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This was about follow-through in playing, and so about the physical side of playing. I think it confirms the law of physics. "Things that are in motion, continue with that motion. To stop a motion you need the contrary." (my wording - inexact - I'm not a scientist). So if your hand, arm, finger - are descending toward the key, there is motion. If you suddenly stop that motion the minute you reach the right spot on the key, you need to use counterforce, and that creates tension. Otoh if your hand is falling more loosely and then follows through in some direction, the motion is simply redirected, and it can relax.

You're fine.

I don't know about follow through on piano, but I may be able to shed some light on follow through in sports such as baseball, tennis, or golf, where the follow through is easily observed visually.

Follow through is widely misunderstood, and the attempt to follow through deliberately is usually counterproductive.

Follow through is the RESULT of a biomechanically correct action. If you transfer weight properly, if your kinetic chain functions with correct timing from proximal to distal segments, follow through is inevitable.

Follow through then is a method of verifying that the action is correct.

And of course, for some the mental image of following through helps coordinate a complicated motion, and for others it hinders.

I agree, because you may be making something happen that doesn't need to happen. An artificial follow-through can mean using additional, unnecessary muscles, thus tension.

I really like this:

I never thought to put in those words. There is a kind of looseness that tells us that what we are watching is efficient. There is unnecessary tension, and you can see that even when you can't fine the words to describe it. At the other end you have something that looks extremely loos, but it is sloppy and it is not in control. It doesn't work.

What we are looking for is somewhere in the middle. For athletes this means easy power AND control. It's rather easy to see the result because the ones that have this win, and they win a lot, and they win for a longer period of time than other athletes.

I would say that piano is the same (the hands), but what we use to measure success is a good bit harder to pin down.

Well,

With young students I insist on the right hand posture. It makes sense, especially with children with small hands. The more they grow and the minute I introduce the "black keys" (which may well be in the actual third lesson!) I tell them that they will need to move their hand up and down on the keys in order to make it and not destroy their hands completely. After all with small hands, you can't be playing the middle C on the edge of the key and also want to play Eb and F# at the same time!

If the fundamentals are placed correctly, they are free to alter the hand position. Many times I have to correct them, because obviously what they're trying to do won't work, but other than that it's ok by me!

Parents never interfere with my lessons! I'm blessed at that!

But what is "the right position"?

Three definitions:

1) The right hand position allows for the most efficient transfer of (arm, hand, and/or finger) weight into the keys.

2) The right hand position produces the best possible tone and sound quality.

3) The right hand position prevents unnecessary movement and excessive tension.

There will be variations among students. What feels natural to one student will be unnatural to another.

I have a few students who are so severely double-jointed, their hands are incapable of forming a round posture when playing piano! It is natural for their knuckles to buckle inwardly with even the slightest of pressure. Forcing them to develop a round hand shape is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Planted as possible food for thought / expansion: Is there a problem in the word "position" or "shape" itself, given that playing involves constant movement? I'm thinking that the hand is constantly changing its shape, and concentrating on a shape might hamper some of that freedom.

That suggests one of my theories is wrong.

To be sure I understand, by double jointed you mean that a joint can bend farther than straight? It can flex to a curled position, or it can extend to a straight line, or it can even go a bit farther?

I would have guessed that a little arch in the finger would be one way to prevent that. Apparently not.

Your description is correct.

You have to remember that these are young children, so their hands are still wiggly and not firm. I would hope that they will grow out of their flabby hands one day. But I'm not going to worry about their weak knuckles. I pick my battles.

Gary, I was sitting at the grand moments ago, when it occurred to me to look at the hammers and see how much control the key actually has over the hammer. It looks like there's roughly 2 to 2 1/2 inches of total hammer travel, and the key is controlling all but the last 1/4 inch of that travel. It would be like bowling where the bowler runs down the alley except for the final foot, where the ball is released. In other words, it would appear that there is tremendous control over the hammer by the direct motion of the key.

Thoughts?

When the hammer shank leaves the jack knuckly it is a projectile.

Whatever velocity it has at that point is what determines how hard it hits the string.

I guess you're suggesting that there might be a difference in how you transmitted force in the half inch or so your finger pressed the key down. Maybe you used a steady pressure to get to the letoff point, or maybe you pressed very lightly and slowly until near the end then put a sudden force on it, or maybe you pressed hard at first and then coasted?

Trouble is there are quite a few studies that say if you're only playing one note, loudness is tone, and velocity is velocity. And when you're playing more than one note, there are all the other factors of overlap, articulation, voicing, damping, etc.

How were those studies conducted? With a steady-state mechanical device which varied velocity only? Or did they vary key depression depth as well as velocity? Did it vary where in the key stroke acceleration occurred? Was the velocity achieved smoothly over the full key stroke? Or suddenly just near the beginning or end of the key stroke? Does the whiplash of the hammer, when too rapid acceleration occurs, affect the sound? Are there other components to the total sound, such as the key hitting the keybed(not a silent process as I suspect many here might suppose - try it on an unstrung piano)? I raise these questions because I've never seen them discussed in piano journals and am not personally familiar with them. And it's quite obvious that some people are able to get a more pleasing tone, even with one note, out of an instrument, than others are. Gary mentioned the old piano rolls. I've only heard a few of those, and they were hardly satisfactory. I've heard the modern Yamaha mechanism, and the sound it produces gets tiring all too soon.

That's exactly what I mean.

