more!!

[@MiguelGebremedhin]

I've been playing for about a month now and just wanted to say your video on playing scales helped a lot. I noticed a video from a different guy on arm and wrist movement, he basically says it varies on what kind of phrases and passages you're playing ! All I can remember from a prodigy when I was in High School was that he would play very relaxed and his movements were not tense at all. I feel like a lot of these subtleties in playing will come in time and practice.

[@DavidMiller-bp7et]

The balance comes with practice. It becomes a natural feel without giving it much thought, perhaps maybe a specific passage in practice. An analogy occurred to me. Consider a thoroughbred race horse, magnificent creatures. When they are running, those thin legs and relatively small muscles in the shins, with bones as coordinated support, holding up and moving a huge mass of horse and weight above them. It is natural and easy for them. Those little shins, a couple joints are holding up many times their weight running like the wind. I had surgery to sew together my "little" peronial tendon, left ankle. Researching it, learned that the little peronial tendon can support 13 times body weight. Strong stuff. Remarkable. Watch a race horse running full tilt and wonder about coordinated components.

[@bv122]

👌 Good points i working on my technique exactly like that and it works, but it takes a lot of time to progress and feel fully confident in that.. i love watching old pianist how they play with a minimum effort bearly see moving of hands and they are so even and sounds beautiful.. truly mastery🧙

[@beckywalstead3366]

Great video, thanks for the info!

[@a.a.dehulster7567]

Very interesting the armweight question. At least one joint of the arm must be fixed (the wrist) for the weight to be transferred to the keys, otherwise the arm would drop backwards off the keys. What do you think?

[@RandomShowerThoughts]

So how do we use arm weight?

[@AstraProc]

Seems he has a video series on that: th-cam.com/video/sr2N_3k91d8/w-d-xo.html

[@rachelstarritt481]

I was trained to move from the wrist and fingers from a teacher who was trained in the Leschetizky tradition, with the arms only involved in chords. Strong fingers were emphasised, especially stretching and thumbs under the hand. The wrist was the most important part that enabled phrasing. The finger exercises involved lifting high from the knuckle from a curved fixed position rather than using the palm. It helped me achieve lightness of touch but for performance I couldn't always get the sound I wanted especially at speed, I would feel like I was clenching to focus on the notes when that passage came with tense arms. Later during my undergrad there was talk on Dohnanyi finger exercises (hold fingers down and lifting others) but I knew there was a problem with that, I hadn't registered or had been taught how to use the whole arm and visualised myself doing it, thinking it would lead to tension in the arms and more problems. I felt petrified that my teacher was going to injure me because she was going by what she had been taught and I knew it wasn't working because I have very small hands. A documentary on Dorothy Taubman changed everything, and now my teacher is much more in tune with physical sensations and possible habits, like stiffness in the head and neck. I think if I had gone down the pathway of the finger independence school, I would not have been progressing with virtuosic repertoire, I would have been enduring it rather than just performing which would suck the self confidence right out of me.

[@rachelstarritt481]

Also leaps were incredibly difficult as when you're only using fingers, you instinctively prepare for the big distance by arriving at the chord or octave you're leaping to before sounding the note, like you're searching for it. The problem with that is then it feels like approaching the leap with two separate movements rather than only one motion with the arm to lead the hand to its location. Approaching leaps with only fingers is awkward and unnatural affecting alignment so you're twisted to the side on the key rather than centred over it.

[@rachelstarritt481]

Are you familiar with Theodor Leschetizky and his ideas at all, and do you agree that technique is not only how most people describe (a means of achieving the desired interpretive goal with the right tools) but also a language in itself? I always like researching people like Leschetizky and back through time to find out how they taught piano even though we might not agree with certain principles ourselves. I think it provides a more complete and informed perspective as an aid of working out chorreography and translating gesture into archaetecture and shapes creating the structure of the piece, as oppose to relying on just the musicality like dynamics, phrasing and rhythm as mental components. There is a quote from the Russian pianist and teacher Pavel Gilelov who says in his interview about Bechstein pianos, "I don't think about playing on keys, but on strings." This brings a totally different dimension to how the piano is interpreted, all of a sudden it comes alive when we think of that imagery and feel at one with the sound.

[@DavidMiller-bp7et]

@@rachelstarritt481 You have a dynamically effective "way with words." Great articulation sensitivity, lots of depth. I watch what you are doing very carefully to see how it gets done, so thanks for your videos. Very profitable "her-story." Hard for me to tell your hand size, take your word for it. Very few people have larger than average hands. Most are small or average. Must be something that allows for great technique for all sizes. I like talk about thumb work underneath a higher wrist position, I have come to develop it more in spots. You "see" it plainly with Martha Argerich. Very difficult to watch unless you know exactly what you are watching for; the hand and especially fingers are quicker than the eye. For visual learners some of the very best online teachers show some passages in slow motion, which is very revealing. Each one has their own learning methods. Your comments are always helpful to me. This is about arm-finger weight balance; glad your found your way. Did you share Taubman type technique with your long term teacher?

[@rachelstarritt481]

@@DavidMiller-bp7et yes my teacher knows about Taubman and Lister-Sink as well, but her training background is in Leschetizki, so etudes and exercises. I shared Taubman with her after she was thinking about Dohnanyi exercises for finger independence, but was so scared of being injured that I sent her the choreography of the hands documentary-she has not looked back since so I’m really thrilled!!! Sadly others aren’t so lucky and fall for old time beliefs that actually cause the injury but they haven’t realised it until they start retraining …

[@rachelstarritt481]

Synthesis is always best and instinct of awareness, not just one method that makes you play better.

[@muminnabil7473]

Interesting but I don't understand why more finger motion is needed in non-legato touch. Fingers act as bridges of arm weight. Finger muscles contract only to let the arm weight pass onto the keys, consequently, both fingers and keys move downwards. The duration of arm weight application determines the type of touch, and a shorter application means an shorter duration of finger muscles contraction. Once the playing finger is relaxed, it'll be pushed up by the key. I don't see how more finger motion helps with reducing the duration of arm weight application. I believe finger motion should be kept to minimum in all types of touch.

[@aloppa7691]

I think cause its true that when you rotate or do other movement with the forearms the finger are very relaxed e you use them only for stabilization. Its just an equation, arm movement + finger movement = play the key