Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner RE: Ten things I wish I could have understood about Taubman

I had my first exposure to Taubman technique as a graduate student in the eighties, and that exposure helped me to say the least. More recently, I redoubled my efforts to really understand Taubman—not only for the sake of my own playing, but so that I could explain it in intuitively obvious ways to students. Part of my teaching website, www.PointofSound.com, is devoted to demystifying this great technique.

My latest entry on the site is "Ten Things I Wish I Could Have Understood about the Taubman Technique from the Very Beginning." I hope people will find it useful and will be so interested in any feedback you might have. Thanks!

How does Taubman square with Matthay's "arm vibration" touch? Matthay seems to rely more on motions pulling the hand down into finger movements than Taubman seems to advocate.

(I'm a big Matthay-ite somewhat flummoxed by the Taubman world. 😀)

Good question! I know that Dorothy Taubman read Matthay's work and considered it an important influence. I don't know exactly what Matthay meant by the "arm vibration" touch, but, given what I know about Matthay and Taubman, it seems to me that their priorities and concerns are fairly consistent. For one he, like Taubman, talks about rotational movement that is invisible (fluttering?).

What is most important, in my own view, is that a technical concept be expressed so that a particular person is able to grasp it in reasonably short order. In this respect (and I guess in a few others), I can see why people might be flummoxed by what you call the "Taubman world." However I myself may feel that this technical approach is brilliant, I also feel that it would be great to find better ways of expressing its precepts, so that it makes more immediate sense to a broader range of pianists.

One of Dorothy's contributions was to give insight into when the forearm pronates and when it supinates, given that you can't very well continuously alternate between the two (as in Alberti bass) in most passages. As far as I know, this was one of her unique contributions. I also think that some pianists are able to grasp this intuitively.

Others call Matthay's arm vibration "hover" or "helicopter" technique (forearm supported with rotatinal freedom, finger movements cause bounce of forearm, which might be slight).

I think Taubman's rotation has confused some regulars on this board (as presented by her followers). It is interesting that Taubman, herself, presents that it is not continuosly applied, if I'm understanding you. 😀

I like the idea that you present on your web site that better understanding of technique will help students feel that playing well is not so insurmountable in a culture bend on dividing their attention.

Thank you, Howard! I think it's important to work with what Taubman came up with until the explanations of it are more easily assimilated, even by kids. It is truly a brilliant way of playing and I think it has the potential to be incredibly helpful to a broader audience.

I don't think Taubman presented that rotation is not continuously applied. I think what happens is that when you've attended to all its various facets (including structural issues, using gravity, and not leaving any body part unnecessarily contracted) all the various elements potentiate each other (to use biomechanical lingo), making the needed quantity of each so small as to be imperceptible to an observer.

I agree, many of the differences primarily lie simply in how things are taught as well as terminology rather than any real underlying differences.

I think the primary difficulty with accepting continuous rotation is simply that people only view it as a binary thing (on or off) rather than the continuity and sensation of the entire motion.

The mere fact that the upper extremity is ultimately connected to a ball-and-socket joint, which has three degrees of freedom, unlike two at hinges, forces some level of rotation to always occur. Whether or not your are actually fully taking advantage of it, is the point of the training.

What an awesome site you have made. Very nice indeed! Thank you for your instructive guide to Taubman.

Thank you so much for that, farao!

So, Anamnesis, as per your remark, Neil Stannard, who wrote the book Piano Technique Demystified, agrees that you are always rotating (though he was thinking specifically of the forearm) whether you are aware of it or not. (I suppose if a person were trained using the nickel-on-the-back-of-the-hand approach,they might not, which would be quite "unnatural.") Dorothy was specifically interested in the rotation of the forearm, but I think that, for probably a lot of pianists, the shoulder area could use the same degree of explicit attention that the forearm receives in what I would call the classical approach to teaching Taubman.

My own shoulder girdle was locked and I had to come up with a strategy for loosening it before I could really benefit from my Taubman instruction. (The words "loosen up" were not sufficient!) I'm glad you bring the shoulder up.

Hi Kms!

I also have this problem and it is quite frustrating. I don't feel I can take advantage of Taubman until I have solved this first. May I ask what strategy you came up with that worked well for you?

Weird thing about this.....I didn't think much of forearm rotation. On day, someone familiar with the Taubman approach explained it to me. I realized that actually I do forearm rotation.....but at the same time, it's hard to see exactly what I'm doing!

Farao, it is really frustrating, isn't it? This is a very quick summary but I hope you will find it helpful. My strategy involved working out a coordination in which I learned to relax the shoulder area (biggest offenders in my case were my deltoids) immediately after I had felt my armweight press against the thumb in a passage. This coordination works in conjunction with overshaping and undershaping. Once I realized that it generally works well to overshape toward the thumb and undershape toward the pinky, and basically had formed a habit of doing this that felt quite comfortable, adding this coordination was not terribly hard. I found this coordination particularly helpful because, not only did I learn to relax my shoulder area as part of the ebb and flow of playing, but it also encouraged me to truly get my arm behind my thumb. For some reason, the coordination doesn't work as well if you haven't done this (perhaps because the signal to the upper body is not strong enough). (As I said in my "Ten Things" list, I feel that this is a critical aspect of the technique, without which it doesn't work nearly as well.) It seemed helpful to the students I had try it as well.

Doing this was consistent with Ortmann's idea that coordinated playing has much to do with the timing of contractions and releases among the muscles involved in a particular task. It made sense to me to consciously build timings of coordination into my playing, using Taubman as a kind of technique substrate.

This could all only work after I had taught myself to really use gravity and arm weight when playing single notes. It is not really possible to make use of those if your upper body is stabilizing your forearm in a hovering position. I talk about these things in my website, www.pointofsound.com.

Good luck!

A propos, the Golandsky Institute annual symposium in Princeton is going on this week. They are live streaming some of the sessions and concerts. I was able to watch Edna Golandsky give some great advice yesterday about ergonomic typing as well as piano. This was timely for me--needed some reminders on how to use the computer without discomfort.

Thank you so much KMS! Very kind of you to share!

And thank you JDW for great info! I signed up so I can see friday and satuday streams. Do you know if the typing class can be viewed somewhere?

I don't know if they are going to make that typing session available again. Edna did produce a video called Healthy Typing a few years ago, which you can get from her website. I think it was about $50, cheaper than therapy .

Thank you for info!

Hi Guys:
The Golandsky Institute offers unlimited streaming to the 70 instructional videos for $9..99 per month.....certainly a little pricey for long-term but I am considering this

Would you recommend this subscription for those that have no Taubman training? Unfortunately, Taubman teachers are not available in my vicinity.

Thanks much

How many can you watch in a day?

kms, I was looking at your 10 things and thinking, I wonder if every Taubman student would have a different set of 10 things that took a while to really sink in. I think you say something elsewhere on the site about how the approach is (and has to be) tailored individually for every student, even though its basic principles are consistent.

For me, among the top 10 would be:
-You have to play to the bottom of the key.
-But if you press down after playing, it will spoil everything.
-You have to really settle on every note (this is basically your no. 2--but for me the arm involvement and the settling are two separable elements of it, because I can lose one without the other).
-Fingers must not get ahead of the arm.
-Never forget the preparatory arm motion (related to your no. 6 and 7)
-When you think you just need to practice something more, what you really need is to take it to your teacher.

I don't quite get your no. 5, though.

I don't know--from what I can tell, the subscription does not include the original video series that covered all the basic topics in a systematic way (why, I don't know--or maybe I'm wrong). Lots of the 70 videos are on particular pieces and seem geared toward more advanced study. You might want to ask them.