Stayin' Alive

 

Not all of you reading this may be old enough to get my reference to the song "Stayin' Alive" from the movie Saturday Night Fever from 1977. "Staying alive" is a concept I use a lot. It means that you stay physically alert, with a feeling of energy running through you.

How does this apply to playing the piano? At all times while playing, whether in fast or slow music, you are aiming to have the feeling of the energy flowing. This means you are physically in motion from note to note, chord to chord, and so on. It is, of course, possible to play a note, then another note, without connecting them via physical movement, but if you do, you will get a sound that we immediately identify as a beginner sound, that is, mechanical and disconnected. In fact, mechanical and disconnected is the hallmark of a beginner's sound.

When you watch a great pianist, you will notice that their hands, arms, and even torso are constantly moving, even if it's only slightly. To an advanced pianist, it feels quite un-natural to just come to a standstill between notes. Many people (non-pianists) have said to me "I thought that was just for show!" There are certainly some pianists who overdo it, possibly for show. But it is inherently natural to want to be in motion. In fact, I believe you can't have emotion without motion.

The skeptics would say this can't be true. They would say that when the hammer hits the string and produces the sound, it doesn't "know" whether you have been in motion or not. This seems logical. However, we know that everything we do physically affects the sound. If you want to play extremely softly, you are doing something physically quite different from what you do when you play fortissimo. There is a wide range of nuance of "touch," as pianists call it, which creates the infinite range of sounds. And all of those nuances are created by something you've done physically.

This all has to do with the "Law of Inertia," which says: bodies in motion tend to stay in motion and bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. If you play a note from the state of inertia, there must be a tiny jolt of energy to get the arm/hand/finger moving. If you return to an inert state, even if only for a nanosecond, and then play another note following the first one, another tiny jolt is needed to overcome inertia. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to make sure these "jolts" were 100% even. If they are not even, then those notes would vary in dynamic level, and even timing, however minutely. While it may be imperceptible to the untrained ear, a musician will hear that those tones were disconnected. On the other hand, if your body (torso, arm, hand, fingers) are smoothly flowing, those separate tones will be heard as if they are on a continuum. When you are already in motion, you have momentum, and there are no individual jolts of energy to disturb the flow. Once you have momentum, it is easier to stay in momentum, provided you don't accidentally fall into inertia. (Isn't it more enjoyable to drive on a road where you can go a long way without stopping, as opposed to a street where you have to brake at every corner for a stop sign? It also uses less gas to go continuously, because all the little "jolts" to get moving again require more gas. I think this is a good analogy.)

I know this may all sound a little "New Age," but the laws of physics really do support this. You can experiment with this yourself. Play a series of tones (five is enough, or you can do a scale) in one hand. With the other hand, hold your arm so that it restricts the movement. You will still be able to play, but it will feel stiff, because of the inertia between tones. Now, play it again (remove your other hand) and try to achieve a "sweep" of the arm, carrying the hand from first note to last. You will hear an immediate difference. I should also add that playing the first way, with minimal movement, doesn't really feel very enjoyable, and in fact feels antithetical to idea of musicality. 

It is much easier to play with momentum when the music is fast. It is less likely that your physical mechanism will fall into inertia in between tones. However, when you play very slowly, you are likely to become inert. My teacher used to say "Beware long notes." If you just "sit" on a long note,  the next thing you play will have to have that little jolt. For this reason, it is extremely difficult for many people to play a beautiful slow movement of a sonata with the musical expression they desire. They say they feel the beauty of the music but can't convey it and don't understand why. I have heard this comment hundreds of times. Inertia is the reason.

Whether fast or slow, we want our playing to have momentum. A river may be rushing fast, with lots of rapids, or it may be slow, moving majestically. But either way, it has momentum to carry forward.

On sure-fire way to fall into inertia is to put your hand(s) in your lap. If you have a passage where one hand doesn't play for a few measures, don't put your hand in your lap. In a sense it will "fall asleep" and need to be woken up again. If you don't feel you like it hovering in mid-air, then let it hover lightly on your lap, but never actually rest.

