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Thanks for the clarification.

I think that one difficulty with playing octaves is that when one stretches the hand to reach the octave, that can introduce a lot of tension in the hand, which, if sufficient, will lock the wrist.

Try it...make a stiff claw of your opened hand, and the wrist is locked.

One way of overcoming that is to do exercises that stretch open the hand, such as Hanon #20, and Pischna # 29 and #30, to name a few.

As the hand becomes more comfortable being wide open, that automatically allows it to be open with less tension, and correspondingly less "locked" wrist.

Octaves, especially for those with smallish hands, do by default require some tension in the hand...the trick is to keep that at a minimum, so the locking of the wrist is minimized, yet maintain enough shape integrity so the hand and fingers do not collapse.

Thus, the is tense for the moment of playing the octave, and less so prior to, and after.

Again, this is hard to describe using the fallabilility of words.

I see your point, but I don't think it should be throught of as aiming for a 'minimum' in the fingers. You must have enough grip to balance on the keys- otherwise the wrist is not going to be able to relax. It will have to be held much more from within the forearm (or the elbow will have to lock). Even if the hand basically keeps its shape, it may not be offerring a stable enough platform for the rest of the mechanism to let go. The forces have to balance and if you take too much away from one, another has to compensate.

From my own experiments, what I discovered recently is that finger grip on an octave and forearm tensions can unfortunately go hand in hand. However, the key is not to relax the finger grip too much. It's to learn how to grip from the hand without also falling into the trap of locking the forearm. The two things do not have to be done together. In fact, when you learn how to get a strong enough grip that sensed in the very tips of the fingers, it actually permits the wrist to free up even more. It's only recently I've discovered how to separate these properly. By activating my fingers more, I've actually found out how to loosen my wrist and forearms more than ever before. It's not easy to learn how to do one without the other, but I think it's essential to attempt to sense the difference. I think you're treating them as if they were inseparable parts of the same thing, but they really don't have to be.

The real key is to learn how to separate the unwanted association that tends to come between gripping in the hand and locking up the forearm. The grip in the hand is not the harmful part. It's simply the holding in the wrist and forearm that needs to be released. If you throw the baby out with the bathwater, it only introduces a whole load of new problems. If you'd told me a few months ago that using my fingers more would improve the speed and comfort of my octaves, I probably wouldn't have believed it. I was thinking that I'd simply reached the limit of what was possible for my body. However, it made an enormous difference (almost instantly) when I learned how to grip more without simulateously resorting to unwanted wrist tensions.

"The wrist: respiration in the voice" - Chopin

Correct. That is why I said "require some tension in the hand...the trick is to keep that at a minimum..."

By "hand" I did not mean minimum in the fingers, or else the whole thing is moot...the hand will collapse when the fingers do not provide support.

you wouldn't classify the grasping act on an octave of squeezing between the thumb and fifth finger as an example of tension within the hand? If you think of keeping it to a minimum, it will almost certainly prevent the hand from standing up properly and result in tensions further back. It's only when you make this grip highly active (provided that you have the understanding of how to do so without clenching elsewhere) that you can free everything else up. I held myself back for years by attempting to reduce such grip, when I actually need to embrace the idea of holding actively. If relaxation becomes too much of a goal in itself, you can cause real problems. It's not about looking for the minimum simply to prevent the hand from collapsing. You need enough to create the stable structure that will enable everything else to be supported. I've actually found it extremely beneficial to work on squeezing a little harder than necessary in my slow practise, rather than to aim for any kind of minimal amount. At the moment, the more I grip (without reaching the point of strain), the more freedom I find myself achieving elsewhere. In the past, I often felt my whole body rocking about slightly while I played octaves. Gripping properly (instead of aiming for a minimum amount) has stabilised my entire body and taken out the effort. I really don't think that the fact that uncontrolled tensions can be harmful should lead anyone to think that you should always be looking to release everything as much as possible.

