Book Excerpts

Introduction
Chapter 2: Struggle and Freedom
Chapter 6: Basic Mechanics

INTRODUCTION

The word "practice" conjures up a variety of potent images and feelings. For some, it arouses dread and memories of long hours spent confined in a small room with a book of finger exercises and a metronome. Such practicing feels more like a punishment than a musical experience. For other, practicing is an escape from painful aspects of life—perhaps the only activity in which they feel free to express themselves. For the fortunate few, practicing is the overflow of joy and vibrant curiosity from a healthy and fulfilling life. Many of us recognize a little of ourselves in all of these descriptions. But whatever our experience is, all of us find practicing a constant challenge to our physical, mental, and emotional capabilities.

Every piece of music presents new difficulties, and each time we practice it new wrinkles appear. One day we may feel comfortable with our instrument, and the next we may feel stiff and uncoordinated. One minute a phrase flows smoothly from our fingers, and the next it suddenly falls apart. We are trying to turn a page of notes into a harmonious, pulsing, musical whole, and it takes all the sensitivity, intelligence, and precision we can muster. Along with the joy of expanding our music-making capacities, we often experience tension and frustration. In many cases, the sheer physical strain from struggling for an ideal performance even leads to injury.

This book is about how to free ourselves from physical and emotional tension as we practice so that we can unleash our innate musical talent. When our fingers get tied up in knots in a difficult passage, we can loosen up and find a comfortable way to play it. When we're struggling to create a perfectly shaped phrase, we can stop to notice each sound and discover the subtleties we've been looking for. By giving ourselves room to relax, we awaken our vital energies instead of stifling them.

This book grew from seminars called "The Art of Practicing" that I began giving to musicians in 1985. My own work at the piano had changed radically in the late 1970s, when I started practicing mindfulness meditation. I tried meditation the day after an unsuccessful audition, thinking that it might help me be more relaxed and confident about performing. I was tired of having so much trouble sleeping the night before competing and of worrying so much about memory lapses. More important, although I had achieved a fair amount of success as a performer, I was dissatisfied with how I felt onstage. Something told me that a completely different kind of confidence must be possible, different from anything I had experienced before.

Meditation was simple. I sat still and focused on my breathing in order to develop an awareness of ordinary events in the present moment. This discipline slowed down my chattering, goal-oriented mind. I learned to relax, not worry so much about the past or the future, and perceive present events more clearly. In fact, I relaxed so much that I stopped practicing the piano altogether. I didn't know when, or even if, I would ever return to it. After two months, I was ready to come back. To my delight, my entire practicing experience was altered.

The relaxation and awareness cultivated during meditation spilled over into my work at the piano. I found myself taking half-minute breaks on the bench while practicing, no longer in a hurry to accomplish anything. It felt good just to sit there and take my time deciding what to do next. Subtleties I'd never noticed before—about the movement of my hands and the harmonies in the music—became striking and engaging. Gradually, I developed a new understanding of the physiological mechanics of playing. I also found that listening more attentively improved my physical coordination.

A whole new range of sounds came out of the piano—both a new gentleness and a more penetrating, forceful sound when the music needed it. The five inefficient hours a day that I used to put in at the piano were whittled down into three focused, productive hours. In short, I accomplished more with less effort, and with much more pleasure. My students tried the new techniques of moving, listening, and relaxing that I developed, and their playing improved dramatically, too. These techniques became the Art of Practicing.

From the first seminar I gave, I was struck by the hunger musicians have for guidance in their practicing. Beginning and advanced students, amateurs and professionals—all longed for a way to sustain their original inspiration while trying to meet the challenge of learning a great piece of music. Some had injured themselves by practicing improperly. Others simply felt uncomfortable with their instruments and frustrated by their inability to express themselves. Many were frightened and anxious about performing. They asked intelligent questions, and some of these, along with my answers, form a major part of this book.

The Art of Practicing is a step-by-step approach that integrates movement principles with meditative discipline, which consists of focusing on sounds, sensations, emotions, and thoughts in the present moment. It cultivates a clear and relaxed mind, an open heart, free and natural movement, and vivid, joyful listening. Both beginners and accomplished musicians can use this approach. In fact, meditative discipline nurtures a fresh, open state of mind called "beginners mind," which is sometimes lacking in professionals, who bring years of habits to their work. I have enjoyed teaching beginners, as well as advanced students, because they have open minds. And I have often been struck by music coming through a beginner's fingers with more freshness, spontaneity, and pure expressiveness than many professionals have.

Part One of this book describes our common experience with the initial inspiration to make music and the ensuing struggle of practicing. Part Two presents the ten steps of the Art of Practicing, which are divided into four groups of techniques: preparatory steps, physical techniques, psychological techniques, and sensory and intellectual techniques. Part Three discusses performing as a natural outcome of healthy practicing.

Although I present the Art of Practicing as a series of steps that progress logically from one to the next, it is not necessary to follow these steps in strict, linear fashion. At certain moments during a practice session it may feel appropriate to jump forward or back one or more steps, and you may go through all the steps several times in one session.

In presenting this approach, my intention is to communicate what I know from my experience as a concert artist and teacher, a meditation instructor, and a student of movement. Above all, I wish to encourage musicians to trust their experience of their own bodies and minds, and to believe that within their struggle and confusion lie the passion and intelligence that are the keys to joyful, productive practicing and powerful performing.

CHAPTER TWO

Struggle and Freedom
Listening and Producing
Longing and Ambition
Ways of Struggling
Giving and Receiving
Trusting Ourselves
Questions and Answers

Struggle and Freedom

Although we start out inspired to practice, sooner or later we begin to feel frustrated. We can't get the results we want, and we don't know why. We feel as though we are working too hard, yet it seems we must not be working hard enough. We start to doubt out ability. The piece that once felt fresh begins to feel stale.

Much frustration is caused by inefficient use of the body. Instrumental or vocal technique that goes against principles of healthy posture and movement creates unnecessary tension, which inhibits musical expression. (Chapter 6 will discuss posture and movement in depth.) Frequently, however, tension and inefficient technique stem from mental and emotional attitudes toward ourselves and our practicing.

One such attitude is that practicing is supposed to be repetitious and regimented—completely different from performing. When we perform, we are on the spot. Every moment feels charged with possibility. We are acutely aware of being in a wide-open space in which anything can happen. But when we practice, we box ourselves in. I have often thought how strange it is that I can be sitting at the piano in my own living room, completely alone and free to do anything I want, and yet fall into some habitual and unsatisfying way of working.

We don't know what to do with our freedom. We repeat passages in a joyless, desperate way to gain technical security. We adhere to a rigid plan for practicing a piece. We push ourselves to meet a deadline and feel inadequate when our work isn't going well. This severity, this habit of being hard on ourselves, destroys inspiration, making it difficult to develop the joy and spontaneity needed for performing. Recognizing this gulf between the joy of performing and the drudgery of practicing led me to develop the Art of Practicing.

The Art of Practicing is about art, about creating something fresh and genuine. In this approach, practicing is not so different from performing. Instead of practicing in a mechanical or programmed way, we practice being spontaneous. The spontaneity that marks a strong, communicative performance is actually cultivated during practice sessions. Although learning a piece necessitates repeating passages and going slowly rather than at concert tempo, the qualities of openness, uncertainty, freedom, and aliveness that characterize performing permeate practicing.

I first experienced this spontaneity in a practice room at music school. I had been practicing for several hours when I suddenly realized that the sound was coming directly out of the piano. Instead of singing the music in my mind, as I usually did, and focusing on that imaginary sound, I heard the actual sound. I was shocked by its vividness, and by the realization that although this brilliant sensory experience had been available to me for years, I had been missing it.

Perhaps you remember a moment when you heard a familiar chord and were unusually struck by its beauty. Or maybe you remember occasions when your movements suddenly became more free and natural than usual. This kind of receptiveness and ease does not have to be a rare event. It is something you can cultivate.

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Listening and Producing

Everyone starts out in music as a listener. As young children, we hear music with freshness and delight. We fall in love with it and are entranced by the simplest song. But when we start practicing an instrument, we stop listening intently. We become so involved with producing sound that we forget to take it in. Instead of sitting back and enjoying the sound, as we would listening to a good concert or recording, we get caught up with trying to make the instrument do what we want, and trying to make the music sound as we think it should. In directing our attention toward these desired results, we take it away from the sound that could give us pleasure in the present moment.

This approach becomes a vicious circle. The less pleasure we receive, the more we try to force the instrument to give it to us, gripping it tightly instead of moving simply and comfortably. This excess tension impedes the flow of musical vibrations through the body, further reducing our responsiveness to sound. We thus deprive ourselves of the joy of full-bodied engagement with music.

