Group 4

Mary Mathews yes, the arc VISUALLY is nice but PHYSICALLY will always let us down. Think of a graph... the distance needed to travel the arc will always be much larger than the direct line on the keys.... that's why you will never be able to get to full tempo with the arc. 

The arc can also lead to a lot of arm tension if you are controlling the arm during the whole motion.... it doesn't allow gravity to do its job. 

It is a hard switch to make but a necessary and rewarding leap of faith :) 

Dr. Leann Osterkamp He Would you mind what you mean by an ineffective arc movement and an effective movement for leaps/jumps in a video? Sorry if i missed it, but I'm wondering if there are some nuances to this point and I'm interpreting it too literally.

My thinking: You do have to raise your hand a *tiny* bit before moving horizontally (otherwise the fingers will catch on the black keys). And when you raise your hand, you would probably do a combination of moving vertically off the keyboard and horizontally at the same time. We wouldn't move vertically, then horizontally, then drop down. So there is some kind of an arc shape to the movement even though it's not necessary one of great vertical distance.

Tim I find a lot of students have a similar fear of getting "stuck" on a black key or hitting a note. However, try just resting your hand on the keyboard... you will find that you can fully rest your hand on the keyboard and notes will not sound, even if a few keys are very slightly depressed. If you slide from left to right, you will notice the same thing... you can be ON the keys without sound happening. 

You also have the whole range of the key to play on, from your torso to the fallboard. We never will play in a single horizontal plane on the keys... so if you find you are stuck on a black key, simply move your hand/arm mechanism slightly more towards you, so that you avoid that. 

the moral is that we never ever have to raise our hand or create any true effort upwards. :)

Tim Yes, rests can be our best friend AND our enemy. Often times, we see the rest and our brain goes "yay, I can ignore this hand for a while and focus on the other hard stuff." What happens is that our hand then freezes in place and when it comes time to play again, we have to release, move, plan.... and it all falls apart. 

Make sure you think about moving your RH up to the next location much earlier than you would think. This is hard while left hand is playing, but necessary. Mentally, even think of the tied A natural as an eighth note and immediately have your RH in the next location before your left hand even hits middle C!

Steve Yes, apologies... technology was not my friend :) 

Marcus Boman great work!

”stretch” is a word we want to eliminate from piano technique. Instead, we want to create maximum efficiency in our “move” so that we are simply moving between notes at a rapid rate so that we don’t have to stretch. With larger chords that you feel you must stretch, that has to do more with issues in placement of our hand. I noticed that some of your fingerings were causing your control to be quite difficult. I also noticed that a lot of times you were not utilizing the whole range of the key (not just side to side but also in and out and diagonal), not positioning in an optimal way, or not angling your hand in a way that would help. 
 

hope these ideas help with the issues you mentioned :) 

Dr. Leann Osterkamp He 

thank you very much for your comments. This was the first time I made a recording and shared it ( not very fond of playing in front of an audience), but maybe I should make recordings more often to analyze my playing myself?

You gave me valuable information about my playing. I try to focuse to points you mentioned.

Looking forward to the articulation course