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It's all good Ando

I wish I had that teachers info so I could have her demonstrate

but I will keep working on it.

and like others said I will continue to observe and evaluate my results.

Ando, I'll address you as a teacher. I'm in a bit of an awkward position since I am at the same time a student getting basic technique - remediation, but I am also getting piano pedagogy along with my training. Since in my other work as a professional teacher (non-music) I've done remediation, worked outside the box, this all flows together, so pls bear with me.

Maduro is a student. His former teacher is the person who gave the instructions, and only she can know what the purpose was. The student might have been given a partial explanation about the purpose, which he may or may not have understood. There may be another purpose, and it could be part of a larger plan - we can't know that. So we should discount the purpose he describes. You should not make him accountable for proving a purpose which he probably doesn't understand. If you were to discuss purpose and method, you would have to discuss it with this teacher - whom we have no access to.

So the only thing we can really do is observe what is happening and what the student says he is experiencing. In the long run he should be working with a teacher in order to further direct this. Right now something cool has happened - he is using more than just his fingers. But how will it develop if left unguided?

I ran into "counterintuitive" and "indirect" some years ago as a student. Some things are not as they seem, or for what they seem to be for. (And some things that seem that way are in fact whacky and dumb.) When you have that, it's between the guiding teacher and the student, and you can just hope that it's going in the right direction. (That it's not the whacky and dumb variety).

There is a huge discrepancy between both the stated aims and the position of his hands in the demonstration video when he stops to show his hand and finger position compared to how he actually plays the scales in all the videos.

When he plays scales his fingers are nowhere near straight, in fact they are curved and only his finger tip is straight. Nor are the fingers anywhere near vertical, they are curved. It's impossible to play scales with the fingers completely straight and vertical as he endlessly insists.

If you read any of my other posts, you will see that I said exactly the same thing!

hands separately
my fingers are pretty straight here
next video in 7 days

hands separately

I think you are missing my point, Keystring.

For the purposes of argument, I'm indifferent to whether Maduro has understood what the teacher wanted or not.

What it comes down to is this: a poster comes onto PW with a theory about an unorthodox technique, then proceeds to demonstrate it at slow speed with fairly straight and vertically oriented fingers, then outlines a plan to instil this into his technique with the aim of developing faster, more precise scale work.

Then, a second video appears playing scales at a much faster speed, but the straight/vertical fingered technique is no longer in evidence. It simply doesn't prove the point of the whole exercise.

I think we are talking past one another to a degree here. You are striving to find an explanation for the whole approach - and you may well be correct about its long-term plan and remedial capabilities. I'm not speculating as to what gave rise to this type of technique or whether it's remedial or not. I'm more interested in the discrepancy between the aims described and what I'm seeing in the videos. I feel some attempt should be made to unify this thing. Either by acknowledging that this technique is having some remedial value, or that Maduro is having trouble executing these scales with the level of straightness/verticalness that was aimed for. What doesn't wash with me is if he says, "here's a video of me playing fast scales with straight/vertical fingers", but then the video shows clearly curved fingers. That is a schism that can't be rationally accepted. Some sort of acknowledgement must be made about this discrepancy.

As a teacher, I'm well aware of the ideas in pedagogy concerning short, medium and long-term technique development and the value of not complicating things any more than necessary, whilst still ensuring that the necessary changes are made. I don't believe we are dealing with such a case for the simple reason that Maduro actually observed his past teacher using this unusual technique. He observed her doing it very well, and he heard her saying this is how he should try to do it. I'm choosing to give Maduro the credit of knowing what he saw and heard because if I don't do that, I would be speculating far too much. Generally adult students don't respond well to the concealment of purpose in exercises. They need to know the whole story before they'll buy into it. I believe Maduro has understood what was being presented to him, but is simply struggling to make it work in the way he saw it and how it was described to him.

Ah, we have some progress now! I don't think it's working, mind you, but at least now we are seeing some visual evidence of the approach you are working on. This is exactly what I was hoping you would do - so thank-you.

I still don't think it's going to work - but at least you are testing the actual theory as described. The main issue seems to be that the thumb and 5th finger are so much shorter than the 2,3,4 fingers, so there is an awkward (mostly wrist) movement to compensate between the different lengths of certain fingers. I'll be interested to see if you can make progress with this.

I'm thinking mostly as a teacher here, even if I am not yet qualified to give piano playing advice. Even if I were, I would never do it on this medium in a public forum. But as a teacher I am more concerned about a student being guided, than correcting him on terminology and concepts which he cannot be expected to know. The most pressing thing on my mind is that this gentleman find and work with a good teacher, and that he will properly guided rather than misguided. I am relieved to see apparent improvement as far as I can tell, and that he hasn't injured himself. The rest of it doesn't seem important.