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Longing and Ambition

One of the Chinese symbols for the word "joy" also means "music." The pictograph shows two drums and a bell, on a stand:

This synonymy rings true with everyone who loves music. Even if a piece is extremely sad we feel joy in the ability to experience and express such powerful emotion. We have a profound need to share these feelings with other people, and such communication gives our lives meaning.

One of the greatest challenges of making music is to maintain some cool in the heat of our passion and joy. It is easy to become impatient when it takes us longer to learn a beautiful piece than we would like. We ache to get it in our fingers, our voice, our body, to make physical contact with the music we love. This longing is our greatest asset. It is our communicative energy. It is the raw, throbbing energy of the heart.

But longing is different from ambition. Longing is our innermost feeling about life. We yearn to connect to people, to music, to the world, and we know that every experience and every relationship, indeed life itself, inevitably ends. The opening of Mozart's G minor symphony is a powerful expression of such yearning. You can almost hear Mozart sobbing over life's beauty and transiency. Popular songs like "Imagine," by John Lennon, and "The Man I Love," by George Gershwin, also convey poignancy and longing. Sometimes, in the middle of a hectic day of shopping, I am stopped in my tracks by the sound of such a song coming over speakers in the store, melting my heart and helping me remember what life is about. Music satisfies our deep need to feel our longing heart, a core of softness in ourselves.

We lose touch with this heart when we become overly ambitious. Ambition is healthy, but it becomes destructive when we drive ourselves too hard. We become so anxious to get the result we want that we push our bodies and minds to do things before they are ready. Such striving might make us feel superficially good about ourselves, but it creates struggle and discomfort instead of ease and pleasure.

Struggle does not produce beautiful music. Music is such a direct means of communication that the performer's state of mind is immediately transmitted to the listener. A pianist who looks as though he is slaving over a hot keyboard, hunching over and working very hard, creates a sense of claustrophobia. You can't breathe easily because he's so worked up. But a performer who walks calmly onto a stage, takes his time sitting down, and welcomes the opportunity to perform with relaxation makes you feel relaxed. When he plays with exhilaration and ease, you feel exhilarated and at ease.

Comfort, ease and joy can be cultivated through practice. To do this, we must give up excessive ambition and the desperate struggle for results, and let ourselves feel the pain of our longing, of having to wait to make music the way we want to. We can learn to relax with this longing and to enjoy its soft, warm presence in the heart. This warmth will then shine through the music we make and touch the hearts of others. The techniques outlined in Part Two of this book are designed to accomplish this relaxation.

I remember a particularly striking, spontaneous experience of letting go of ambition. I was making an audition tape in a recording studio. I had played the Chopin G minor ballade several times through and still wasn't satisfied. After the eighth take, my body felt drenched in pain from wanting to play it well. The engineer's voice came over the speakers like a death knell: "Ten minutes left." The piece was nine minutes long. I just gave up. I let myself completely feel the pain and played without trying so hard. To my amazement, my body relaxed, the pain dissolved, and the music sounded fluid and clear. It was the best take of the afternoon.

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Giving and Receiving

Giving up our struggle opens us to the music. And the performer's job is to do just that—to open fully to music, to let it come in, physically and mentally, and to become an unobstructed channel for its transmission to other people. We cannot possibly give music to others without first receiving it ourselves. Practicing is the process of receiving what was written.

Receiving can be difficult. Many of us have grown up in environments that did not sufficiently encourage us to enjoy or appreciate ourselves. Yet we need such encouragement and warmth to stay receptive to our feelings and to music. I sometimes point out to students that their frustration with a piece is an indication that they care deeply about it. One student told me it was one of the most helpful things ever said to him. He was able to stop berating himself and began to appreciate himself instead, which opened him up enormously to the music. We don't usually use experiences of dissatisfaction as signals to be gentle with ourselves. Instead, we blame ourselves or become aggressive with the music. Tension escalates, and the more we practice a piece, the worse it gets.

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Ways of Struggling

Musicians create tension in a variety of ways. One of the most common is trying to play a piece fast before you are ready. When you push your body to move fast, it tightens, which only prevents it from moving as fast as you want it to. Even if you are worried about meeting a deadline, take your time.

Another misguided approach is to try to play something pianissimo or fortissimo when you are just beginning to learn it, and when the nervous system is not yet ready to do that; it's too difficult. You try so hard to play softly that you produce either a tight sound or no sound at all; or you force yourself to play loudly, which makes your muscles clench and become rigid, leaching their power and creating a strained sound. It is similar to what happens if you grip the front of your neck with your hand and then try to talk or sing: The physical constriction limits sound production. If, instead, you simply play comfortably, the required softness or loudness will come naturally with time.

Tension also comes from trying to manufacture a special kind of energy, particularly if a piece is romantic or emotional. You think, "Chopin was in a fever when he wrote this, so I'm going to produce a big fever." You get worked up and heavy, huffing and puffing, which is exhausting. Or you think, "Beethoven was an angry person, so I should get angry in order to play this piece." When you force emotion that way, you become tight, and the composer's power cannot flow through your body. Fierce energy comes through when the body is loose and free.

A particularly dangerous form of struggle is practicing through physical pain. Some musicians feel it is necessary to experience muscle soreness, as if they were pumping iron, when working hard to develop technique. This is a completely false notion. Pain is an indication that you are overusing a limited muscle group, using the wrong muscles, or using too much force. It is a signal to relax and slow down. At some point your body reaches a limit. The pain builds up until it becomes incapacitating. Injuries of the hands, arms, neck, back, jaw, lips, or vocal chords afflict many musicians, forcing them to stop playing or singing for extended periods of time, and sometimes permanently. One of the most well known examples is pianist Leon Fleisher, whose celebrated international career came to an abrupt halt when his right hand stopped functioning properly. Looking back on the torturous practicing that caused this tragedy, Fleisher commented, "There was something macho about practicing through the pain barrier. Even when my hand was exhausted, I kept going. Although I thought I was building up muscle, I was, in fact, unraveling it.1

The tendency to drive oneself physically leads some musicians to rely heavily on finger exercises to improve their technique. One student spoke about spending hours practicing exercises by Phillip or Pischna. "Your muscles can ache," she said, "and the exercises aren't interesting. But don't they strengthen you?" The value of an exercise depends on your state of mind. If you don't find it interesting, then it is not useful. Muscular pain is not necessary, and muscle power is not as important as good coordination. If you are genuinely interested in the technical concept of a particular exercise and you listen well and move comfortably, you can learn a great deal about your body, and it can be enjoyable and helpful.

I myself have rarely done exercises. An exercise is simply a series of notes taken out of normal musical context, and usually sequenced and repeated. Many written exercises are lengthy and unmusical, and practicing them can easily become tedious. Concert pieces like Chopin études, on the other hand, are interesting to practice because each solution to a technical difficulty yields an appealing musical effect. One of my teachers had a wonderful analogy for using real music instead of exercises to develop technique. If he wanted to exercise his legs, he said, he wouldn't pace around his room; he would go for a walk in the park, where he could enjoy the fresh air, the trees and flowers and birds, and maybe even see some pretty women. Practicing exercises you don't enjoy is confining and saps your energy, whereas practicing a difficult but beautiful piece of music gives you energy. We feel revitalized by music, and we need that.

Psychotherapist Diane Nichols, director of the Performing Arts Psychotherapy Center in New York, says musicians are harder on themselves than dancers or actors, and have a more difficult time with their work. This is partly because musicians work primarily alone, and when they eventually play for an audience it is overwhelming. Also, performing music requires extreme precision. If your finger moves an eighth of an inch in the wrong direction, people can tell you have made a mistake. Because of the need for this precision, musicians are also more susceptible to noticeable memory lapses than other performers. They are afraid of "blanking out" or making blunders in front of an audience.

The fear of not being perfect drives musicians to overpractice and practice without joy. I remember being in music school and walking around looking through the little windows in the doors of the practice rooms. In every room a student was going full steam at his or her instrument, without stopping, like a locomotive. Rarely did anyone allow a minute's pause for reflection or relaxation, for maybe turning the page and seeing what was ahead. If someone did stop practicing for a minute, he may have heard a student in the next room playing the same piece at a faster tempo. One of my classmates discovered that another piano student deliberately tried to make him feel bad by playing the same repertoire faster and louder in a practice room near his.

This intense perfectionism and competitiveness sometimes causes musicians to develop an incapacitating tension that doctors call "overuse syndrome." Even if they have a good technique and are not repeating the same passages excessively, they overuse their technique. Afraid of not practicing enough, they injure themselves by practicing too much.

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Trusting Ourselves

All of these ways of practicing indicate lack of trust in our ability. We are afraid that if we just relax and let ourselves work naturally and comfortably, we won't be good enough. So we drive ourselves, force ourselves, and hurt ourselves. In doing so, we lose touch with our most valuable asset as artists—the willingness to be vulnerable, genuine, and spontaneous, to communicate from the heart.

