Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Tense hands in beginners. What's the trick?

Don't expect tiny fingers to play on anything other than a light keyboard. Teach 'drop and flop' (down) and flick (up) instead. You'll find them here: www.youtube.com/isstip

Thanks a tonne KK :*)

I recently had a little girl who had pain in her pinky on two chords that she played with no problem at home, on her unweighted tiny keyboard.

Her mother wanted her to "be brave and play through the pain in lessons".

It took me three weeks to fix that!!!

Evidence: I learned with the coin on the hand thing and now, decades later, the tension has indeed limited my technique sacrificing speed, articulation and tone. I am now struggling to learn how to relax all that tension.

(BTW my teacher has me doing the ropey arms thing, slow scales while concentrating on releasing tension, heavy arms, exaggerating movement in my wrists, etc. The key seems to be in my shoulders. If I concentrate on relaxing them, it helps all the way to my fingerips.)

I have been telling people for YEARS that the muscles in the shoulder/neck area are trigger points. The moment you get students to release unnecessary tension there, you will see the upper arms, elbows and forearms release tension, and it goes right down into the fingers.

Usually children only hold tension there when they are badly instructed, but adults will hold those muscles so tight, they will actually spasm.

My dad always told me "it's better to work smart than work hard." Why torture yourself and suffer if the same results can be achieved with less work?

I always remember meeting a student of Matthay at a conference. The fluidity of the playing was overwhelming. She said afterwards it's in the shoulders where the last bit of tension is found and released, then all the fireworks start.

Gary, HOW do you get this to happen? What do you say/do to get that tension to go away?
I have a young lady that plays like this and all of my attempts to get her to relax have been temporary fixes. Her mom says she doesn't play that way at home (not sure though). When she comes to lessons she is strung tight!

This will sound extreme.

Make relaxation more important than correct notes.

Make relaxation more important than correct fingering.

Make relaxation more important than correct or even rhythm.

Make relaxation more important than anything else.

This will be TEMPORARY. But you have to get a tense student to believe that being relaxed is more important than playing well. The reason is that you can NOT play well with unnecessary tension. Sooner or later tension will kill everything AND cause serious health problems.

I never listen to parents or students about what is happening at home. According to them, the play correct rhythms, correct notes, relaxed, and everything that goes wrong in lessons ONLY happens HERE.

If you honestly think that placing a coin on sombody's hand would provide an antidote to an excessively tense manner of playing, I seriously hope you're not a professional teacher.

The best thing I've found is the advice of Alan Fraser about activating proper grip in the hand. Unless the hand can support, relaxation in the shoulders is futile. If you don't achieve balance, the tension will have to occur somewhere, no matter how hard you try to relax. I was badly affected by the ludicrous idea of a slack hand. It held me back for years. Once I finally got my fingers to support, it became possible to relax. Free shoulders are important, but concentrating on the shoulder itself is futile unless you can find balance at the key. I find the most important thing is to get the kid to learn to rest on the fingers in between the notes. Once they get used to a solid platform to balance on (without need for much effort), things can start to ease up. I'm convinced that tensions in the shoulder usually come out of necessity when then the hand is not supportive enough.

Concentrating on tension in the arms and shoulders etc. before using the hand properly is like trying to fix a leaking bucket by adding more water. First you have to plug the hole, before you worry about adding more water. I think this is a rather uncoventional appraoch, but it certainly worked for me. Relaxing in the wrong places was the underlying cause of the most destructive tensions.

Andrew

Ludicrous!? If anything's ludicrous it's resting 'on the fingers'. Why not just rest on the keys, they don't seem to mind the tension.

Welcome to PW, I do hope you've done more than just watch a DVD though.

[quote/]Ludicrous!? If anything's ludicrous it's resting 'on the fingers'. Why not just rest on the keys, they don't seem to mind the tension.
[/quote]


What else did you think I was suggesting the fingers ought to be rested upon, if not the keys? This is usually the problem when kids suffer negative tensions. If they don't support by resting on the finger, they find it hard to play the following note. Playing the next note is like trying to start a sprint while standing on one leg. Once you get them to find a comfortable neutral position in between the striking of keys, the benefit quickly carry across into the following fingers.

