Piano Technique - My Two Cents

Rather than repeatedly type the same things over and over in forums, it's probably best just to consolidate my main ideas into this blog. So expect more of this in the future.

Part of my intent with creating this blog is to encourage and motivate others interested in Piano in general and Jazz Piano in particular (pick your poison, I deal with both). So this time I'm going to talk about my experience in Piano in general, and specifically about technique.

I can't say I have a lot of technique compared to classical pianists playing for 20+ years. It's passable now but being older, I thought it would be an impossible struggle. I spent an inordinate amount of time intellectualizing the study of technique from reading. I went to a Classical piano teacher who had incredible technique who learned directly from a 2nd generation student of Liszt. I debated technique on the Pianist Corner.

Now at 8 years into this journey, and post-tendonitis and various other injuries on my hand from overuse. I can say I've tried a lot of different things and what is fresh in my mind is what I'm learning. In fact this is what makes me unique as a story teller. I'm gone through these issues recently. Not like some old-time teacher who had to overcome technique issues at 8-10 years of age. And luckily, I can verbalize the experience specifically for adults.

I can play OK now. I can play fast 16ths on a jazz tune. I'm starting to solo in jazz at professional level tempos (above 250bpm). My tone is better and my finger legato is good. In other words, my technique has developed.

What Playing Feels Now

I need to capture this experience for newbies so they can sense if they're headed in the right direction or not. When I was playing piano in the early years, the feeling on the instrument is very different from how it feels now. It will be interesting to see if I read this blog-post 10 years from and have a change of opinion. But for now, I will give my current opinion.

Back then, I had to consciously apply movements I've learned intellectually like rotation, moving hands in and out (in relation to the fallboard), be conscious of the arm weight, shape of the hand, relaxation, height of the bench, tension in my body from shoulders to fingers, ...on and on.

Looking back, I think I overdid the intellectualization. I realize now that there is a natural tendency for the body to do it right. If you will let it. I realize now that allowing the body to be unrestricted is in fact the training required for good technique.

Unfortunately, I haven't found any short cuts. Everything still requires time. Maybe this is one of the first limitations I've discovered about starting piano after 8 years of age. Our body RESISTS naturally now, at least as an adult.  Or is it the brain that resists? Probably the brain. As an adult, the brain intellectualizes and applies logic instead of just letting go and letting the natural movements guide us.

Reminds me of the action of "falling". As a child, if you fall of a skateboard, you will likely land relaxed on the pavement and suffer little injury. As an adult, you will land stiff as a board, and you will suffer painfully from broken bones. This is not an idle statement. I broke an ankle to prove this point!

Piano playing, just like learning to skateboard as an adult, is not a natural thing to do. The body has to "memorize" distances perfectly and orchestrate a precise coordination of movements. But I've since discovered that the problem is, the adult brain, interferes and makes everything stiff.

Problem of Opposing Muscles

The issue with playing piano is that our natural tendency is to "hold back" and this results in that stiffness I describe. Everything is done at first with brute force (often with finger power). This is true of any adult beginner. Specifically, what happens is that instead of a particular muscle just contracting and performing the desired task directly, some other accessory muscle is always countering this movement. This is what is meant when someone says you have too much "tension". It is impossible to play the piano completely relaxed. Muscles have to contract. Muscles have to support. Muscles have to retain shape and structure such as the hand or position of the arm.

But every action is a balance. For example, holding one's arm in a fixed position is a balance between two sets of muscles pulling on the same sets of joints on opposite sides.  I don't need to get technical and describe these movements of tendons, ligaments and muscles.

To depress a key on the piano swiftly and without hesitation requires a complete release of the opposing muscle. It's pretty hard to do. I don't know why, but the body seems to always act naturally to reserve the right to reverse the action so it doesn't let go and the muscles work against each other.

This is the unnecessary muscle contraction. This is under the control of our conscious mind. If our conscious mind doesn't interfere, you will use only the necessary muscles and not more.

In other words, the brain has to be taught to eliminate the stiffness and promote looseness. And the brain can be taught to do this, by playing SLOW.