Communicating this openly in performance feels risky. You are on the spot and can't control what will happen. But it is invigorating because you are wide awake to the present moment. You walk onto the stage and notice every little thing—how your shoe feels on your foot, how the light hits the floor, how the shadows fall, every little sound in the audience. You think, "Oh, no! I don't know if I can do this! All these things are going on!" These things are going on every day, all day in your life, yet suddenly you are aware of them. As you place your fingers on your instrument or open your mouth to sing, you feel extraordinarily sensitive to every move you make.

The Art of Practicing is a discipline that cultivates this heightened awareness in every moment of our practicing. We practice noticing the details of our sensory experience, letting the sensations of sound, touch, and movement saturate the body and mind from moment to moment. By deliberately practicing such receptiveness, we gradually become familiar with the experience of brilliant awareness, and we begin to feel at home in the bright light on stage.

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Questions and Answers

Question: I feel I have a long way to go in being able to play things fast, and that if I don't push myself I'll never make it. How can I relax and trust myself if I really don't know if I have what it takes?

Answer:Speed develops when the body is functioning comfortably, with minimum tension, so speed can come only if you don't push yourself. It's true you never know if you can accomplish something that seems far in the future, and each person has a different innate capacity for finger dexterity and speed. Nevertheless, you can't get somewhere without making the journey.

Speed is different from rushing. I saw a movie about Arthur Rubinstein in which he sat very simply and played without any sense of hurry whatsoever. Even playing a difficult piece, like the Chopin F minor concerto, he looked totally comfortable, and the notes came simply, one after another, with plenty of speed but with a tremendous sense of relaxation and freedom.

We have to continually remind ourselves to take our time, because we are usually impatient. We want results. Slowing down doesn't have to feel like holding back. It can be an opportunity to revel in sounds and sensations, to not be so concerned about where we are going but to enjoy the moment and become comfortable where we are.

Speed will come. If you play the same passage ten times without trying to get faster, it will get faster anyway. If you turn a metronome on the first time you play it and the last time, it will be faster the last time. It's a natural process, like discovering you can run after you've learned to walk.

You can't develop your potential by trying to be somebody else. You have to start with what you have. Then things can open up. The body works well when you treat it gently.

Question: I don't understand how you can be spontaneous when you practice. If the way you practice determines how you will perform, then shouldn't you be very careful about how you practice?

Answer: Yes, but not too careful, because then you don't have room to be yourself. You can be careful with the music without walking on eggs, which limits your freedom, physically and mentally. You tighten up, so you can't express yourself fully.

Question: But I read that the pianist Czerny suggested trying to practice something ten times consecutively without making any mistakes as a way to prepare for a performance. Is that a good idea?

Answer: That's too rigid. A better idea would be to practice performing for people and to become accustomed to making mistakes. Then you'll be ready, because, after all, constant, absolute technical perfection is humanly impossible. It's good to get used to that fact.

Being note-perfect is not the point. Of course it's nice if you can play every single note at the right time. But making music involves a lot more than that; otherwise a machine could do it. You can't express yourself genuinely if you're trying too hard not to make mistakes. You have to be willing to stumble over your words occasionally when you talk to people, so that something spontaneous can happen. Making music is the same way. Artur Schnabel made more mistakes than many pianists, but people usually didn't mind. He touched his audience deeply because he was spontaneous. He had something to say and allowed himself to say it.

People often think that you can't be precise and relaxed at the same time, but with the kind of discipline I'm suggesting, precision and relaxation come together. Because you are relaxed, you are free to move easily and to express yourself clearly. So you actually make fewer mistakes.

Question: I thought finger exercises were a necessary part of learning an instrument. How can we develop technique without them?

Answer: Musical compositions, along with simple scales, provide plenty of opportunities to develop technique. But some people prefer to use exercises to focus on a particular technique. That way, when they encounter the same technical demand in a composition, they are free to enjoy the music more and to focus on technique less. Other people, myself included, prefer to spend all of their practice time on real music, even if it means isolating a difficult passage and working with it extensively as if it were an exercise. In any case, technically challenging repertoire always requires that type of practice. Do what is most enjoyable for you.

Question: How do you motivate a student to work harder without making her tense?

Answer: The key is "healthy" or "relaxed" effort: neither too tight nor too loose, too tense or too lazy, but finding the proper balance between these extremes. It takes effort to move your arm, but it can be done naturally and comfortably. You can use your mind in the same way. You don't have to force yourself to race through your practice session. If a student begins to practice in this relaxed way, she enjoys it more, and her motivation develops naturally.

Question: I've never felt a hundred percent prepared for a performance, so I don't understand how it's possible to overpractice. Isn't it true that you can never practice enough?

Answer: It depends on what you mean by "prepared." A hundred percent preparation is impossible, because every piece of music has an infinite number of facets; you can always do more. So you prepare as much as time allows. People very often overpractice. I find that if I rest more and practice less I usually play better. Overpracticing comes from fear, which locks the mind and body and limits your spontaneity. Overdoing it also makes you physically tense and exhausted. Musicians usually wish they had more time to prepare—just a couple more days or a week—before their performance. But when the moment of performance comes, you have to abandon your idealism in order to express yourself freely.

Question: If you're open in the way you describe, can you be receptive to a piece that you're not strongly attracted to?

Answer: The ideal situation is to love the piece that you're playing. Then expressing yourself comes more naturally, and you have more to give an audience. We all have our particular affinities. But professional musicians often have to perform a piece they don't feel passionate about. Accompanists play repertoire chosen by the soloist. Competitions frequently require certain pieces; so do teachers. A soloist might have an opportunity to play with an orchestra if he is willing to play a particular concerto.

If you try to be receptive to a piece you don't love, you can expand your emotional range and grow as a musician. Without an initial passion for the music, your performance may be somewhat limited. It may be that the piece is limited. Or a piece may not suit your temperament or personal style. But it's important to expand your musical and emotional range as much as possible, especially when you're young. Later on, it's important to recognize your strengths, and not to think you're inferior or inadequate as a musician just because you have certain affinities.

Question: It's hard to find my own pace at music school because the environment is geared to working fast. How do we avoid getting caught up in that rush and competitiveness?

Answer: A lot is expected of music students. When I was in school I often felt that the pace went against my grain. But a musician-in-training must become familiar with a wide variety of musical styles and a lot of repertoire. Teachers sometimes assign a new piece every week. This is particularly difficult when other students are able to learn pieces quickly and you have to compete with them. Or maybe you can learn a piece quickly, but you don't enjoy doing so because you have no time to study it in depth.

The school is trying to prepare students for the realities of the profession. Sometimes you are asked to perform a piece on short notice, or your manager may want you to know two or three dozen concertos so he can book you for a lot of concerts. Nevertheless, some very successful performers have small repertoires. They just know what they do best, and that's what they present to the public.

When you're in your twenties, you find out who you are as an artist—which composers you prefer and which music suits your voice. Let your teacher introduce you to a wide variety of music, and take time to search for new repertoire on your own. Maybe you will discover pieces that inspire you more and still provide the same challenges. If you feel the requirements are too demanding, discuss your feelings with your teacher. Don't be afraid to request a slightly lighter load, and explain that you'd like to try to produce higher quality work by concentrating on fewer pieces.

When you feel overwhelmed by how much you have to do, take a few moments to remember your love for the music, and let yourself enjoy it as much as you can.

Question: Many musicians I know have developed injuries, and I've become so afraid of getting one myself that my body tightens up now when I practice. I know I need to relax in order to avoid hurting myself, but it's as though I'm afraid that if I move my hands and arms I'll do something wrong. How can I let go of this tension?

Answer: It can be hard to relax in the climate of fear and competitiveness that surrounds a young performer. Contractors don't usually hire a freelance player who has had an injury even after he's recovered from it. As a result, many musicians choose to hide the fact that they're suffering from tension or pain until it disables them. So it's a vicious circle of pain and fear. As awareness of the prevalence of injury and its causes and cures increases in the musical profession, prejudice against the formerly injured is gradually decreasing. Unfortunately, funding of orchestras has also decreased, making jobs extremely difficult to get, even for those who have never been hurt.

Learning about how your body works and sharing your concerns with people you trust can help you deal with the fear and confusion surrounding pain and injury. It is especially important to be kind to yourself when you notice you are tightening up. Your fear is understandable, and the better you understand it, the less grip it will have on you. Ask yourself what exactly you are afraid of. You may be afraid that you will hurt yourself so badly that you will never play again. Or you may be afraid that an injury would ruin your chances for a job or competition. Whatever your fear is about, it has a lot to do with how much you love music and how much you long to express yourself as an artist and person. Appreciating these healthy feelings and desires can help you relax and let go. It can also help you be a good friend to others who are scared. The more understanding and kindness we can develop toward those who have been injured, the more everyone will be able to communicate openly about practice-related ailments, receive help when they need it, and learn how to avoid hurting themselves in the future.