Violinists can achieve flow or momentum much more easily than we pianists. They cannot just plunk the blow on the string and make a sound. Rather, the bow is constantly in motion, even if playing one long tone. Wind instrument players must keep the flow of their breath continuous. It seems like only pianists have the trap of inertia.

I work on this a lot with my students. Of course it takes many years and a great deal of dedication to train yourself to always be in motion, and not just any motion, but the ways that will produce the best results. But if you have no teacher to guide you, just try to continually remind yourself to move, and not just "sit." A good place to begin is with the torso. People think you just play with hands and fingers, but the torso needs to be active and alert. I can always tell when a student is going to play more musically, because I see his/her torso begin to move, even before playing the first note.

Ideally, this constant flow or motion should carry you from the very first note of the piece to the very last. Even if you are playing a piece with multiple movements, you can try to keep your energy flowing between movements, through the silence. I have found that when I do this, the audience continues to listen (you can just tell when you have their attention). If I "relax" and become inert, so do they. 

Some "experts" will say that you just need to strengthen and train your fingers to play perfectly evenly and that will achieve that "connected" sound. Sorry, but no amount of strength will do this. (How would strength even apply to playing a delicate, ephemeral passage in Debussy?) If it were just a matter of strength, many people could do it, if they put in the hours, like going to a gym. But playing beautifully is much more subtle than that. Remember to always "stay alive."

Hand size and shape

 

Our hands come in all sizes. Some people think there is an ideal hand size for pianists, but this is not the case. There have been great pianists with large hands and great pianists with small hands. Look at many of the incredible modern-day young pianists from Asia, and you'll see their hands are fairly small. And of course there are, and have been, child prodigies who have small hands yet play all the challenging pieces. There have been pianists with short chubby fingers and pianists with long tapered fingers. Rachmaninoff had abnormally large hands due to a genetic condition. The basics of piano technique are largely the same no matter what the size of the hand, though there will be minor adjustments that may need to be made.

When you think about it, our hands are not really "designed" for the piano at all. The fingers are all different lengths, and the thumb is entirely different, yet the piano keys are all the same size and laid out evenly. It is a miracle we can play as we do. 

Although our hands have basically the same shape, there are differences in this area too. For example, I  have a slightly larger than normal space between my fourth and fifth fingers, which makes using the fourth finger instead of the third more comfortable for me on large chords and arpeggios, in some cases.

This is why I am opposed to the idea of having the fingering written into the scores. In many cases the fingering is added by an editor (and what do we know about the editor's skill level? -- probably not much). Even if the fingering is the composer's, your hand may differ quite a lot from his, and the fingering he used may not work for you. 

We also have differences in the normal curvature of our hand. If you relax your hand with the back of the hand on your lap, you will find your normal curvature. No one has hands that are absolutely flat when relaxed, yet many (including myself) have hands that are almost flat. If you had piano lessons years ago (and unfortunately, even now), you were probably told to "curve your fingers." An illustration in one of the commonly-used beginner books shows a hand curved over a tennis ball. This is patently false, and if you try to adhere to this, you will limit the technique you can achieve. You can't possibly curve your fingers when playing even an octave, and certainly not when playing a large chord with four or five notes. The idea of curved fingers originated in the early days of keyboard music when the harpsichord was the primary keyboard instrument. The physical nature of the harpsichord, and the music that was written for it, is worlds away from the modern piano, and music of composers since Beethoven. This is one of the "300-year-old ideas" that I refer to in my earlier post of that name. When you play, you should ideally be using the natural curvature of your hand. If you need to play a very large chord, or the span of a tenth, for example, you will need to open your hand even more, which may make your hand quite flat, though still relaxed. There is no situation I can think of where you would want to, or need to, curve your fingers as if over a ball. 

