Blog

Physicality and Flow

October 16, 2023 


Why do I care so much about teaching the mechanics and physicality of playing the piano? 


I cannot count the number of transfer students I get, who play very well and are very musical, but play as if they are typing. Their fingers are working hard, flexing and striking. Their wrists are still, their forearms paralyzed, arms and shoulders and torso stuck. 


I played like this for a long time, too, because nobody ever taught me any different. Heck, I was still playing like that when I entered my undergraduate of piano performance. It didn’t take long for the demands of the advanced repertoire and accompanying work to catch up with me… My right wrist would be sore, and that pain would radiate up my forearm and elbow. Sometimes it was so bad I couldn’t even lift a 4L jug of milk. 


I felt broken and inferior. Playing the piano was so important to me that I’d thrown caution to the wind and flung myself into a music degree. And now I felt like I couldn’t play at all. Would I be in pain forever? Would the pain eventually get so bad that I would have to stop playing? 


It took a lot of work on the part of my piano professor, and from my own self-learning about piano pedagogy, but I can happily now say that I can play for hours and not be sore. Playing feels better and sounds better. 


What made the difference? 


Moving away from finger-oriented playing and teaching. 


A (trick) question I ask lots of new students is, “What part of our body do we use to play the piano?” Often they ignore the mischievous glint in my eye and answer, “our fingers!” 


It seems so self-evident. Watch any pianist play a technically demanding piece, and you are dazzled by their fingers flying across the keys. Exercises to “strengthen the fingers” and “increase finger dexterity” abound. Well-meaning teachers will set down the book of Hanon exercises in front of their students and promise that just 10 minutes of it a day will revolutionize their piano playing. 


There’s a great book called “What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body” by Thomas Mark, and he puts it best: 


“Saying that we play the piano with our fingers is like saying that we run with our feet. The fingers move when we play the piano and they are the only parts of our upper body that touch the piano. Similarly, our feet move when we run and are the only parts that touch the ground. But a runner who tried to improve their running by keeping their legs motionless and doing foot exercises would be ridiculous. They are similar to a pianist who keeps their arms motionless and exercises their fingers, although what the pianist does has the sanction of tradition. We play the piano just as we run: by complex coordinated movements of our whole bodies.”

[“he” pronoun replaced by “they” pronoun throughout]


The “sanction of tradition” he’s talking about refers to the tradition of classical piano instruction. Often, a teacher will remember exercises, repertoire and frameworks from their own lessons, and pass it down to their students. A teacher draws from their teacher, who drew from their teacher, who drew from their teacher, who drew… in unbroken lines all the way back. 


Who knows, maybe some of this finger orientation goes back to the harpsichord – which, by the way, REQUIRES finger-only playing. The harpsichord’s action is so light (that is, the keys are so easy to depress) that the player only needs to brush their finger backward from their knuckle, as if they are plucking, to make a sound. 


Not so with the piano. The piano is HEAVY: steel frames, strings under tons (literally) of pressure, elaborate mechanisms. The piano is built for volume and resonance. If you play with finger-only orientation on the piano, it’s too much work… and injury will result. 


But injury is not the only reason to expand a player’s awareness beyond the fingers. 


Often I will play a classical excerpt two ways for a student. The first way, I will “type” it: my fingers move, and everything else is stiff. My wrists lock up, my fingers tighten, my arms are tense. The second way, I will free it up: my fingers are firm, and yielding. My wrists are supple, ready to accept and transfer input. My arms flow and float and drop and align behind the playing finger. My shoulders are released; my collarbones are free; my torso releases. 


They will always say the second way sounds more smooth and fluid. The first way sounds clunky, choppy; I use the word “pedantic”. 


The body is the conduit for music. If there is excess tightness anywhere along the conduit, from body to instrument, it inhibits the flow of energy, like a dam in a stream. This energy could have been transferred to the instrument and be translated into acoustical energy. Finding this free flow in your own playing is joyous. I know from experience how fulfilling it is. 


I think part of the impetus behind finger-oriented teaching and playing is the illusion of control. It feels very much like you can micro-manage and be absolutely sure of every note you’re playing being the “correct” one when you involve only the fingers.  It also feels GOOD to think that you’re working hard. When you feel the burn build up in your fingers and arms from tension, it really does feel like you’re trying very hard. We think that if we’re not suffering, we’re not trying hard enough, and therefore we’re not going to get better at our instrument. 


When we start to relinquish that illusion of control, and start to free up our bodies, it is scary. When our arms feel empty and like they’re made of air, it worries us. We think that we are not going to be able to land on the right note. But the more we can release, and trust, the more that we can experience the flow of music. This is artistry; this is music making. I hope I can lead my students (and myself!) there.