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BASIC MECHANICS
- Mechanics, Habits and Emotions
- Musicians Are Athletes
- Muscular Tension and Release
- Exertion and Recuperation
- Effects of Childhood Training
- Respecting Your Individual Body

PRINCIPLES OF POSTURE AND MOVEMENT
- Posture
- Posture and Freedom of the Arms
- Posture, Circulation, and the Viscera
- Finding a Good Posture
- Dynamic Balancing
- Getting Help with Your Posture

USING YOUR ARMS AND HANDS
- Grasping
- Retraining Your Hands
- Wrist Flexibility and Position

EXTREME POSITIONS
- Using the Arm and Wrist to Help the Fingers
- Traversing the Keyboard
- Springing, Buoyancy, and Feedback
- Staccato - A Variant of Springing
- Buoyancy, Support, and the Circulation of Energy
- Rotation
- "Dropping In" with the Arm
- Experimenting with Different Arm Techniques

CONCLUSION

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. Any application of the recommendations set forth in this book is at the reader's discretion and sole risk. The reader should regularly consult a doctor in matters relating to health and particularly in respect to symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

Basic Mechanics

In 1983, my friend Joan Campbell Whitacre, a wonderful movement teacher, saw me perform and warned me that my habits of repeatedly leaning forward, swaying around, and dropping my wrists below the keyboard were going to get me into trouble. She had just come back from a performing arts medicine conference where she learned about instrumental techniques that cause injury. I responded to her kind warning with arrogance: "You don't know, because you don't play." Fortunately, a year and a half later, my posture and wrist position changed naturally as I became a more relaxed person. One day I simply found myself sitting upright instead of leaning and swaying as I used to, and although my wrists remained flexible, I no longer let them drop so low.

I was shocked. This simpler physical approach felt natural, and when I tried playing the old way, it felt uncomfortable and forced. I didn't know if I should trust the new way of playing after doing something completely different for my whole life.

I asked a musician friend to listen to me play and tell me how it sounded. After hearing ten minutes of Bach and Chopin, she delivered the verdict: "It sounds much better than before. You're not holding on to the music for yourself; it's coming through more to the listener. You're communicating more."

I knew she was right. I realized that all the leaning and swaying I used to do was a way of struggling against the music, that instead of letting it flow freely through my body, I had been trying to keep a grip on it, to force it to go a certain way. I no longer felt the need to do that. I could sit and move simply, allowing the music to flood my system and naturally pour out of me. Excited by this discovery, I taught the new, upright posture to my students. Every one of them immediately played more beautifully.

Most musicians are not lucky enough to spontaneously discover a better way of using their bodies. They may suspect something is wrong when practicing becomes an endless battle for control of the instrument. Or they may develop an injury that forces them to look for a new technical approach. But many feel just as I did: They enjoy making music and are unaware that it could feel and sound even better.

Every pianist needs a working knowledge of the body mechanics involved in playing. Posture and movement have enormous impact on one's ability to control the instrument and on how the music sounds. Regardless of talent, musical imagination, and exhortations from teachers to play with a more velvet or penetrating tone, if the body isn't working efficiently, the music that comes out will be only a fraction of what lives inside the person.

Completely natural movement in making music requires a developed sensitivity and thorough study extending far beyond the scope of this book. This chapter will present a few basic principles of body mechanics and movement dynamics that can make the difference between a fluent technique and one that is uncomfortable and potentially injurious.

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Mechanics, Habits, and Emotions

Musicians are often unaware of how they use their bodies. When an injured instrumentalist comes to a performing arts clinic for a consultation, a doctor sometimes videotapes her playing to see if her posture and movement habits could have caused the injury. Often, she is shocked by the instrumental technique she sees on the screen: It is awkward, inefficient, and full of tension. One musician said, "I wouldn't let my students play that way," and burst into tears.

A student playing in one of my master classes leaned over the keyboard at a 45-degree angle throughout her performance. When I adjusted her posture upright, she felt more ease in playing. Nevertheless, in two subsequent classes, she leaned over just as before, unaware that she was not sitting up straight. One day I ran into her in the subway. She said she was on her way to Macy's to buy a full-length mirror so she could check her posture at the piano.

Using a mirror is a good idea. Alexander teacher Hope Martin explains that when habits are deeply ingrained we lose awareness of what we're doing. "Our kinesthetic sense-our sense of the body's position and movement-adapts to our habits and reads them as 'right.' So we may think we're sitting or moving one way when we're really doing something quite different." More than once I've sat or stood sideways in front of a mirror, turned my head to check my posture, and discovered that I was leaning backward or arching my back when I thought I was upright.

Body awareness is especially difficult for musicians because of the emotional nature of music. Emotional energy floods the body in music-making and distracts us from mechanics. Imagine being overjoyed or furious with someone while carrying a cup of tea across the room; it's hard to be smooth and coordinated in the heat of strong emotional energy.

Working with the production of musical sound involves pleasure and sometimes pain. When we experience pleasure, hormones are released into the system, making us even more receptive to sensation. So sensation builds, and our feeling capacity keeps expanding. We hear a lush, passionate section in a piece of Chopin and feel a rush of warm energy spreading through the body. The more we hear it the more we want to hear it again, until we feel saturated. It's a love affair.

How we react to all of this sensation is crucial. We typically react to pleasure by trying to hold on to it. The hands, arms, back, and neck contract and grasp as our passion for the music becomes possessive. This contracting and grasping is tense and uncomfortable. We habitually react to such discomfort by tightening even more, sometimes to the point of creating pain. Resisting these tendencies takes constant practice and is the essence of musical discipline.

Understanding these tendencies can help us slow down and be more aware of how we use our bodies. Focusing on simple body mechanics can go a long way to release us from the hold of emotional reactions.

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Musicians Are Athletes

Musicians don't usually think of themselves as athletes, but they are. While sports like running and football tax the big muscles of the body, practicing a musical instrument makes extreme demands on small muscles. If a musician's little finger feels a bit strained, he might think it's nothing compared to a runner's sore legs. But it can actually be a more serious problem. Here's why.

Muscles are composed of individual fibers. A small muscle depends on relatively few fibers to accomplish a task. When we use small muscles to make rapid, repetitive movements for hours every day, those few fibers are getting a much harder workout than the slower-moving fibers in a runner's leg muscles. In addition, the muscles at the periphery of the body receive less blood than those closer to the center because the blood vessels are smaller, making small muscles still more vulnerable to injury.

We think we aren't working so hard because our heart and lungs aren't pushed like those of a basketball player. Because the whole body doesn't feel tired, we don't realize when we need a break. So we go for hours on end, pushing those little muscles harder and harder, repeating the same movement patterns countless times, unaware of the strain that's building up.

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Muscular Tension and Release

Like the strings of a musical instrument, the body must be neither too tight nor too loose to be in tune for making music. Most of us are too tight. We don't realize that we are using more muscular force than necessary. When the skeleton is properly aligned, it doesn't take much force to make even a very loud sound on the piano.  Excess effort is a common problem.

Physical therapist James Wang explains that muscles work best from a resting or slightly stretched position. Let's say you are playing a chord on the piano. To make the keys go down, you have to contract muscles in your arm. When you contract a muscle, different types of muscle fibers slide past one another in opposite directions, making the muscle shorter. If you begin your move to play the chord with a relatively relaxed arm (using just enough muscular effort to hold the arm in position), the fibers in each muscle have a long distance to travel, which gives power to your movement. It's like delivering a punch from a foot away instead of an inch: The longer the distance, the more power you have. But if you initiate the movement with a tight muscle (one that is already quite shortened), the fibers have less sliding room, so your movement has less power. If you imagine tightening up your whole body and then trying to run, it becomes obvious that excess muscular tension prevents smooth, powerful performance.

Dr. Patrick Fazzari points out that we need our muscles not only for power but also for endurance, speed, and control. Tight muscles fatigue more easily and cannot perform at top speed. And even if you are playing or singing a short, slow piece of music, fine motor control is impossible when muscles are tense. Dr. Fazzari compares a body with tight muscles to a car whose engine is revving too much at a stoplight: When the light turns green and you have to move, you are overly ready to go, and your vehicle (or your body) goes out of control. In contrast, a car that is idling properly, or a muscle that is in resting position, with relaxed, normal tone, will be easy to control when you need to move. You can play pianissimo or execute a difficult leap more easily when your muscles are relaxed.