I recently saw a documentary on the late pianist Vladimir Horowitz. I was again struck by how flat his fingers were when he played. Yet he clearly had huge technique. This flies in the face of what your grandmother's piano teacher would have told you, and sadly, many teachers nowadays as well, regarding curved fingers.

[When I was young, my teachers admonished me to curve my fingers. Therefore, I could never grow my nails even a little bit long, which was very disappointing. If the teachers heard the slightest click of my nails, I was told to go home and cut them even shorter. Later in life, when I learned how to play in a way more natural for my hands, I was able to grow my nails. If you are hearing your nails clicking, it is probably because you are over-curved. You want to be playing on the soft pad of your finger, not the nail tip.]

Another misconception about our hands relates to finger strength. For many years it was believed that you would need to strengthen your fingers through specifically designed exercises in order to achieve good piano technique. This, too, is another 300-year-old idea that has been thoroughly debunked. Again, I would point to child prodigies and petite adults, who do not have significant muscle strength in their hands. Along with this was the idea of "finger independence," that is, training the fingers to move independently of one another. If you play this way, the only thing you will achieve is a stilted sound (what I call "note-y"). Technique has more to do with speed and agility than it does with strength. You have all the strength you need in your arms, which is where the power comes from, for instance, for fortissimo playing. In fact, if you "bulk up" your hands with strength training, you will limit your flexibility, as well as your reach. 

Some of my students who have small hands have asked if there is anything they can do to stretch their hands. The answer is no. But you can learn to open and relax them. Just as with yoga and other forms of body work, you can learn to "let go" of the muscles in your hand so you don't hold them so tightly. I can reach a tenth, even though my hands are not large, because, as I like to joke, "I have worked very hard to be this relaxed." If you try to stretch, you will likely injure yourself. If your hands are truly too small to play a particular chord, the chord can be quickly rolled or broken, or a note can be omitted. There are lots of ways to use a little "smoke and mirrors," as many pianists with small hands have done.

Everyone who has worked towards "finger independence" has no doubt heard about the so-called problem with the fourth finger. The fourth finger has less independence than the others due to the nature of the tendons between the fingers. Many pianists have tried to figure out ways to overcome this, and some injured themselves in the process. Schumann injured is hand permanently in the quest to solve the "problem of the fourth finger." The real solution, and the only solution, is for all the fingers of the hand, and the hand itself and the arm, to work together. Not only will this achieve more beautiful playing, it was also enable you to avoid strain and injury.

If you are attempting to learn to play the piano and think that the problems you may be encountering are because your hands are too small, or the wrong shape, I encourage you to find a teacher who can support you in learning to play in a way that works with your hands, not against them.

Time Signatures and what they convey

 

All beginning students of all instruments learn about "time signatures" in the very earliest lessons. But I find that virtually all the early piano books, and many teachers, don't really explain all the information, beyond the mechanics, that time signatures are meant to convey. You might think it's simple enough.... but I have seen so much confusion around this subject, I feel compelled to explain.

The time signature appears at the very beginning of every piece. It's essential that you know it before starting to learn to play the piece. If you are somewhat experienced, you'd figure it out by just seeing the music, even if the time signature were missing, but nevertheless the composer would not omit such an important piece of information.

When you are a beginner, most of your pieces are in 4 - 4 time. (The numbers are actually written vertically. It is important to note here that my use of the dash is not actually the correct notation. Limitations of this software don't allow me to show the time signature with the numbers stacked vertically, with no line between them, which would be the correct way. See below). You learn that the top "4" means 4 beats per measure and the bottom "4" indicates that the quarter note is the unit of the beat. In a piece with this time signature, you will likely encounter one or more whole notes, which get 4 beats each. Later on, you may have a piece in 3 - 4 time; now there are only 3 beats per measure. The quarter note is still the unit of the beat, but you won't be seeing any whole notes, since those have 4 beats.

This might seem a little confusing to the beginner. Why would you have three quarters in a measure, when 3 quarters don't add up to a whole?

