Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner The Advanced-Intermediate Plateau

Maybe you mean that you didn't fully depress the keys. That could effect the tone but most wouldn't phrase that as raising your finger too quickly.

I think you should try and clarify what's happening with your teacher because even if it helps you it's better to understand what's happening. In your first post you seemed to equate striking the keys too fast with releasing the keys too fast which seems to indicate misconceptions. As far as how quickly you raise your finger goes, if you look inside the piano when you depress a key you can see that the
only thing that releasing the key does is determine when the dampers move.

Hope you don't mind if I jump in. From having worked with Seymour I can imagine what he probably meant.

There are a couple of things that could be involved. The first thing is that you have to realize that you can't analyze things like this too narrowly or literally: you have to consider also what other actions will tend to occur in association with the action in question, things that will almost inevitably be associated. And most likely it's not an either/or about how you release the note as opposed to how you hit it (as was said in an earlier post), it's both.

Here's an analogy that Seymour himself uses: the follow-through in a tennis swing. (Or baseball, or golf.) Any instructor will always emphasize the importance of the follow-through. You might wonder, why does it matter? After all, you have already hit the ball.

This is pretty much the same thing. The reason the follow-through is important is that if you aren't doing it properly, there are other, slightly-prior things that you also aren't doing right -- and the follow-through happens to be an easier and more inclusive thing to focus on and to execute than the prior stuff which is more directly responsible for the outcome. Making sure you do the follow-through properly helps to ensure that you're doing a whole bunch of prior things properly.

Getting back to the actual example: If you lift your finger too fast, you're probably tensing up your hand and arm in a way that will tend to produce a harsh tone -- including already during the moments prior to lifting the finger, which includes when you're approaching the key and hitting it, even if you think you aren't. Focusing on lifting slower after hitting the key is conducive to greater looseness (and richness) during the immediately-prior process of approaching and striking the key -- and the next key. Of course you could try to focus just on not tensing, and indeed that's good too, but it might be easier and more effective to focus on how you lift your finger, or at least to ALSO pay attention to that.

The problem in making this understandable is that sometimes when people say it, they don't make it clear that they don't really mean the direct effect of what they're talking about, but the associated things that occur.

I think there could be an additional thing involved which is indeed a direct result of lifting the finger too fast and could contribute to the harsher tone: the damper comes back down more suddenly. This would be an issue mostly if you're not using the pedal, but maybe somewhat of an issue even if you are.

I hope that's helpful -- or at least comprehensible.

Not much!

That's a huge challenge even for the most advanced pianists. Are you maybe underestimating it? If you can get through it pretty well, as you said, you're darn good.

We also have to consider the how the visual aspect of the performance impacts how we perceive it. Even if someone jerking up and down like a robot manages to produce wonderful tone, we won't perceive it as such. We want to see fluid and graceful movements.

I think you hit the nail on the head Mark. I've been working to eliminate tension which has caused my tone to be harsh at times. Again, I think the cause was the old piano. Thank you for clarifying.

You worked with Seymour Bernstein? Tell us!

Hey Marc C. I have an excellent teacher who has helped me work through "Pictures". I am glad that I took it on, and will enjoy continuing to perfect this for years to come.

More thoughts on the "hitting the plateau". The analogy of biking up the mountain is good, but...I think it is also important to sometimes take a breather and "coast downhill". By that I mean going back to some easier literature, sonatinas, rags, etc. When you find that they come to you more easily, then you know you have made progress.

Finally, on tone. One aspect is relative volumes. One player's range from pp to ff might be 50 to 80 decibels whereas anothers might be from 30 to 60. Playing the same piece on the same instrument they will sound quite different.

Harsh tone is from crashing into the keybed with firm fingers, as opposed to the hand's version of "using a parachute with flexed knees"

I agree with that; however, isn't lifting your fingers relatively quickly an integral part of a staccato touch?

I think he's referring to tensing up before and/or during the downward movement. What is done after the note is finished being played in it's downward movement doesn't affect tone, although it can be related to what is done before the note is released as his tennis analogy points out(I taught tennis for 15 years). It's not the speed of release that's causing the harsh tone.

I studied with Seymour for a long time -- not regularly enough or intensively enough to totally "get it," but he was my teacher for 18 years. His wonderful ways with music and piano are so different from anything that I had known or done before that it was all very hard for me, but at the same time it meant that I could learn a great deal because I was starting sort of from zero.

A remarkable coincidence was that he happened to have been the only student of the pianist who had been more influential upon me than any other: Alexander Brailowsky. I didn't learn this till after my first lesson with Seymour. What was most odd was that after the lesson, thinking about how different and how far my playing was from what Seymour would have me reach for, I was thinking, I'm a follower of the Brailowsky way of playing, I guess he just doesn't appreciate that. And actually Seymour was Brailowsky's one and only student!

Right -- the speed of the release is just be an associated factor, although a very useful one to think in terms of. When it's put just in terms of the speed of release per se, it seems like either some mystery or just an apparent absurdity!

It depends on what kind of staccato you're going for. I was taught to "bounce" for arm and wrist staccato and flick the fingers across the keys for finger staccato. A previous teacher did tell me to think of lifting my fingers more quickly, but my current teacher says that it's not the correct way to think about it. Thinking of staccato in terms of lifting quickly leads to more tension.

I'm highlighting that part of what you said because of how you emphasize the way we "think" of it, rather than just the pure anatomical aspects. Obviously the latter are important too, but much of our success depends on finding conceptualizations -- i.e. ways of thinking of and of approaching something -- that serve as triggers and enablers for a host of good physical things to occur.