The importance of muscular relaxation extends beyond the muscles of the playing mechanism. When the body is loose and open inside, it serves as a resonating chamber for the sound produced by the instrument. The music vibrates freely within you because you are not constricted. These unrestricted vibrations in the body travel back into the instrument and create a full, rich sound.

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Effects of Childhood Training

Starting to study an instrument at a young age can create unique problems. Dr. Fadi J. Bejjani points out that before the age of ten the skeleton is still malleable and is shaped by how you play your instrument, so children need to learn the right habits from the beginning.

Musicians are also especially vulnerable between the ages of ten and sixteen, when the body grows very fast but its parts are growing at slightly different rates. The bones might grow a little faster than the ligaments or tendons. Children adapt to these changes in awkward ways with their instruments, which can have a harmful effect. Dr. Bejjani feels that during this awkward period musicians set themselves up for most injuries later on. He points out that at this age musicians also start entering competitions and auditioning, which causes them to push themselves and thus create further physical stress. Teachers need to be sensitive to these issues.

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Respecting Your Individual Body

Teachers also need to encourage students to capitalize on their physical strong points and to avoid repertoire that does not suit their body. Hand therapist Caryl Johnson points out that in addition to hand size and shape, hand flexibility varies greatly from one person to the next. Some musicians naturally have loose connective tissue in their body. If the ligaments (which connect bones to other bones) and the fascia (which encase the muscles and connect them to other muscles) are particularly loose, it can be hard to maintain a strong hand position.

Ms. Johnson is a pianist herself and has unusually flexible hands, which she finds to be both an advantage and a disadvantage. "I can play four- or five-voice fugues with no problem," she says. "But I'm in trouble with Rachmaninoff or Liszt, in pieces where you need a big reach and strength. "Many patients come to her with injuries that could have been avoided if they had stuck to repertoire that didn't stress their hands.

In applying the physiological and movement principles presented in this chapter, I encourage you to pay close attention to how your body feels every step of the way. Do not go faster than you can, and do not force your body to do anything. Your practice time is yours alone. It is a time to let go of pressures and to let your body relax, open up, and make music. If you notice tension or discomfort, stop and let it subside before you continue. If you wish, use the information in this chapter to try to discern what you might have done that might have caused the tension. If discomfort recurs or persists, stop practicing, consult a physician, and seek expert advice on your technique.

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PRINCIPLES OF POSTURE AND MOVEMENT

Performers display a wide variety of physical styles. Glenn Gould and Vladimir Horowitz sat low and crouched over the keyboard; Arthur Rubinstein sat up straight. Some musicians lean forward, others lean back. Some move in all directions, others sit basically still. Some curl their fingers, others play with flat fingers. Is anyone way the right way? Or does it all depend on your personality?

Performing arts physicians find that musicians do have individual differences in their bodies that require adaptations in technique. But they also know that basic principles apply to everyone. Bones are bones, and muscles are muscles. They work in a given way. Health professionals agree that some of the most talented musicians would play even better if they used their bodies more naturally. Although some performers can subject their bodies to unhealthy techniques for years without serious consequences, others have more delicate physical responses and become injured in a short time.

Here is a basic introduction to posture and movement for pianists.

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Posture

I attended a symposium on performing arts medicine at which a doctor showed slides illustrating common physical problems of musicians. The first slide was of an old European painting depicting a group of people playing chamber music. The harpsichordist was hunched over the keyboard with elbows akimbo. The string players were similarly contorted, heads strained to the side, spines and arms in extreme curved positions. Their faces looked pained. He then asked us to imagine this picture with the instruments removed. The room broke into laughter.

We are conditioned to think that making music is a license for using our bodies in strange and uncomfortable ways, and for holding these postures for hours, days, and years on end. We don't like to question or change our habits, for fear of losing our artistic powers. But these strenuous postures do not serve the best interests of either ourselves or the music.

Good posture allows the limbs and breathing muscles to be free and flexible. When the torso is stable, it functions like the trunk of a tree: The limbs move freely without interfering with the balance of the whole organism. I used to think that to get power and expressiveness at the piano I had to lean forward. Most pianists share this habit of straining toward the instrument in some way instead of finding a comfortable posture and letting their arms and hands do the work.

In normal upright posture, with the spine naturally aligned, the head balances easily on top of the spine. If you slump forward, or hunch over, you move the head out of its balanced alignment with the spine, and the neck muscles must work much harder to hold up the head. This tension travels down into the shoulders, torso, arms, and hands. The entire playing mechanism is compromised. If you need to lean forward to reach keys at the extreme ends of the keyboard, keep the neck in line with the rest of the spine and bend from the hip joints. Maintain a feeling of length along your entire spine while you move your back, and keep a sense of width across your shoulders while you reach with your arms. Rotating your torso to the side allows you to reach distant keys without leaning too far.

In an effort to sit or stand up straight, some musicians go to an extreme and arch their backs, throwing their shoulders back. This posture overtightens the lower back, making it an ineffective source of support and putting constant strain on a few muscles. In a more natural spinal alignment, the muscles in the torso don't have to work hard. The bones, together with the connective tissue, take on the load of the body and support you against the force of gravity.

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Posture and Freedom of the Arms

In playing an instrument, the arm (including the hand) functions both as a system of levers and as a conduit for visceral energy. It carries the charge of emotions and hormones from you into your instrument. Therefore, for both good leverage and musical expressiveness, this elegant route from torso to fingertip must be free of unnecessary tension. Shoulder, elbow, and wrist must be efficiently positioned and sufficiently loose for energy to flow through freely.

Tension in the neck and shoulders can put pressure on nerves that lead into the hand, creating pain or numbness in the hand or forearm. Health professionals often find that adopting proper posture alleviates such conditions by releasing tension in neck and shoulder muscles.

Because many neck muscles extend down across the shoulders, tensing the neck by slumping forward creates tension in the shoulders. Try slumping forward as you read this and see what happens in your neck and shoulders compared to when you sit upright. Notice that the tension in the neck and shoulders travels into the arm muscles, too.

Dr. Fadi Bejjani describes the chain reaction this way: The head represents about ten percent of your body weight. When the neck is not positioned advantageously to support the head, the shoulders take on the load. Because this load is too much for the shoulders, it gets transferred to the elbows, then to the wrists and hands, thus potentially hampering their fine-movement capabilities.

Pianists sometimes lower their necks and heads to look down at their hands. Since the spine continues through the neck, lowering the neck alters the alignment of the entire spine, which creates tension in the neck and shoulders that travels into the arms. 1f you need to look down, try moving only your eyes. Or tilt your head forward from the top of your neck (at the level of your ears) instead of dropping your neck. This way, your spine can maintain a natural, comfortable alignment.

Some pianists who wear bifocals tilt their head backward to see the score while playing. This position also strains the neck and the playing mechanism. If you wear bifocals, consider buying another pair of glasses to meet the requirements of playing your instrument.

Many pianists habitually round their shoulders and hunch over when playing, which limits the movement of the collarbone and shoulder blade. These bones work together with the arm bones whenever you move your upper arm (see Figure 1).

The upper arm bone attaches to the shoulder blade, which attaches to the collarbone. All the bones move together as one mechanism.

The two collarbones and two shoulder blades form a yokelike structure, called the "shoulder girdle," which is suspended over the upper rib cage with muscle and other soft tissue in between. Hunching over throws the shoulder girdle forward and compresses the space between it and the ribs in front, limiting the mobility of the shoulder girdle and arms.

The collarbone moves from its joint with the breastbone. Try sitting upright and putting your left hand on your right collarbone. Move your right arm forward and notice that the collarbone moves easily with it. Now hunch over and do the same thing. Notice that the collarbone can hardly move.

Although the shoulder blade attaches to both the collarbone and the upper arm bone, it does not attach to the ribs in back. Instead, it floats in muscle and glides over your back. It is therefore free to move along with the collarbone and provides greater mobility of the arm.

When the shoulder blade has full range of motion, the freedom affects even the fingers. Joan Campbell Whitacre finds that when a musician begins to move his shoulder blade more freely, he becomes more aware of the connection between the shoulder blade and the fingertips. This feeling of freedom and connectivity results in greater freedom and precision in using the hand. Without a free shoulder blade, the hand and forearm have to compromise their natural position and/or movement to perform on the instrument.

To feel how mobile the shoulder blade can be, sit or stand comfortably upright, reach in back of you with your left hand, and touch your right shoulder blade while moving your right arm forward, back, and to the side. Then try to feel this mobility without actually touching the shoulder blade. Finally, play a few notes on your instrument and feel the connection between the shoulder blade and the tip of each finger. Slowly play part of a piece of music, maintaining this feeling of connectedness. Notice how this connectedness affects your playing.

