September 28th, 2007
And you thought that I couldn’t relate knees to piano technique… o ye of little faith!
That’s right… As you sit and read this, move one knee slightly forward. You may notice that it is impossible to do it without a slight movement of the pelvis as well. Lately as I have returned to some thorny passages that over the years have obstinately refused to become easy to play, I notice that although I have cultivated a non-collapsed hand for years, somehow somewhere in there, there still exists some insidious form of micro-collapse. I also notice that as this collapse is happening, I cannot rock my pelvis. I have fallen into Arnold Schultz’s idea of stabilizing the hip joints to provide a fulcrum to the levers higher up the body.
If I rock my pelvis the movement tends to be too big – it disturbs rather than enlightens. But if I attend to the moveability of my knee, it helps my pelvis stay free and moveable without my overtly moving it. So as your hand comes into the keyboard, let your knee ease forward a tiny amount, literally a millimeter or two… Does your hand sense its innate structural potency any more clearly when you do this? Does it better understand how to stand freely, floatingly?
Not only link a slight movement of your knees to the movements of your hand. Also sense that when your finger starts using a non-aligned, effortful action to move the key, the level of tension rises in your thigh, all along the underside of your leg from your pelvis to your knee, and also very often perceptibly in your calf muscle and foot. Release the tension anywhere in your leg by returning to sense your sitz bones and your pelvis’s capacity to ease gently forward or back or left or right on those two points of stability, and simultaneously sensing how your hand could return to its empowered neutral, the point where it freely stands and has its greatest capacity to move in any direction.
Physical sensations that don’t distract but hone our musical perceptions
Many will dismiss this kind of work as a great example of living in illusion – “Think of MUSIC! LISTEN! All this attention to physical sensation is just a distraction,” they say. I know that I myself felt that way for many years, so I can understand the mindset very well. But if this kind of work helps, I am glad to offer it. Physical sensation is the great teacher for body organization – we are not just losing ourselves in a morass of sensation here, we are attending to specific sensations that educate a certain function, one that will empower our musicianship and ultimately allow us to listen better!
And even those of you who are genuinely interested may find that you simply cannot tune in to the fine kinds of sensations I am talking about. I should remember that I have years of Feldenkrais lessons behind me where I developed a heightened sensitivity to my own kinesthetic self-image, and that people new to the game may well become skeptical just because the sensations I describe are imperceptible to them. You should know that we’re virtually all like that at the beginning, but if you keep trying you will indeed develop this greater and richer capacity to sense.
AFF
Knees and Piano Technique???
September 28th, 2007
And you thought that I couldn’t relate knees to piano technique… o ye of little faith!
That’s right… As you sit and read this, move one knee slightly forward. You may notice that it is impossible to do it without a slight movement of the pelvis as well. Lately as I have returned to some thorny passages that over the years have obstinately refused to become easy to play, I notice that although I have cultivated a non-collapsed hand for years, somehow somewhere in there, there still exists some insidious form of micro-collapse. I also notice that as this collapse is happening, I cannot rock my pelvis. I have fallen into Arnold Schultz’s idea of stabilizing the hip joints to provide a fulcrum to the levers higher up the body.
If I rock my pelvis the movement tends to be too big – it disturbs rather than enlightens. But if I attend to the moveability of my knee, it helps my pelvis stay free and moveable without my overtly moving it. So as your hand comes into the keyboard, let your knee ease forward a tiny amount, literally a millimeter or two… Does your hand sense its innate structural potency any more clearly when you do this? Does it better understand how to stand freely, floatingly?
Not only link a slight movement of your knees to the movements of your hand. Also sense that when your finger starts using a non-aligned, effortful action to move the key, the level of tension rises in your thigh, all along the underside of your leg from your pelvis to your knee, and also very often perceptibly in your calf muscle and foot. Release the tension anywhere in your leg by returning to sense your sitz bones and your pelvis’s capacity to ease gently forward or back or left or right on those two points of stability, and simultaneously sensing how your hand could return to its empowered neutral, the point where it freely stands and has its greatest capacity to move in any direction.
Physical sensations that don’t distract but hone our musical perceptions
Many will dismiss this kind of work as a great example of living in illusion – “Think of MUSIC! LISTEN! All this attention to physical sensation is just a distraction,” they say. I know that I myself felt that way for many years, so I can understand the mindset very well. But if this kind of work helps, I am glad to offer it. Physical sensation is the great teacher for body organization – we are not just losing ourselves in a morass of sensation here, we are attending to specific sensations that educate a certain function, one that will empower our musicianship and ultimately allow us to listen better!
And even those of you who are genuinely interested may find that you simply cannot tune in to the fine kinds of sensations I am talking about. I should remember that I have years of Feldenkrais lessons behind me where I developed a heightened sensitivity to my own kinesthetic self-image, and that people new to the game may well become skeptical just because the sensations I describe are imperceptible to them. You should know that we’re virtually all like that at the beginning, but if you keep trying you will indeed develop this greater and richer capacity to sense.
AFF