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TIPS and TOUCH---- Getting the Piano in your Hands - - -
# ONE . . . . Touch Key First!
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When we watch a great basket ball player such as Michael Jordan handle a basketball, you will not see him "smack" the ball like a volleyball, in order to sink 30 and 40 jump shots one after another. No! Michael Jordan's fingertips, wrists, lower forearms and entire body down to his toes are all synchronized together in handling the basketball through lightening manuevers and shots that go "swish" nearly every time.
The piano is no different!
The surface of the piano keyboard must be IN OUR FINGERTIPS FIRST or like a clumsy basketball player, our playing will always be sloppy and out of control.
No matter if you are playing a Chopin waltz, or or Scott Joplin rag, where the left hand leaps back and forth from a low bass note to middle piano chord, or whether a flurry of linear passages in the right hand, from "day one" we should begin to train our fingers to FIRST TOUCH THE KEYS,
"grasping" the SURFACE of the KEY FIRST.
Learning to have a gentle, relaxed touch ON THE SURFACES of the keys first, momentarily, whether a group of notes for a chord, or a series of melody notes, is of great value.
"Grasping" is a function of our sensitivity of touch, and a little bit of a mental state,
but also is acheived by our consiencious use of our little nail joints, right behind the fingernail. Allowing them to flex out, convaved, or curled under, convex, but by all means, knowing how we intend them to be used.
THen the key is lowered to bottom.
------------------With our fingers!!!!!!!!
NOT our arms or from the wrist! The keys should be acuated ONLY from the knuckle or "marsupial joint", the primary joint that connects the fingers to the hand, in the same manner as the squeezing function of our hand, when we pick up a book or a glass of water.
With the thumb also, from it's marsupial joint at the base of the hand, near the wrist.
************ A REMINDER ***********************
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We play the piano WITH OUR FINGERS!
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It seems incredible that I should have to say this! But the TRUTH of the matter is that far too many piano players, not "pianists", are using their ARMS, and STIFFENED WRISTS, or our playing FROM their wrists and not EXCLUSIVELY with their fingers.
Now there are definitely demands of piano music that will require varying degrees of wrist tension, and their are certainly movements from the wrist and arm and fingers together as one unit, but their is no exception to the primary principle of "TIPS ON KEYS FIRST"
NEVER punch, stab, slap, hammer the piano keys!
(Joseph Lehvinne could not even stand the "tapping" sound of his students fingers on the keys!)
Relaxed fingers and hands, and wrists, arms and to the top of our shoulders are always a must. Hunching the shoulders up, a common sight, accomplishes absolutely nothing at the piano. Our arms will often raise relaxed hands off the piano and lower a relaxed set of fingers to play one note expressively, but when the finger or fingers reaches the key surface,
Train to ALWAYS FIRST "feel" the key surface, if ever so briefly an increment of a second.
Again, -----------FIRST SENSE or "Grasp" the SURFACE OF THE KEY with the finger tip or tips, with our arms and wrists suspending relaxed hands and fingers...
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