Musicians often fail to take advantage of the mobility of the shoulder blade. Often when I ask a student to move her arm forward, she moves her torso forward at the same time, as if the two body parts were glued together. Using torso muscles to help push keys down is inefficient. These muscles are big, and moving them is a great deal of work. It's much easier to let the arm move freely while keeping the torso in one place, or letting the torso move slightly backward in reaction to the forward movement of the arm.

Leaning forward at the piano, whether you slump or not, cramps arm movement, which limits arm flexibility and power (see Figures 2 and 3).In later sections, I will describe specific piano techniques that provide maximum power without sacrificing the ease of a comfortably upright torso.

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Posture, Circulation, and the Viscera

Collapsing the spine in any way, whether you simply round your shoulders forward or crouch over the piano, constricts the chest. When the chest is naturally uplifted, the heart and lungs have more room to operate. The resulting free circulation of blood and oxygen nourishes the body, improving function. Beyond this purely functional level, keeping the soft, vulnerable front of the torso uncramped and open allows emotional energy to flow more freely through the viscera. The vital energy of the heart, organs, and glands is more available for making music.

A young woman played in one of my workshops with her shoulders rounded slightly forward. When I had her adjust her upper back to a full upright position, tears filled her eyes and she protested in a child's voice, "I don't like it! It makes me mad! I want to protect myself!" I was impressed with her self-awareness. She understood that she needed to let her shoulders be free, but it made her feel painfully exposed because it opened her up emotionally. In spite of her resistance, she courageously released the tension in her shoulders and played in a more uplifted posture. Her playing immediately sounded warmer and richer. The new position gave both her emotions and her arms free range.

Upright posture is part of being human. Animals walk on four legs, and their soft, vulnerable "front" faces the ground. But we face one another fully and exchange emotional energy that way. Laban movement analyst Martha Eddy points out that when we sit or stand in an uplifted way, our organs expand. This fullness, which increases when musical vibrations enter the body, not only lends vital energy to the music but also provides support for the torso, easing the load on the muscles.

Notice how you feel standing or walking in a comfortably uplifted posture versus leaning forward or backward, or hunching over. The feeling your posture creates comes through in the music you make.

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Finding a Good Posture

To find a good sitting posture, balance upright on your sit bones (see Figure 4). You can feel them when you shift your weight on your seat from side to side. Alexander teacher Hope Martin suggests thinking of the sit bones as "feet that support your torso." This image may help you settle firmly and comfortably into your seat. From that solid base, let the spine lengthen upward naturally. Let your shoulders extend out to the sides.

Allowing your neck and jaw muscles to release will help your head find its natural balance on top of the spine and will help the entire spine align itself properly. Feel how your skeleton rocks gently back and forth resting easily on the sit bones. Mentally scan your body from head to toe, releasing any tension you notice in the muscles. Feel a three-dimensional expansion from the center of your torso out, letting yourself breathe fully.

Keeping both feet solidly on the floor gives essential support to the back. Pianists sometimes keep their left heel off the floor, which makes it impossible to maintain an even pelvis, requiring torso muscles to work too hard.

The two sit bones protrude at the base of the pelvis, which attaches to the leg bones at the hip joints.

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Dynamic Balancing

Posture is dynamic, not static. Because we're alive, subtle movements, such as breathing, constantly occur even when we're "sitting still." So it's counterproductive to try to hold a rigid posture. Instead, we need to stay supple in order to respond easily to what the music and instrument require at every moment. When you play your instrument, your weight shifts slightly on your sit bones all the time as you breathe and move your arms.

Sit bones and feet are curved structures. Let yourself rest on them by balancing dynamically, not by trying to hold yourself statically in position. You'll rest much easier that way.

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Getting Help with Your Posture

Because it is difficult to feel exactly how we are sitting or standing, it is helpful to receive guidance on your posture from a movement educator. A practitioner of the Alexander Technique, Body-Mind Centering, the Feldenkrais Method, or Laban Movement Analysis can help you align your spine and use your muscles to achieve easy balance and support. Ask him or her to watch you play and to tell you if a different way of supporting and balancing your weight will allow you to move more freely and naturally.

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USING THE HANDS AND ARMS

Grasping

One of the first things a baby does after it's born is make grasping movements with its hands, wrapping its fingers readily around whatever adult finger is offered. Parents are often surprised at the power of that tiny hand reaching out to hold on to life and other living creatures. The instinct to grasp is so deep that we don't usually stop to question the ways we use our hands or how much they mean to us. We take their power for granted until something reminds us how precious they are.

I remember cutting my little finger badly on the lid of a tin can in the kitchen. Seeing the blood gush out from under a thick flap of flesh, I envisioned the end of my entire musical career and screamed at the top of my lungs, "My finger!" Luckily, no serious damage had been done, and a few stitches patched up my precious finger.

We work hard with our hands, and they bring us great rewards. We maximize these rewards if we use our hands with gentleness. Grabbing an instrument with too much force strains the hands and arms and decreases sensitivity. But yielding to our tender nature and using a minimum of grasping power allows the hands and arms to relax so they can contain more feeling. We discover a truer intimacy with the instrument and the music.

When I was fourteen I began studying with a wonderful teacher in Berkeley named Alexander Libermann. He had a very commonsense way of explaining things. One of the first things he had me do was pick up a pencil and notice the movement my hand made. He pointed out that I automatically knew exactly how much pressure it took to hold the pencil without either squeezing it or dropping it. He explained that playing the piano was the same. Instead of hitting the key, you "take" it, like taking a pencil in your hand. He taught me to use just enough strength to push down the key, and nothing extra.

This kind of awareness is essential. Excess tension in any of the playing muscles prevents vital energy from flowing freely from the body into the instrument. The details of achieving freedom in your playing mechanism require the personal attention of a qualified teacher. The next sections will present a few basic principles for moving the hands and arms with minimum effort.

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Minimum Hand Tension

Health professionals talk about "the position of function" of the hand-a neutral position from which the fingers function with the greatest strength and efficiency (see Figure 5). Dr. Emil Pascarelli suggests finding this position by extending your forearm, not bending your wrist in any particular direction, and turning your hand palm up. The natural curve your hand assumes is the position of function. If you keep that curve and simply turn your hand over onto a piano keyboard, you have a strong, comfortable, loose hand. Whatever instrument you play, staying as close to this model as possible will help you avoid straining your hand and arm. Deviating from it excessively by keeping your fingers raised, curled, or unnecessarily far apart will cause strain.

In the position of function the hand forms a natural arch.

Students usually play with too much tension in their fingers. Some musicians overexert their fingers to exercise their muscles and strengthen them. The fingers themselves don't have any muscles in them; the muscles that control the fingers are in the rest of the hand and mainly in the forearm. Tendons extend from these muscles to move the fingers. So overtensing the fingers creates excess tension in the forearm. This tension prevents the free flow of energy into the hand, making playing difficult and creating an unpleasant sound.

Minimum hand tension in playing the piano begins with sitting at the proper height. If your elbow is lower than the top of the white keys, your hand and forearm must reach up to the keyboard, which places the fingers at a disadvantageous angle for pushing down keys and requires the hand to work too hard. Sitting too low also prevents the weight of the arm from dropping directly into the keys to produce sound. The hand and forearm must overwork to compensate.

To prevent such strain, adjust the height of the bench by following these steps:

1. Sit upright on the bench and drop your arms at your sides.

2. Place your hands on the keyboard in position to play, with your forearms perpendicular to the length of the keyboard.

3. Let your elbows drop naturally rather than holding them against your body or sticking them out to the side.

4. Raise each wrist to the level of the arch of your hand (see Figure 6).

5. If your elbows are not level with the white keys, adjust the piano bench until they are. Use a yardstick or metal tape measure to check that the distance between the floor and your elbow is the same as the distance between the floor and the top of the white keys.

While playing, avoid dropping your wrists below keyboard level.

To train your fingers to move with minimum effort, place one hand on the keyboard, keeping the wrist level with the arch of the hand. Practice playing one note at a time with a loose finger while keeping the other fingers relaxed and resting on the keys. Don't use arm movement at first; simply bend the finger to push the key down without trying to get a big sound. Bending primarily from the base and middle knuckles, rather than the tip joint, will allow you to maintain a strong, comfortable, arched position. When you move your index finger to play, the other four fingers should rest on the keys without tension instead of hovering over the keys or sticking up in the air (see Figures 7 and 8).

Slowly play five white keys in succession, starting with the thumb. When each key is down, check to make sure that your other fingers are relaxed and resting on the keys before you play the next note. If one finger is up even a millimeter, the lifting muscles (extensors), which are on the topside of the forearm (the side in line with the back of the hand), are contracting to hold it up. Since you are simultaneously contracting the bending muscles (flexors), which are on the underside of the forearm (the side in line with the palm of the hand), to press a key down, your entire forearm becomes unnecessarily tight. This phenomenon of "co-contraction" creates a harsh tone and limits speed and expressiveness.

