Another misconception: curved fingers

 

If you've had piano lessons, you may well have had teachers who told you to "curve your fingers." You may have been told to imagine your fingers curved around a ball, such as a tennis ball. There are beginner books, for both children and adults, which show a picture of how this should look.

The problem is, it's just plain wrong. 

Challenge anyone who tells you to curve and ask them to explain why. There just isn't any good reason. Try playing an octave, or a chord spanning an octave with four notes, and you'll see you can't do it with curved fingers. The hand (the palm, actually) must open up to be able to span that distance. Look at Chopin's first etude in C major; the entire piece consists of arpeggios which span a tenth, and the whole thing is meant to go at lightning speed. There is no way to do it with curved fingers.

If your piece requires loud dramatic chords, of course this has to be accomplished with the arm (despite what some will tell you.) But if you come down hard onto curved fingers, the joints of the finger take all the impact and it can be dangerous for the joints.

Instead, you want to have the natural curvature of your hand. Lay your hand palm up (prone) on your lap, and your hand will form it's natural curvature. Move your hand to the piano without changing anything; this is how you should play. Some people naturally have more curvature, some have less. No one has a completely flat hand, and no one is naturally curved as if over a ball. You may need to flatten (open) your hand even more to play a ninth or tenth. Watch a video of the late Vladimir Horowitz; you'll see he had practically flat fingers, yet he had huge technique.

With curved fingers you contact the keys on the tip of the finger. This is why you'd hear the clicking of your nails unless you keep them extremely short. (See my post "Can Pianists Have Nice Nails?) But if you have more of an open hand, you contact the keys with the pads of your fingers, which, as that term indicates, gives you more padding. It is much more comfortable and better suited to take the impact of loud playing, and you won't hear your nails clicking.

As with many other old ideas about piano technique, curved fingers orginated in the days of the harpsichord and early pianos, which were very different from our modern piano, and the music being composed at the time was also much less demanding. Curved fingers is another example of what I call a "300-year-old idea."

Plateaus

 

If you've been playing the piano for a while, you've probably had the experience of being on a plateau -- just not seeming to improve even though you're still practicing as much as you always did. (This is a phenomenon that other discliplines, such as athletics, deal with as well.) It can be very frustrating. You wonder if you are doing something wrong. You might even have thoughts of giving up.

First of all, know that this is how learning usually works. It is often not a steady climb, as if on a hill, but more like a staircase: you make a movement upwards, then stay at the same level. Then another jump up, and level off again. You can even learn to enjoy the plateaus, knowing that your brain is preparing for the next jump up.

However, if you have a lot of plateaus that last for a long time, you're probably practicing wrong. Just playing the pieces over and over again is the worst thing to do. You can't "white knuckle" your way through a plateau. Instead, you need to find some more creative ways of practicing that challenge your brain, and cause it to form new "wiring" (neural pathways). I've blogged about many of these, but not necessarily as regards plateaus. Here are some things you can do.

Transposing. Playing the whole piece, or at least parts of the piece, in another key is supremely challenging for most people. The challenge is why it works. The goal is to transpose as much as possible by ear, but use the score as necessary. When you use the score, you are mentally calculating the distance (interval) from the original key to the new one. But doing it by ear is where the real benefit happens because it "drives the music into your ear." By that I mean that you ear will really know the music.

Playing hands crossed. Play the right hand's part with the left hand and vice versa. What this does is temporarily destroy muscle memory so the ear has to take over. Like transposing, it strengthens the auditory image of the music, that is, a deep knowledge of how it sounds.

Play with one finger, alternating hands on each note. This will obviously only work for a single line melody. You could do this with the main melody, the bass line, or any individual voice. If you are having trouble memorizing even just the melody, this would be good to do. As above, you can't rely on muscle memory so you have to use the ear.

Playing with eyes closed. You should be doing this a lot of the time anyway, as soon as you know the piece or passage by memory. If you haven't been doing this and you find yourself on a plateau, definitely include this in your practicing.

Practice the piece in sections in reverse order (assuming it is a piece of some length). Practice the last section through, then go to the next-to-last section, practice it and then play them both through to the end. Continue with each previous section until you are playing the whole piece. I can't really explain why this works, other than it is just a fresh perspective, but it does seem to help.

Take a break. Put the piece aside for a few weeks and take up some new pieces. The brain will develop new neural pathways from the new pieces that will, hopefully, assist in everything you play, including the piece you set aside. As mentioned, trying to force your way through a plateau is probably not going to work, and it certainly won't be fun.