This is how my Taubman teacher taught me to play octaves without dropping and flopping the wrist:

I cringe every time she does that! We've been here before. Dropping your weight into the keys is fine, you need to relax (even if it's not visible) immediately. The idea of the arm/hand/key bouncing is bizarre, your hand does not 'get' thrown up, you throw it up i.e. pull it up with your forearm flexors. Drop a large thick steak on the keys - I think you can guess what happens (or doesn't). Notice she uses her wrist on the fast octaves.

Yes, also do not agree with what Golandsky says about the octaves. When she plays them fast she is using her wrist, but when she does it slowly, there is no wrist movement. Her "tricks" about the hand getting thrown back up, and the thumb pivoting upward are her ways of releasing the wrist IN BETWEEN PLAYING THE KEYS. I emphasize that last part because relaxation can only happen when one is not pressing a key.

Thanks to all of you for this helpful discussion and the great videos. It was actually my son's teacher who suggested I look around for exercises. I observed his last lesson, and she was demonstrating how he needs to play octaves so that the melody is more musical and flowing. She demonstrated several times and he followed her lead, and he did sound more relaxed. She said maybe there were specific exercises out there--besides just what she had shown us--that he might enjoy trying, and knowing that I'm active on this forum, she said maybe I could look around.

I will check out the Hanon and Pischna exercises, Rocket88. Maybe those will give him something specific to practice, rather than just a lot of dropping. Of course, the dropping will probably do the trick eventually as well.

Again, I appreciate all the ideas. I have a small hand and have this tension as well, so maybe I'll improve as my son does.

Nancy

"We've been here before" have we? So you've already cleared this up, as the technique guru, eh? You know, your knowledge of this is so limited it would be exceedingly comical to see how you regard yourself, if it were not so sad. If you think that the idea of bouncing is unnecessary, perhaps it's time for you to upload a film of yourself playing high speed octaves with your cumbersomely flopping wrist. I think we'll soon see how effective your method really is. If you are really so ignorant as to believe that the return force is not of benefit, would you like to demonstrate that it is possible to play octaves to a high standard without it, instead of spouting empty words? The greatest technicians are not always the finest teacher of technique. But then, there's a certain minimum standard that ought to be reached, before someone seriously proposes to be in a position to dole out advice on octaves. I really don't think you have adequate credentials.

If you understood more about simple physics, you'd realise that a steak falls solely downwards. Whereas a small movement of the arm can help a substantial portion of the momentum to be conserved and redirected at a different angle- as a kind of follow-through. Of course, such movements are impossible if you are so truly stupid as to believe that it would somehow be of benefit to stop and droop from the wrist (instead of lining it up at an optimal angle in the first place)- an action that takes all the energy out of the by channeling the force of gravity through the wrist instead of into the keys where it belongs. Even the average GSCE grade C student would probably know enough about levers to tell you that collapsing the wrist (instead of aligning it) would prevent an efficient transmission of energy (and necessitate greater physical effort).

I think you might want to check your eye sight, because the way she uses her wrist has nothing to do with your approach (and the movement is initiated above, not 'from the wrist'- it comes as the result of momentum elsewhere). THe hand comes up BEFORE the downward strike in faster octaves, as the direction of motion is reversed. That's conservation of momentum, not playing 'from the wrist'. There's no counterproductive collapse to be seen anywhere near the moment of the contact. If you think she's inadvertently doing anything that even faintly resembles the tripe that you're coming out with, you really ought to watch again and pay more attention. It's about as opposed to the bullshit you came out with as anything possibly could be. Who knows, if you drop the idea of dropping your wrist (instead of simply lining it up adequately in the first place) maybe EVEN YOU could learn to play octaves to a competent standard? The only reason to droop the wrist is to release excessive forearm tensions. A rather simpler solution is simply to learn how to release those unwanted tensions in the first place. If you weren't so obsessed with the idea of promoting a slack hand, you might learn how to balance the forces in a manner that would not require a tense forearm at any stage. The exercise you advocate is a preparatory exercise for learning looseness in the wrist. It has absolutely no bearing on the technique for virtuoso octaves.