To keep the playing finger as loose as possible, visualize the bones of your finger moving instead of focusing on muscle power. Think of the joints as openings where movement takes place, and visualize the lubricating fluid in the joints flowing. Bend each finger loosely toward the palm of your hand. The thumb works differently than the other fingers. If you move it toward the palm, it goes under the other fingers. We need this movement as well to play the piano; a simple legato scale, for instance, requires passing the thumb under the other fingers every few notes. But to push a key down, the thumb must move vertically instead of bending from the knuckle.

If you learn to use the fingers this way without adding any extra push from the arm, you will have the first foundation of efficient, comfortable movement and a beautiful tone. Even if some fingers are at first too weak to produce sound, keep using them in this relaxed way until they acquire enough strength to make sound. Once this control of your fingers becomes a habit, your mind will be free to focus on adding arm movements to your technique. These will be discussed later.

When playing with relaxed fingers becomes a habit and you have developed wrist and arm freedom as well, you can add a little bit of pressure with the fingerpads (the cushiony part of the fingertips) to produce a penetrating sound. Don't let the hand become tense; just slightly squeeze the key with the fingerpad and keep the hand as loose as possible.

Keeping the hand loose also requires not opening the fingers spread apart longer than necessary. Opening the hand is more strenuous than leaving it in a neutral position. Choose fingerings that minimize the amount of time your hand is stretched. Also, when reaching a distant key requires you to open your hand, release the stretch immediately after playing that note. So, on the keyboard, if you stretch from your right thumb on middle C to your little finger on the C above, let your other fingers move back to a less open position as soon as you've played the higher note. It's like opening and closing a fan: Open your hand to a full reach, then release the reach to allow the muscles to recuperate. Adding wrist and arm movement, which I will describe later, will make it easier to reach distant keys.

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Retraining Your Hands

Learning to let go of tension takes mental, not physical, effort. Once a muscle is tightened, the only way to release it is to allow it to release. You can't make the muscle release by using additional muscular effort.

Retraining initially requires limiting your practice time so that you can work with great mental focus. If you are recovering from an injury, you may need to limit practice time to as little as fifteen minutes a day. Or you might benefit most by practicing only ten minutes at a time so that your mind is fresh and alert. Whether you have had an injury or not, in order to program new movement patterns into the nervous system, each move you make must be done with as much awareness as possible. Work slowly, paying attention to one movement at a time without anticipating the next move. As you practice, the new way of moving will take less and less conscious effort to maintain. Eventually, it will become automatic-a new habit that replaces the old one.

If you are recovering from a practice-related injury, it is most important to notice when your muscles begin to feel slightly tired and to stop at that point. If you push yourself further, you may experience pain and reinjure yourself.

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Wrist Flexibility and Position

The fingers enable us to handle objects with precision and refined control. The wrist, arm, and shoulder serve to position the hand in space. Their high degree of mobility suits this purpose well.

The wrist contains eight bones that roll around against one another like marbles, providing tremendous flexibility.2 Whether the wrist bones are mobile or stabilized, the wrist functions as a dynamic bridge that allows energy to flow between the fingers and the forearm.

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EXTREME POSITIONS

Performing arts physicians find that musicians who repeatedly bend their wrist into extreme positions often develop carpal tunnel syndrome-an injury in which forearm muscles become so tense that they put pressure on a main nerve leading into the hand, causing numbness and incoordination.3

Sitting too low at the piano requires the forearm to reach upward to the keyboard. The wrist must therefore maintain a high position to place the fingers at an advantageous angle for depressing the keys. This constant flexion of the wrist causes strain and prevents energy from flowing naturally from the arm into the hand.

Some pianists drop the wrist below a neutral position at times. (Figure 5 shows the neutral position of the wrist.) Dropping the wrist below this level requires your hand to reach upward to the keys even if you are sitting at the proper height. In addition to making the fingers overwork, this position stresses the wrist.

These problems are common with computer users as well. Many corporations have been served multimillion-dollar lawsuits because they did not provide workers with properly designed chairs, desks, and computer accessories, requiring employees to work in uncomfortable positions that resulted in hand and arm injuries.

To prevent such strain at the piano, sit at the proper height and avoid dropping your wrist below keyboard level. Although the wrist may be raised momentarily at times, it must not be held statically in a raised position.

Using the hand in an extremely stretched position on the keyboard can be overly strenuous if the wrist is not slightly raised. Letting the wrist move up also allows arm muscles to work easily. The arm provides needed power that can't be produced by finger movement alone. In an old school of piano technique, teachers put a coin on the back of a student's hand and punished him if it fell off because it meant the wrist had moved. I often see pianists who are unaccustomed to moving their wrists. Once they learn how to move them properly, their playing opens up due to the increased flow of energy into their hands.

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Using the Arm and Wrist to Help the Fingers

The arm is heavier and stronger than the fingers, so it provides a great deal of power. Imagine trying to lift a heavy object or make a loud sound on a piano with finger exertion alone. Such excessive strain is unnecessary. Even soft sounds on a piano are often best created by using the force or weight of the arm to help out the fingers.

To understand the difference between finger leverage and arm leverage, use a keyboard to play the same series of notes (or play on a table, imagining the keys) in three different ways:

1. Use only finger flexion (bending) to press the keys.

2. Without bending the fingers, move the arm forward and back, letting the wrist move up and down. The finger functions as an extension of the arm, and the movement of the arm makes the key go down.

3. Use a combination of fingers and arm, bending the fingers normally and letting the arm move forward and back so that the wrist moves up and down.

Most of the time, combining finger and arm movement is easiest and most natural because all the levers of the playing mechanism share the work.

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Traversing the Keyboard

The forward movement of the arm, and consequent raising of the wrist, is particularly useful when transferring the weight of the arm from a long finger-such as the second or third finger-to a shorter onesuch as the fourth or fifth finger.4

Try balancing your arm weight on your third finger on a table, or on a white key of the piano. Let your arm "stand" on that finger, shifting the weight of the arm from side to side to feel that the weight is balanced on the fingertip.

Then shift your arm weight to the fourth finger and notice how the arm has to move forward to balance on the shorter finger, raising the wrist (see Figure 9). The wrist doesn't need to move very much to give you the feeling of "standing" on the finger. Moving the wrist up too far weakens the connection between arm and hand. You want to feel a firmness in the fingertip that comes from the weight of the arm dropping into it, and a connection between the shoulder blade and the fingertip. Rather than statically holding the wrist up away from the pull of gravity, let the wrist respond dynamically to the movement of the finger so that the impact of pushing the key travels through the wrist into the forearm and is distributed through the entire length of the arm.

Finally, transfer your arm weight to the fifth finger. Notice that the arm and wrist move still farther (see Figure 10).

By using this technique you lighten the load on your fingers and keep energy flowing through your wrist. Do not keep the wrist in a raised position, but let it move naturally in response to the movement of the fingers.

This shift of arm weight also works for moving to black keys because they are farther back on the keyboard.5 Select a passage that uses both black and white keys on the piano and experiment with this movement of the arm. It's like navigating across the terrain of the keyboard, being aware of the ups and downs of your hand and of the topography.

Maureen tried this technique at her lesson but couldn't get the hang of it. Then she suddenly exclaimed with a big smile, "Oh, I see! It's like walking on the keys!" This is an accurate description. When you walk, you transfer the weight of your body from one foot to the other. Because the fingertips are curved and together form a curved line, if you are playing fast it feels more like rolling over the keys. This walking or rolling sensation in playing is comfortable and provides a feeling of intimacy with your instrument. The hand feels molded to the contours of the keyboard.

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Springing, Buoyancy, and Feedback

If you are "walking" your arm slowly across a keyboard, try springing gently from your fingertips to propel the arm forward. This movement is similar to springing from your feet when you walk: Instead of relying exclusively on big hip and thigh muscles to lift your feet off the ground, you also engage smaller muscles, of the lower legs and the feet. Initiating a movement with a smaller body part distributes the labor, making the movement more efficient.

In the springing motion, the finger grasps the key (you can feel this on a table just as well) pushing against it and propelling the arm upward and forward while you hold the key down. This technique is easier and more natural than pushing the arm forward from the shoulder or upper arm. It is similar to what swimmers do when they reach the end of a swimming pool and turn around to swim back: They push off from the side of the pool by springing from their feet. Springing creates momentum, it feels good, and it provides a change of pace from other types of movement.