The answer is because our musical notation for rhythm was based on the idea of 4. If you go back to my early posts on rhythm, you will see that I use the analogy of a log, which you are chopping in 4 equal pieces. These pieces can be further "chopped" to give eighth notes, sixteenth notes, etc. This is a good representation of the 4 - 4 time signature. Our notation didn't evolve with the idea of three beats.  It is, however, very adaptable and can be used to show 3 - 4, 2 - 4 and others.

When I explain time signatures to my students, I prefer to say that they are telling you the "rhythmic organization" of the piece of music. It may be "organized" around a "log" cut in 4 pieces, or in 3, etc.

Eventually the student will see a piece in so-called "cut time," which is 2 - 2 (again, the dash is not correct). The bottom number 2 indicates that the half-note is the unit of the beat. But when the student looks at the music, it looks identical to 4 - 4. There are still 4 quarters in a measure. Why did the composer choose to write it in 2 - 2 rather than 4 - 4? The composer is telling you to "feel" it in two beats. In other words, there are fewer emphasis points in 2 - 2 than there would be in 4 - 4. Imagine you are marching to music for a marching band; you want to hear 4 strong beats, each syncing with a step. But if the piece had more of a graceful, flowing nature, you'd want fewer strong emphases. The "math" may be the same as 4 - 4, but the musical interpretation of the piece is different. This is an example of why it is important that the teacher explain the intent behind the time signatures, not just the math.

A real source of confusion comes when you get 6 - 8.  The 6 - 8 time signature arose because the composer wanted the beat (quarter note) to divide in 3. The normal division is in 2, since, again, the notation evolved around the divisions of even numbers, 2 and 4. When the beat divides in 3, it is shown as a triplet. The triplet has to be marked as such, because the division in 2 would otherwise be assumed. If the composer wants triplets for the whole piece, it is cumbersome to have to indicate it everywhere, so the idea of 6 - 8 arose. It would seem to tell you there are 6 beats in the measure and the eighth note gets the beat. However, we would never feel it as 6 beats. We would feel it as two main beats (like 2 - 4), but the beat divides in 3 rather than the normal two. The two main beats is the important point to stress. In 3 - 4 you feel 3 main beats; in 6 - 8 you feel two. A waltz would have to be in 3 - 4 time, but a jig (or gigue) must be in 6 - 8. If the teacher does not explain this, the student would have no way to understand it. Sadly, I have actually seen incorrect information in books. I once saw, in print, the explanation that "6 - 8 was the same as 3 - 4 but faster." Not true in the slightest since the time signature tells you nothing about the actual tempo (speed) of the piece (see below).

There are also time signatures such as 9 - 8 and 12 - 8, which have the beats divide in three just as with 6 - 8.

As you can see, I've gone to some pains to write the time signatures without the slash which you often see when they are written about, but not in the actual score itself. They are not fractions and have nothing to do with fractions. In the score the numbers are written vertically, but there is no line between them, as there would be if they were representing fractions. If time signatures were fractions, then 4 - 4 would equal 1 and 3-2- would equal 1.5 and those number have nothing to do with what is represented in those time signatures. And 3 - 4 and 6 - 8 would be the same, whereas, as we have seen, they are completely different. Again, I recently read a book about music and the brain. The author is a pianist and clearly quite knowledgeable about music, but even she made the mistake of referring to time signatures as fractions.

Which brings me to another misconception about time signatures by beginning students. The time signature does NOT tell you the tempo, or speed, of the piece. A piece in a given time signature can be a fast piece or a slow piece. An indication of the tempo is given at the top of the score with terms such as Allegro or Andante or Largo. (There is no exact speed for these either, which is where the musician has an opportunity for her/his own interpretation.) 

Again, if you think of the time signature as the rhythmic organization, you won't be confused. If your teacher cannot explain time signatures to you, or calls them fractions, you will know that the teacher doesn't actually understand them.