Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Supporting the weight of the arm on the fingers - a video!

Here's what happens when the weight of the arm has to be supported by the fingers - some pretty major tensions in the arm! (look away ladies of a delicate disposition)

Right, which is why one needs to be careful when using arm weight that they do not continue to press or use the weight after the key has been struck initially.

Quite so! Release immédiatement!

????????

That certainly doesn't happen when I rest the weight of my arm on my fingers. The elbow is visibly fixed in position rather than adequately released and so is the wrist. It looks far more like pressing through a hand with an arm that has NOT adequately released its weight in the first place. If that's truly "supporting weight", why are you moving around and seizing up so much? That's supporting heavily sustained muscle pressure, not relaxed weight.

If desired to do, for some perverse reason, I could make a video of myself moving my fingers while making an effort to seize up my wrist in response to every action (a trap that all too many sadly fall into) and say "here's what happens when you try to move the keys with your fingers" However, it certainly wouldn't reveal anything terribly worthwhile.

First you get me banned for two weeks because I dared to find your physics laughable then, as soon as I'm back you want a debate! Sorry mate, you're being ignored - please go back to your own thread.

Posting that video on Youtube under the moniker of 'keyboard class' is pretty irresponsible.

Any chance you'd enlighten me?

But all you're doing is tensing up. I don't understand why you would do that? You're not supporting the weight of the arm on the fingers because the weight is stuck in your forearm and not moving due to you seizing up.

Have you tried it yourself? I mean raising your arm from your finger tips and not taking the weight at the shoulder?

If you can do a press-up, it's hardly that big an ask is it?

Yes? I don't see what that does have to do with anything..

I just find the arm a very heavy thing to lift up onto the fingers - the resultant stress in the muscles just corroborate that.

Why would you? The weight goes into the keys. It doesn't seize up and stay in your arm or fingers. I'm talking about when you actually play, not use a table..

Yes but the fingers still handle as much weight. The only difference is the damaging bump when the key beds.

I don't understand why you would find it so difficult. It's simply the weight of the arm, and most times not even all of it, not ADDED weight from tensing/seizing up. That's how I've played and still play and haven't had any problems..

The less weight from the arm (and it isn't a 'simple' weight it's quite a heavy one) the more weight supported at the shoulder. The video is not about what happens if you only hold up some of the weight.

It's not about what happens when you hold all of the weight on the hand either. It about what happens when you hold most of the weight back stiffly and then press stiffly.

Yeah, when you play a fortissimo in something like Brahms or Rachmaninoff, how would you go in about it? How could you not have supportive fingers? How would you produce the sound at all?

Of course you'd have supportive fingers and as Morodiene says 'do not continue to press or use the weight after the key has been struck initially.'

Basically what you are seeing are the flexors having to pull from their origin (the other side of the elbow (medial epicondyle) - so that stiffens), through the wrist (which has to stiffen other wise it gets pulled up by the flexors) through to each joint of the fingers (which are obviously tense as they support all the weight). Off to bed.