When you spring from the surface of a key, your initial contact with the instrument is soft and sensitive because you focus on the cushioned sensation in the fingerpad (the fleshy part of the fingertip) rather than on exertion of the upper arm and shoulder. Joan Campbell Whitacre describes the difference this way: "You need big, powerful arm and shoulder muscles primarily to position the arm and hand so that the fingers can make contact with the instrument. When you work harder with these muscles than this action requires, your intention is to be powerful. But when you initiate from the fingertips, your intention is to touch the instrument with the feeling of the music and to work from that sensation into a gradual recruitment of the power needed to fully express the feeling. The result is a more sensitive touch. It's mechanically efficient and can be as powerful as it needs to be, but it remains sensitive."

Because springing forward from the fingertips provides a great deal of power with minimum effort, it's an easy way to make a loud sound on the piano. It also allows you to easily play two or more keys at a time with one hand. Try playing a chord using only finger movement; you will notice it' s somewhat difficult. Then play the same chord using arm movement to help the fingers; it will be easier. The slight grip of the fingertips creates a penetrating sound. The looseness of the arm makes the sound full and relaxed as well.

Because springing gives you power, it helps in shaping phrases. In a simple two-note phrase, for example, you can easily create a decrescendo by springing on the first note and simply pressing the second key with your finger. The energy of the spring will carry your hand to the end of the phrase and help to create a legato effect.

Springing frequently works well also in playing long notes because it allows you to keep moving instead of freezing in place. Occasional, well-placed springs in a slow melody help you keep a sense of continuity.

Springing makes the arm feel buoyant, and pleasant vibrations from contacting the instrument feed back into the body. Be sure to maintain a sense of connection between your fingertips and your shoulder blade so that the energy can flow freely through the arm in both directions.

Try springing your fingertips on a tabletop and notice the effect on your arm and body. It's like walking with a spring in your step-the energy from pushing against the ground with your feet feeds back into your feet and through your legs. You feel solid and supported by the ground, but also light. Springing from your fingertips gives your instrumental technique the lightness and precision of a cat springing from its feet.

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Staccato - A Variant of Springing

Staccato is often best accomplished on the piano by springing the hand and arm up off the keys, which I call "bouncing." The fingertip initiates the bounce by grasping or "biting" the key and propelling the arm straight up, just as you would jump with your feet from a trampoline. This movement is easier than brushing the key with the fingertip (moving the finger toward the palm of the hand), as pianists sometimes do. You simply let the whole arm bounce up from the keys, and then let it drop so that the hand lands on the keys in position for the next note before playing it.

To learn this technique, think "bounce, land" with every note. Landing means letting your fingers rest on the keys after every note instead of holding tension in the hand by keeping the fingers in the air. It economizes on movement: Instead of playing a note and then searching for the next key, you aim for the next key when you bounce off the first one, and you go directly to it.

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Buoyancy, Support, and the Circulation of Energy

Because the piano rests on the floor while you play it, the instrument provides a degree of physical support for the body. When springing, instead of just going through the motions with your hands and arms, tune into the energy that comes back into your body from the instrument. Laban Movement Analyst Martha Eddy describes a piano as "a very fancy cane, in some ways," that supports the body. Feel how your arms would just fall downward if the instrument were not there to support them. Give in to gravity and let the instrument support you. The arms will then relax, and movement will feel effortless.

The arrows marked on the photos in Figure 11 show how springing allows energy to circulate freely through the body.

1. The force of gravity on your entire body counterbalances

2. the upward force on the fingertips when the piano keys hit bottom.

3. Springing from the fingertips to propel the arm upward and forward sends an impulse from the fingertips up the arm and

4. down the spine.

5. This impulse reaches the sit bones, sending a counter impulse up from the seat. The counterimpulse continues upward through the spine and

6. forward through the arm.

Energy thus circulates continuously through the body.

Joan Campbell Whitacre describes this free give and take of energy as similar to a handshake: "You can shake someone's hand as much to receive what they're giving to you as to give what you're offering to them. Then you take something into you from them, and the communication is more complete."

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Rotation

Another important movement is forearm rotation. This is the movement we make when turning a doorknob. To understand how rotation works, extend your forearm in front of you with the palm facing up. Then turn the arm over so that the palm faces down. Figure 12 shows that when the palm of the hand faces up, the two forearm bones–the radius and the ulna-are parallel. As the palm turns downward, the radius rotates around the ulna so that the two bones cross to form an X.

Place your left hand on your right forearm bones at the wrist to feel how this rotation happens. Notice that only the forearm seems to shift position, not the upper arm. But if you press against the upper arm bone while doing the rotation, you will notice that it moves slightly also.

Notice that when the two forearm bones are parallel, there is considerable space between them. This space is occupied by various muscles, tendons, and connective tissues. Although this space changes shape when the radius rotates around the ulna to bring the two bones into an "X" relationship, it does not close up. Therefore, during rotation, focus on maintaining this space to allow the forearm muscles to remain relaxed.

The springing motion on the piano often involves some degree of forearm rotation. For example, if you transfer your arm weight from the tip of your third finger to the tip of your fourth or fifth finger, the arm has to move toward that outer corner of your hand. This diagonal movement combines the forward spring with a rotation of the forearm. The forearm rotates out to the side, changing the angle of the palm of the hand.

The example of piano music below (Example 1) is marked with arrows indicating where a springing motion is used. The third, fourth, and fifth arrows mark notes that require a diagonal springing motion, which includes rotation of the arm.

Pure rotation, uncombined with any forward movement of the arm, is also an important technique. In example 2, subtle springing motions are used to negotiate the eighth notes (spring on the notes played by the fourth finger) while rotation accomplishes a clear melodic line in the same hand.

Rapid back-and-forth rotation of the arm accomplishes brilliant trills and tremolos. It is the only repetitive movement the body can make that is as fast as the finger trill. Getting the arm into the act gives trills much more power.

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"Dropping In" with the Arm

In buoyant movements like springing, we use our muscles to counteract gravity. Often we need to know how to take advantage of gravity instead. We take gravity for granted. But think how powerful and all-pervasive it is-without it we'd go floating off into space, along with pianos, cars, and everything else that's not attached to the ground.

In transferring arm weight from one finger to another (the "walking" movements described earlier), we use gravity to move efficiently over the keyboard. Gravity can also serve us well when we make larger arm movements.

Eliciting a ringing sound from a piano often works best when, instead of working hard with the arm, you just let the weight of the arm drop into the instrument. Instead of pushing the keys, you use gravity to make them play, with just enough muscular effort to hold the arm at the most effective angle and control the force of the drop.

To drop freely, the arm has to be loose. Try lifting your arms up and then tightening the muscles; it becomes impossible to drop your arms. To let them drop toward your instrument, you need to release the muscles. Then the arms will fall automatically.

When a pianist has difficulty letting the arm drop freely, I suggest the following exercise. Sit upright on a firm seat and place the palm of your hand, fingers open, on your thigh. Make a few quick gripping motions with the fingers to get a sense of the spring power in your hand. Now spring your whole arm straight up into the air and let it fall back down. If your arm is very loose, your hand will spring easily above the level of your head and fall fast and hard with a smack on your leg. If it's tight, it will resist the spring and fall with less force. Repeating the exercise a few times can help loosen the arm.

Paul used this exercise to loosen his arm for playing a Chopin waltz. Before doing the exercise, his playing sounded restrained. When he played again after doing the exercise, the piano rang with such fullness that it sounded like a different instrument. He looked at his arm in awe, wondering where this powerful, new limb had come from.

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Experimenting with Different Arm Techniques

You need a teacher to guide you in applying these techniques to a variety of musical passages. When working with arm movement on your own, try to feel a healthy balance between mobility and stability of the wrist. If the wrist is too loose, the line of energy from the arm into the hand is broken. If it's too tight, the flow of energy toward the fingers stops at the wrist.

Getting stuck in any one pattern of using the arm overtaxes one group of muscles, creating tension that can lead to injury. As in any other physical activity, it doesn't feel good to do the same thing over and over. Paying attention to how you feel, varying your movements, and taking frequent breaks to stretch and relax are the best insurance against unpleasant and possibly harmful practicing.

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1 Glenn Plaskin, "Learning from the Master," M Magazine, September 1985, p. 91

2 Wynn Kapit and Lawrence M. Elson, The Anatomy Coloring Book  (New York; HarperCollins, 1977), plate 17

3 Richard Norris, M.D. , A Musician's Survival Guide: A Guide to Preventing and Treating Injuries in Instrumentalists (St. Louis, Mo.; International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, 1993), pp. 59-61

4 Abby Whiteside, The Indispensables of Piano Playing (New York: Coleman-Ross Company, Inc., 1955), p.74.

5 Ibid.

Photographs courtesy Steinway Hall.

The three drawings are taken from The Body Moveable by David Gorman and modified by William Conable in How to Learn the Alexander Technique. They are used by permission.