Logic of Playing Slow

I don't always play slow. In fact, it's not something I do that often. However, when teachers say "play it slow" we need to dig deeper into what's being said and how to apply this to practice.

Let's say we're playing a technically difficult phrase (like a series of A arpeggios in Chopin's 10/1 Etude -- one of the toughest challenges I found in that piece). If you try to solve it by brute force, and you practice it day after day, the end result is just tendonitis. It's tough on the fingers and the shoulders get tense and strained.

Now technically speaking, teachers will talk about solutions like arm weight, wrist rotation, in/out motion. But instead of thinking about any of that, just play it VERY SLOWLY. Extremely, and excruciatingly slow. I mentioned this to someone and the reaction was that this sounds ludicrous.

But let's get to the point of it. By slowly, I mean that at every note keypress, make the most natural movement that your body follows in slow motion. LET YOUR BODY TEACH YOU. And then use the following questions to so if you're interfering or if you're letting go.

1. Feel any tension in your body. Are you shoulders scrunched? Are you putting all your weight in the finger?
2. Watch the angle of your wrist. Was there any rotation?
3. Is there a need to move the hand in or out to cut down on motions and twisting? What does finger naturally do if you let it?
4. Wiggle the finger on the note. Feel the support from your shoulder-arm-wrist-finger-joint. Does the finger need to be adjusted? Is it in the center of the key?
5. How's the arm weight? Is there too much weight, too little weight?
6. How about the other fingers that are unused? Wiggle them. Are they tense?
7. What about the prior note (finger legato)? Is it being pulled up from the key too fast?
8. Are you holding some fingers in an extended position from a note previously played?
9. Is the wrist twisted (left-right position in relation to the arm) and not straight? Is your body promoting this twist by not moving the upper body (and your bottom) in relation to the wrist?
10. Did I say WIGGLE? Let me repeat that. That's the test to make sure everything is loose. Did you wiggle once? Wiggle one more time with the only support being the tip of the finger on the key.

I'm sure there's more but the issue here is that when someone says "play slow", you need to dig deeper into what that means. Your body has to memorize the feeling of a non-tense keypress into every single note. EACH NOTE COULD BE DIFFERENT. It's just the nature of the beast. The movements are not necessarily symmetrical. Each movement has to be learned. This is why learning the piano is so hard. There's a million movements to remember automatically.

Just to make sure we're all on the same boat here, understand what slow means. The above is NOT metronome slow. IT IS SLOWER THAN THAT. I could be 5-10 seconds per note initially. And sped up as you eliminate the bad movements.

Result of this Conscious Analysis

Now if you really become conscious of every movement in slow motion, you will have time to address every tension and remove it. Then your body will memorize this and file this into your subconscious. And you will begin to use proper techniques as described in various technique schools like "relaxation", "rotation", and so on. You will then use a minimal amount of muscle contraction to play.

Mind you, there are stages to this. I certainly have a lot of work to do in this arena. Just because I'm writing this doesn't mean I've solved all my issues. But it takes time to practice all this slowly. Just a Scale alone is a monumental thing to practice in this manner.

But like everything else, we need to build a database of skills. Piano requires a lot of it. And from a technique point of view, these skills have to be accumulated since everything is different. Even playing a C scale has different effects on muscles depending on the register/octave.

Example Issue

On a regular basis, I play scales and then slowly listen for unevenness. Now usually my goal is to play scales pretty fast. Typically around 150bpm quarter notes (playing 16ths). When I do this, I listen for various problems like a common one is losing finger legato on the thumb, or unevenness in finger 4. Often, playing fast adds tension and then I recognize a weakness in technique.

So once I hear the problem (there's another blog post about "hearing your faults"), this is now the time to apply the slow practice methodology above, again analyzing every movement in my entire body. Once you've isolated the correct movements (as taught to you by your body), you can start  speeding it up again until you've achieved perfection.

Summary

I don't have a regular teacher now. And I haven't been to a Technique teacher in a long time. But I've learned that all I need to do is to let my own body teach me how to do it. And it will do it if you press each note painstakingly slow when you have a technical problem.