That doesn't help us know which is the better way to play staccato (and I'd say that maybe it depends on the particular passage, and on the person) but......the way we "think" of it can cover a lot, and we don't necessarily need to worry if it seems to be in conflict with some physical realities, as was the case for harsh tone and how fast we lift the finger.

I'm bumping this thread because I came across a passage in Gyorgy Sandor's book On Piano Playing that is pertinent to the discussion about harsh tone and fast finger lifting. Here is the passage:

The speed with which the damper falls back on the string to stop its vibrations results from the speed with which the finger abandons the key; that is, if we raise the finger abruptly, the damper drops abruptly and stops the sound instantaneously. By the same token, if we leave the key slowly, the damper halts the string gently and gradually, and the sound seems to fade away. Therefore we have to cultivate a technique of abandoning the key gradually. Since legato playing requires that notes blend into one another, we must rely on the mechanical device that can help to achieve this blending. As you will see, a combination of the damper, the fingers, and the arm is needed to enable us to play a real legato. ...

Our goal is to let the fingers abandon the keys slowly, but this task is a difficult one for the fingers alone; it is hard to raise one finger slowly and lower the next one at normal speed.The solution to this problem is to raise the arm slightly. This arm motion gently lifts the finger that has just played, and the slow abandoning of the key retards the damper, which thereby halts the sound gently. By this gradual fading away of the previous note one creates not an illusionary but a true legato. If the next note enters gently, it will blend easily with the previous note. Therefore do not attempt legato playing with inhibited, repressed finger motions alone or with a motionless and fixed arm and wrist. Avoid large circular "relaxed" motions of the whole arm on each note too; they will have the effect of isolating, not connecting, notes. Instead guide smooth and slight finger motions with a smooth, unifying, and slightly upward motion of the whole arm. Remember, there is only one upward arm motion for the entire group of notes! No pressure is required, and no excessive finger or arm activities are needed, just a slight liftng of the arm toward the end of each group is all that is necessary.

Yes -- in fact, I said that thing about the dampers a few posts ago, but nobody paid attention.

Thanks for the info from Sandor!

Well I just had to make a comment after reading all the encouraging posts. I returned to the piano two 21/2 years ago after 45 years. I was a music major in college, took lessons college level two years. Prior to that took accordion lessons 6 years. While in college, I reached what I would call intermediate/early advanced. Now at age 70, I really appreciate that it takes longer to reach the next plateau. I found a wonderful teacher, who has brought my level back to where I left off some 45 years ago. So now we have stared a Chopin Nocturne, No.32,Op 1. I think this is a big leap, but my teacher pick this one, because she thought I could handle it with lots of paticence and work. Working on small sections at time is the key.
Dot

I live in the Fort Worth Area so howdy neighbor!

I just came back to playing seriously in the last 6 months and am finding that in order to get past my plateau I have had to:

* Practice give or take 3 hours a day.
* Stop trying to learn a piece ASAP, leads to bad habits and mistakes.
* BE PATIENT, LET THE PLAYING FAST COME AT ITS OWN PACE.
* Create the "finished product(musicality etc...)" at a slow tempo before I speed it up.
* Be aware of all the notes I'm playing and how they work with the notes just preceeding and following and within the context of the musical idea being presented.
* I let my teacher pick all my pieces so I dont paint myself into a corner.
* Spend time developing my own little exercizes to gain more control and touch and voicing with certain pieces. For example in Grieg's Notturno, not a hard piece if you dont care how its played, but to play it at the concert level there are soo many nuances and voicings and to get those "pulsating base notes" to be almost whisper soft constantly ... its actually a hard piece (for me, not note-wise, but to get it to concert performance standards); therefore, I have had to develop and pay attention to my technique and how I press the keys and how far to press the keys. etc...
* Even the easiest pieces become difficult when you pay attention to everything going on and convey it correctly.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the Sandor quote as well. He really nails it at the end. It is all about the lifting. This is what my teacher and I work on constantly....when to drop and when to lift. You free up the mechanism and gain control.

Yes, but in truth I find it hard to comprehend exactly -- I mean in terms of really exactly doing what it says. I think we could go a little crazy it we really tried to make sense of all the specifics. But if we forget that and just look at the overall idea of it, I think it's on target.

Well, if anyone is still interested this is how 2010 is starting to shake out:

Papillons
Mozart Sonata in B-flat K333
Beethoven 'Pastoral' sonata
Prokofiev Sonata #3

We are going to work on these one at a time - unlike my usual approach of working on 8 things at once and then dropping them when I'm about 95% done. This time - we will go - 'all the way to the end- all the way to the end - and out the other side' (if anyone knows what that quote is from). He thinks I need to work more on clarity, evenness, and also having a very clear idea of exactly what I want to 'say' and how I want to do it. He thinks we should work on these pieces in a lot more 'depth' than we have been used to doing together.

That looks like a pretty fun list - don't know if I'll get to all of it.

Schubertian,

This does look like a fun list to work on. As an adult musician, like you I always brought things to the 95% level, and now as a music student, I now have to go a lot farther into the other end so to speak. This I can say has cut back quite a bit on what I've been doing lately. Like you instead of having 8 or 9 things as works in progress, I now have only 3 pieces that I can probably handle. This makes for a different learning approach for me, or at least one that I haven't visited in a long time. At first I find I am frustrated by the shear small amount of music, and in particular get bored with the three pieces only at this stage in the game. Inside though I know that the music will get more difficult as I get deeper into it, particularly when I start working on the memorization and the real musical accuracy that never was necessary before.

Your teacher sounds really great. I like the way he has given you goals to work on this year. This makes a big difference in the way you'll study. Instead of just floating along with things that you like to work on, these goals will give you something to work for, and will be a great asset for when you no longer study.

Good luck and remember to have fun along the way.

John