December 19th, 2007
Linking the intellect to the physical for a cohesive piano technique
Last night I worked with Miroslav, a fourth year student of mine now preparing several competition programs. Miroslav’s fingers go like the wind, and he has a great capacity to follow many different voices at once with his mind, bringing to life the rich polyphonic textures of such compositions as Rachmaninoff’s 3rd concerto or his Polka in a wonderful way. But his mind is so sharp that he tends to over-rely on it. The connection tends to be direct from brain to fingertip, bypassing the body in between. I worked in two ways on this.
Straightening the back stiffly then slouching to ‘repair the damage’ is no solution
First, I got him to sit straighter. But not to strain himself into an upright position. The effort to sit up straight that locks you into that position is counterproductive, usually resulting in a hyper-extended spine that prevents free movement. Many pianists consciously avoid this by rounding the back, letting their pelvis roll backwards off the sitz bones onto the sacrum. But this creates a different problem – they now have no access to the inherent structuro-functional power of their spine. Both these solutions prevent the power of the body transmitting through the fingertip to the key.
A hanging spine – the pianistic vine of life
I suggested that he imagine his body like a pencil balanced vertically. It seems to be ‘hanging by a thread,’ in a state of unstable equilibrium. I brought him to this position in an easy, fluid way, touching his back and gently nudging him forward so he found himself rocking forward without the usual strain toward verticality. Instead, there was an inner coordination upward along his spine that had him straighten without trying to. When Miroslav cultivated this, it was interesting to see how his body began to move much more easily with the phrase shape. He wasn’t over-moving, but there was a resonance, a synchronous relationship between his torso and the line of the phrase.
Second, I noticed that his jaw was quite tense. It turns out that when he feels he doesn’t have the ‘phrase contact’ he wants, the first thing he does is tense his jaw up. Of course, this is the worst thing that could happen, because he is now effectively prevented from resolving his problem and committed to perpetuating it. The amazing thing was how much his sound changed when he consciously let his jaw stay loose. The piano started to speak. His sound began to have colour instead of being black and white. His phrases became sinuous and expressive. His fingers became limpid and were now able to caress the keys with utter sensitivity, creating a delicacy of touch and variety of dynamic that let all the musical content truly live in sound.
Resolving the inadvertent physical sabotage transformed his piano sound & expression
He was now able to do as he wanted. It turns out that he had already been aiming for that kind of expression, sound and colour – he just hadn’t been aware of how he was inadvertently sabotaging the process. When the missing piece of the puzzle, the body, was brought in to the equation of mind-finger-music, a third quality appeared wonderfully, as if unbidden: heart, expression, tonal and emotional colour.
AFF
Using a whole body piano technique to enrich musical expression
December 19th, 2007
Linking the intellect to the physical for a cohesive piano technique
Last night I worked with Miroslav, a fourth year student of mine now preparing several competition programs. Miroslav’s fingers go like the wind, and he has a great capacity to follow many different voices at once with his mind, bringing to life the rich polyphonic textures of such compositions as Rachmaninoff’s 3rd concerto or his Polka in a wonderful way. But his mind is so sharp that he tends to over-rely on it. The connection tends to be direct from brain to fingertip, bypassing the body in between. I worked in two ways on this.
Straightening the back stiffly then slouching to ‘repair the damage’ is no solution
First, I got him to sit straighter. But not to strain himself into an upright position. The effort to sit up straight that locks you into that position is counterproductive, usually resulting in a hyper-extended spine that prevents free movement. Many pianists consciously avoid this by rounding the back, letting their pelvis roll backwards off the sitz bones onto the sacrum. But this creates a different problem – they now have no access to the inherent structuro-functional power of their spine. Both these solutions prevent the power of the body transmitting through the fingertip to the key.
A hanging spine – the pianistic vine of life
I suggested that he imagine his body like a pencil balanced vertically. It seems to be ‘hanging by a thread,’ in a state of unstable equilibrium. I brought him to this position in an easy, fluid way, touching his back and gently nudging him forward so he found himself rocking forward without the usual strain toward verticality. Instead, there was an inner coordination upward along his spine that had him straighten without trying to. When Miroslav cultivated this, it was interesting to see how his body began to move much more easily with the phrase shape. He wasn’t over-moving, but there was a resonance, a synchronous relationship between his torso and the line of the phrase.
Second, I noticed that his jaw was quite tense. It turns out that when he feels he doesn’t have the ‘phrase contact’ he wants, the first thing he does is tense his jaw up. Of course, this is the worst thing that could happen, because he is now effectively prevented from resolving his problem and committed to perpetuating it. The amazing thing was how much his sound changed when he consciously let his jaw stay loose. The piano started to speak. His sound began to have colour instead of being black and white. His phrases became sinuous and expressive. His fingers became limpid and were now able to caress the keys with utter sensitivity, creating a delicacy of touch and variety of dynamic that let all the musical content truly live in sound.
Resolving the inadvertent physical sabotage transformed his piano sound & expression
He was now able to do as he wanted. It turns out that he had already been aiming for that kind of expression, sound and colour – he just hadn’t been aware of how he was inadvertently sabotaging the process. When the missing piece of the puzzle, the body, was brought in to the equation of mind-finger-music, a third quality appeared wonderfully, as if unbidden: heart, expression, tonal and emotional colour.
AFF