Also, if a slack hand were not a ludicrous idea, presumably it would not be ludicrous to put a layer of foam over the keys? If there is a lot slack at that end, energy is wasted and a larger workload is hence placed on the shoulders. It's simple physics. It was the idea of keeping the hands as 'loose' as possible that screwed up my playing for years. A hand that has a lot of give in it is the eqivalent to trying to play through a foam pad.

You rest nothing on the fingers till the moment of key depression. Even then, that's just for one particular articulation

You misunderstand my point. Whichever finger is depressed needs to support the gravity, not fingers that are not in use. I used to think in terms of tension and release but that led to a slack, useless hand after the strike and a workload on the shoulders, rather than a balanced support at the point of contact. I actually got very tired from playing technically straightforward pieces, because I was 'holding' my arms, rather than supporting on the keys. Tensions would arise all over the place, regardless of how much I tried to relax. It wasn't that I didn't know how to feel the weight of my arm, but that fingers were not up to supporting it. The laws of moments have to add up somewhere, regardless of how much you might intend to relax.

The way I'm finding at the moment involves a very small but consistent level of tension to grip at the keys themself- rather than a sense of full release. If you line the fingers up just right, the sense of effort is so miniscule that there's not any need to 'relax' from it.

I'd strongly recommend Alan Fraser's work to anyone, although personally I see it as the missing link for arm-weight ideas, rather than as an alternative.

Fingers have no role in supporting the arm other than during key depression. You have shoulders to do that.

Sorry, but that goes against all rational sense. The shoulders aren't going to stop your hand from going limp. That only occurs within the hand. When you use gravity in the most productive way, it helps to solidify the hand in a manner that reduces the need for muscular effort. Regardless of how you approach it, a hand with zero grip has no fuction whatsoever. Even if you choose not to exploit the return force that the keys exert against gravity, you are gripping with your hand to some extent. Otherwise you would waste most of the effort through slack fingers. You could not play a note. I think the problem is often that those who get it right feel a release but still use sufficient grip while doing so. However, for a lot of people, they end up relaxing into a point of no grip. For such people, it doesn't matter how much you try to relax- the forces cannot balance until the hand finds more stability at the key. This was certainly my problem. In your case, you may not be aware of how you continue to grip slightly with your finger, but if you did not do so, they would collapse after the strike. Regardless of which end you approach it from, stable fingers seem to be the common link in any efficient technique I've seen. How many famous pianists have fingers that notceably give way when they strike a chord?

Why would you want to physically hold your arms in the air at all times, when you can rest upon your fingers? Obviously there are times when you have to hold from the shoulder (such as in rapid staccato- but isn't there a good reason why rapid staccato is so tiring? Because the hands are never a rest surely?)? For what purpose? Why be thinking in terms of realeasing effort at the fingers, yet constantly be having to hold your arms in the air, without biving yourself a platform to balance on?

Before key depression there is no function for the hand. Function comes through use.

You are contradicting yourself. You said that the effort stops after the strike. By that logic, the function that comes through use should stop, when the strike is finished. If the shape of the fingers remains the same, there still needs to be activity. By your logic the function would be lost, if there were a full release of the effort.

This demonstrates one of two possibilities to be occuring. Either the armweight must be resting, for the keys to maintain the balance of the structure. Alternatively the hand may be gripping. Personally, I believe both are required, to find the balance.

Also, if function came solely through use, every finger would lie slack until it played the note. That simply is not true. If you look at any good pianists hand, you can see preparation in the fingers. This can only come through muscular activity.

Don't get your problem - you 'strike' (hate that word), and the hand goes back to its natural shape.

Would you care to name any great pianists who play every note in a movement that is instantly followed by a notable slackening of the hand?