John, my immediate thought would be that the moment the bowling ball is released could impart all sorts of spin on the ball, so it could be spinning backwards or sideways - a lot like a pool ball. If you stroke a cue ball slowly at one end of the table, by the time it hits a ball at the other end it really doesn't matter how you hit it (other than knocking it off course with spin), because by the other end of the table it will be rolling slowly.

But if you hit that same cue ball with HARD, with draw (backspin), it makes a huge difference, as anyone who plays pool knows.

But with a hammer the hammer is held in line. The moment it is no longer pushed the only thing left is the velocity of the hammer. It's going to hit the same strings in the same place in the same way.

Now, you can argue that there are other factors, but I believe they are extremely minor.

There are a lot of things that are part of the sound we hear, but can we distinguish them?

With the lid up on a grand I can clearly hear the difference when holding down a chord with my fingers of whether or not the damper pedal is down. I can hear the sound open up as I depress the pedal, the opposite when I lift it. Obviously other strings are free to vibrate sympathetically, and then they are not.

But can I hear the difference between those two sounds if the pedal is not changed? I'm not sure. I do know that I can't hear the difference if someone does it, on stage, while I am sitting several rows back where the audience would be.

But for me the main point is this:

If 10 different people play one note on my piano at about the same dynamic level, just pressing the key and then holding it for a few seconds, will I hear a difference?

I won't. If you can, you are hearing things I can't hear.

John, here are two recordings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt_gcYP6QEk

Supposedly this is Rachmaninov, but on a piano roll. I have no idea how this was done, so pardon my ignorance.

Start at 4:00, Lilacs. I may show myself to be a fool, but I have listened back and forth between this and the real deal, and old recording:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72xh91KTOOA

I don't know this piece, so I am only going on what I am listening to. But it sounds like the same person, the same phrasing, the same touch. The same magic. If this is someone from today, pretending to be Rachmaninov, mimicking his style, sound, phrasing, then he fools me.

If I am right about this really is Rach himself, but on a mechanical device, I fully admit it raises way many questions than it answers.

Why are most of the piano roll recordings so fake and so obviously inferior sounding? Why does this recording sound so good? Who did this? How?

My answers are not answers, but questions: apparently SOME how the genius of Rachmaninov is coming through in both recordings. The roll recording is slightly higher in pitch. Other than that I prefer it, because of the sound, for the same reason that I prefer recordings made recently to those made early in the 20th century, but otherwise I would give both recordings a tie. It seems like there is more subtlety in the roll recording. How could that be? I do know from talking to older pianists (long ago) that they had to make compromises because of the equipment and other factors. Today's pianists don't have to do that.

So the roll recording sounds, to me, more like modern day recordings. Other than that, it just sounds very good, and 100% like Rachmaninov.

I wish I had another example, something that is more famous and perhaps that we might both like better, but however the "roll" recording was made, I think it makes it obvious that we have way more questions to answer about how we hear than we have solid answers.

To expand on the idea - in the old days the only recorded model that we had were illustrations and photographs in books. Unfortunately that is still what is often used today. So a student in the past tried to make his hand a ball-holding shape - later the debate was whether it should be a flatter shape - or maybe it should "be" the shape that happens when you hang your hand straight down. The question was always which pictured shape is it?

But the hand of the person playing is in motion. Playing is motion. Which position or shape has to be the wrong question, and the wrong goal. Trying to "have" the right shape implies a static shape to the hand.

In fact, isn't it the same for posture as shown in the books? Yes, you have a given distance from the keys, height of the bench, you don't slump over. But in playing you go forward into the black keys, sideways to the distant keys - even Rubinstein demonstrate a gentle swaying governed by where along the keyboard he is going.

So if a student tries to adhere to a shape or position as in a picture, he may be limiting the looseness of motion he needs to have, because live players are not photographs. Could this thinking actually be causing problems?

I also listened back and forth. It would be very interesting to learn what was done. The blurb under the playing says

I'd like to find out more about what they did.

Regardless, it gives us wonderful insights into Rachmaninoff's vision of his own music, and his playing.

I am curious about something in the first recording, Prelude in C# minor - what is happening from 0:13 to 0:14. The chord suddenly becomes quieter. What did he do to produce that? Would a soft pedal on a grand have an effect by suddenly shifting the mechanism over, even if the strings are already vibrating? Or release of the damper, suddenly cutting out sympathetic vibration of other strings, while holding down only the played notes?

Even releasing the damper pedal then quickly pressing it again produces a drop in volume. Doing this a few times in a row creates an artificially fast decay, although of course its effect is limited to the resonating strings not the ones held with the fingers.

The soft pedal can't do anything to affect notes that have already been struck.

I here it done only once, and it is exactly as you say. You sort of "bounce" the sustain. The dampers come down just long enough to brush the strings, and that partially stops them, but an immediately re-depression then lifts them back up. So you get an instance, noticeable cut in volume and resonance.

This also clears up another matter. Both hands then have to play the moving chord, while the bass notes resonate. Some people recommend using the sostenuto pedal, which I don't like at all. It takes away the una corda, and we don't have three feet. For sure Rachmaninov elected to used the sustain and the una corda.

I did not mention this recording because it is a recording of a cliche, and I don't think Rachmaninov played this too often except under pressure because he got sick of "being asked to play 'my prelude'".

I was hoping a few people would listen to the two recordings of Lilacs and compare them. So far no takers...

The soft pedal can't do anything to affect notes that have already been struck. [/quote]