Meanwhile if you are the earlier ends of learning, you will often think you are doing one thing while you are doing another. As long as the student ends up in the right direction, it's all par for the course. I mean, you follow instructions that you understand well enough, your teacher is observing you and checking that it's going in the right direction. How you understand it intellectually matters less than that you are doing the right thing. Eventually, maybe years later, you may get, "Ah, so THAT's what my teacher was really doing with me back then!"


Here's what makes sense to me. He had very curved fingers. When he tries to make them straight, he ends up having the right kind of curvature and relaxation, and motion in the rest of the arm. I happen to be following something similar .... NOT these instructions, you must understand .... and it is with understanding. When I "try" to keep my fingers straight, I am finally getting movement and ease in them. I know that the result will be curvature of a good kind, which comes about from my trying to make them straight. So reading a student explain these things and give these demonstrations make sense to me. If this is going where I think it might be going, then I'd think his teacher would say "Good, you've stopped the excessive curvature. Now here is what is really happening from what I told you to do."

I get what you are saying Keystring, and I don't necessarily disagree with it either. I think we just have a different approach to the thread itself!

Just what I was going to say.

I agree, and because of this extraneous movement, the scales are very uneven. I can wait another 7 days, but the jury is still out on this "technique".

Absolutely disastrous scale playing. Uneven rhythmically and tonally and an obviously incredible amount of awkward movement every time he passes the thumb.

But besides all that he is not coming close to playing with straight fingers held vertically as he has been advocating since the beginning of the thread.

I wouldn't spend even a second more on this silliness.

LOL

you guys are that daft

uneven scale playing?

those are swung 8th notes
lol

Even swung they are incredibly uneven. As in, a few notes are incredibly loud whilst others you can't listen to them.

see side view video link at the bottom of this post

I feel somewhat pressured to prove a system that I know is valid because I saw it executed when I was a student at a top conservatory with a graduate student of that top conservatory (Aaron Copland)
to people who are so much on a higher level than I am
I am an intermediate player at best. you are criticizing things that are normal when adopting a new technique

so you have to look at a few things
first my scales were garbage before I started see original video

second it is a very unfamiliar method that I am trying to retrain my fingers and hand too I havent done this since 2008

third
if I make mistakes a large part should be attributed to the performer (me) lets not blame the method technique hand shape whatever

that being said
here is another video from a different angle

Bear in mind my fingers are not as straight as I want them to be
the faster I play the sloppier the technique gets

this video is taken from the side at three speeds
the metronome is at 120bpm

there are some fudged notes at slow speed primarily the thumb because I just remembered today that she had me do this very exxagerated twist of the hand so the thumb would stand out almost like you were shaking someones hand upside down so some of the thumb mistakes is because of the over exxageration
i need a little more time with the technique
but those more objective viewers will have to acknowledge some improvement
over the very first video
where i compare my two methods
my scales have improved a lot over the past few days
some of you say it just my opinion

sideview

"Swung eighths" or not the technique is clearly wrong and incorrectly described verbally in the extreme. It's not working at all and looks awkward and silly. None of the OP's descriptions of what he thinks he should be doing match what he actually is doing(which looks very bad also). Even what he is actually doing incredibly awkward, and completely unsuccessful.

But I'm sure he will continue to waste his time.

exploration is never wasted especially if it is done with good methodical observation.

I play in church every sunday and can instantly see what is going on with my technique
because I often have to improvise and create spontaneous embellishments

so trust me if what I am doing is not yielding results on sunday I will know it and make adjustments.

time will tell all

I am not claiming anything but just saying give me a chance to learn and develop it.

all you have said pianoloverus is how wrong
first you said it was impossible to play like that
now you say it looks silly and awkward
well no duh i am just learning to do it
but at least I have shown you it can be done and at a decent tempo
and you say i am not doing what I described
I am doing exactly what I said my fingers are straight like posts standing on the keys

(did you think i meant I keep them straight?)
I mean they are straight when they depress the keys


but to be honest it doesent feel all that awkward

Here's the question in my mind - what is the purpose of the extremely high wrist and vertical hand?

Obviously, it's impractical to actually perform with that kind of hand position - it would make simple chords, octaves, and extensions impossible in context. So...what do you take away from practicing in that manner that you can use in performance?

as far as I can tell from practicing and remembering that my teachers main thing once I had it fairly correct slowly was to have me play as rapidly as possible

in retrospect and after reading keystrings post and a couple of others

it seems that the hand has no choice but to relax back to a normal position
although still somewhat high no where near as high as what you see me doing.

I think that there are muscles that are being trained
and after remembering the upside down hand shake thing

I can see a lot of rolling going. on

so to sum it up

it is preparing the hand and wrist to move and be flexible
as well as the shoulder and forearm

but this is coming from the student and my own observations
of the practice.

sideview

I am watching my hand now and there is a lot of movement from above my wrist is rolling around now

I am not sure that my hand is supposed to be vertical but I am sure my fingers are supposed to be straight by the time the key gets to the bottom of the keybed

I think we just have to see what things happen to my technique as I continue to play with this thing

side view with lots of mistakes