Sunday, June 26, 2016

160626. Piano Fitness Hypotheses II Hungarian Rhapsody No.2, S.244/2 (Liszt, Franz)

Piano fitness is fresh.    See what's fresh from the inside out.  Balancing hips, heart and head will maintain freshness.  The mind's pure awareness is never identical.  This is the beauty of playing live music - it is never repeated exactly the same.

"The universal does not allow perfection."- Steven Hawking


It's been over 2 years since Chopin op. 60 barcarolle began the 1st hypotheses.  While significant insights for understanding piano technic from last March continue to be developing,  this 2nd piece will start fresh from where piano training is today.

June 2 is when I began the first page
June 9 the 2nd page


Thursday, June 23, 2016

160623 !! Recommitted !!

piano fitness is sometimes boring.   Boredom is included in life, hopefully occasionally, problematic if too frequent.  The balance between feeling ready to enjoy rehearsal and remembering long term goal when boredom occurs.  Learning to listen is ongoing.  Rehearsals have been minimal, but awareness of connection still improves and, as always, finger 2 is the linch pin.

Minimal postings due to boredom because it is 4 years of changing the 2nd knuckle.   Tangentially effected are the leader and the middle, but the whole body is responding to the changes.

With inclusion of the upper arm roll and quicker wrists, "watching" the fingers move is (too slowly) becoming habit.

Monday, June 6, 2016

160606

Piano fitness is infinite.

 4 years ago, June 2012, I began including concepts from Tom Mark's book- "What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body" into my piano rehearsing.  The development of Piano Fitness Postural Fundamentals  results in consciously changing: how I sit, support the arm movement in 3 planes, indentify elements that need improvement, rehearse mindful movements, releasing all joints and learning to watch the fingers move!  Along the way, others have contributed further insights into learning to listen with a mind/body connection.  Information from the Facebook  Piano Technic discussion group  has been extremely useful in correcting decades of improper form :

http://pianoscience.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/collapsing-fingers-simple-illustration.html?m=1

http://andrewthayer.co.uk/index.php?p=1_6_Essays-on-piano-technique

A forgotten link video tip:  "the faster I move my wrist, the faster my fingers move."

If my former instructor, Alex Hanway, is correct, taking 5 years to develop the musculatur for playing piano, I feel the 5th year's most significant improvements will be training prestissimo fingers.

With the last post was almost a year ago, redundancy lead to fewer new posts.  The primary hinderence was and still is releasing the locked the bridge knuckle of the 2nd fingers.  For 4 years, the consistent observation of releasing this joint has been at the forefront.   Undoing decades of unconsciously incorrect rehearsal has been slowly and steadily changing while pure awareness of everything has grown.  The challenge always being:  to allow a new way to be seen with a renewed mind and rehearsing the elements until they settle back into  unconscious habit.  It has been an exciting, frustrating, but extremely worthwhile adventure that appears to have no end.    

Piano fitness is infinite.