TEACHING PIANO AT THE EARLY GRADES: The All Important Thumb

     I had just begun my tenure as a university professor when after a concert I was ambushed by several local piano teachers. They had heard I "didn't believe in scales." They were outraged at the sacrilege. 

    "Well," I responded as I stepped back, pressing my hands against the cinderblock for support. "'Believe' is such a loaded word." My mind is racing to place their complaint in context. How had I gained this reputation as an infidel—and so early in my career? "My students tend to be advanced," I offered. "They come to me (presumably) already equipped with scales, so I don't teach scales and certainly don't want to hear them."

This seemed to quell the hysteria somewhat. But I was on a roll, now, and not about to release them back into the wild without more information. I pointed out that scales are necessary as an aspect of keyboard harmony and topography—and most importantly, how the thumb works in coordination with the other fingers. But once fluent with hands together at a moderate tempo in all major and melodic minor keys, relentless practicing of scales hoping for some miraculous technical advancement is a waste of time. Yes, waste of time. The scales we practice in "root"position rarely occur in concert music, if ever. We are better off extracting scales from repertoire we want to play and practicing those. My inquisitors are right, though, to question my pedagogy. For their elementary students, scales are imperative.

    So what is a scale? If we're going to teach scales, we should know what they are. An octave-worth of notes that move stepwise in the same direction? Yes. Two groups of notes that fall easily under the hand? Yes. (Getting warmer.) Two groups of notes played by fingers and are connected by the thumb. Connected by the thumb! What we need to teach when the time comes is how to efficiently manage the so-called thumb crossing from one group of notes to another. If I had to describe a single most important aspect of piano technique, it would be how to use the thumb, a technique that is often misunderstood and one that can be taught in the early grades. 

    The thumb is itinerant. It does not reside on the white keys alongside the fingers as we are sometimes told as children: "Every finger lives in its own house, including the thumb." Not true. Try it. This gesture crunches the hand into a ball, pulling muscles against each other. The thumb has two jobs: Playing its note and clicking the hand into the new position.

    Here is a demonstration. The thumb crossing appears at about 4:40. Forearm Rotation and Thumb crossing.

    Once the crossing is mastered in each hand separately ascending and descending, the hands need to learn to play together. The issue here, of course, is about coordination, which is another story. Here's a hint: The crossing occurs first in the right hand, then in the left. Make a nutshell example beginning on the  third note in each hand and ending on the sixth note. What does this look like? How does it feel? I know this sounds complicated, but it is really quite simple once the hands learn to work together.

    Stay tuned.

     

Teaching Piano: What Should Teachers Know?

  

   

In a piano forum on teaching, the question came up as to how much pianistic skill a teacher should have. Should the teacher be able to demonstrate any piece the student brings? Alas, I jumped in feet first, which is not easy with one foot in mouth, and declared if the teacher can't demonstrate, the student should ask for his money back. In retrospect, this does seem a bit harsh. Still, I have to ask, what is the reasonable expectation of the inquiring student.

    Should the teacher be able to play at performance level all of the teaching repertoire? Especially as the repertoire becomes more and more challenging? Certainly at the elementary and intermediate levels the teacher should be able to demo the material, at least in fragments. At the advanced level, though, should the teacher present only repertoire he has himself studied, perhaps performed? Sticky question. In my experience I have noticed that it is possible to be an effective teacher at the elementary and intermediate levels without being a concert pianist. Many of my university students came to me from non-performing teachers. The operative issue at any level is whether the teacher can explain or demonstrate technical and musical issues as they arise.

    So, in order to earn the right to keep the fee, we teachers arm ourselves with information. We know how to observe a good hand position, one in which the wrist is like a bridge between the hand and forearm. We know to watch for occasions in which the student stretches to an extreme in order to oblige the printed page, when in fact that is unnecessary and potentially harmful. (The score tells us how the music sounds, not how it feels in

our hands.) We notice when the student stumbles and, instead of advising only to practice slowly or in rhythms, look underneath the hood and decide what mechanism isn't working. (Is this the best fingering? Is the arm behind each finger as it plays? Is the thumb-crossing understood? Can the notes be grouped or shaped more efficiently?)

    Demonstrations are great and can be an inspiration to the student. My undergraduate teacher, Muriel Kerr, was an outstanding artist and when she demonstrated a passage, it inspired me to head for the practice room. But she didn't have the technical information on the tip of her tongue that I sometimes craved. She had been a child prodigy and likely didn't really know how she did it. So, demonstration alone is not the answer either. If there must be a choice, I'll take information over demonstration any day. Both together, though, well in that case we deserve double the fee.

    

    

Piano Scales: Fixing the Potholes

     A student writes: "I have noticed that if (during practice) scales or runs begin to feel a bit uneven or bumpy, this can often be corrected by playing the scale or run up and down four octaves at a moderate tempo while randomly stopping momentarily just before playing a particular note (i.e. stopping short and then continuing without any preconceived pattern in mind). The “stopped” finger (the one that would play next) is held back from playing for a quarter-note rest, and then I continue on for a few more notes before stopping again with another finger, etc."
     "My best guess," he continues, "is that the sudden stopping of a finger and then releasing it has the effect of contracting and then releasing opposing muscles that I was allowing to tense up.  This random-stoppage approach seems to add something to the rag-doll relaxation-and-shake-out approach to creeping tension."

Walking from note to note.

     Without seeing what he is doing, it is difficult to diagnose the unevenness of his scales. What he describes as a remedy strikes me as arbitrary and perhaps less reasonable than examining underlying causes. 
        Usually, "bumpiness" is the result of a misunderstanding of how the thumb works while crossing. When anticipating a thumb crossing, allow the thumb to hang—yes, hang—behind the next finger. It should hang more or less behind the finger that is playing. Also, he should allow the forearm to move at an angle behind the playing finger in the direction of the music. This puts the playing apparatus in a perfect position to play the thumb rotationally. (Select the tab "Demo" above and choose "Forearm Rotation" for a demonstration.)
     But first, he should make sure that he is really completing each note of the scale before going on to the next. This is an opportunity to review basic forearm rotation. If the weight of the forearm is really transferred to each note as if walking, and if his fingers are each "at rest" at the bottom of the key, evenness should come easily. Feel the rotation a little exaggerated at first, but then in speed don't think of it at all. I know, this is what confuses a lot of people. In speed we rely more on shaping and the "memory" of the sensation of completing each note.

     There are video demos under the iDemo tab above. For more on this and other topics have a look at:

                         Piano Technique Demystified

Voicing the Melody in Beethoven's Pathetique: Playing in the Sand

   In a recent piano class, I worked with a student on a performance of Beethoven's 'Pathetique' sonata, second movement. She was capable of producing an agreeable singing sound, though her attention seemed to be focused on the obsure, particularly in the opening measures. Or perhaps her attention, that is, her ear, was not focused at all. We heard in her performance a very nice rendering of the viola part, the accompanying sixteenth-notes. Yes, really. Nothing against the viola, but I'm almost positive that Beethoven meant for the first violin to dominate.

     I decided to use the occasion to talk about voicing chords, although there is another solution that is quite workable and perhaps more practical for some pianists on some pianos.

 

   I told her to picture herself at the beach, sitting at the shore line. Now, I told her, imagine your fingers making small indentations on the wet sand, allowing the fourth finger to go a little deeper. That's the feeling. Of course, we're talking about distribution of weight and both fingers have to move down at the same time. In this case, she needs to tilt her hand to the fourth-finger side. The problem is compounded by the fact that four is already lower than two, as two is on a black key. After working through another exercise, playing the melody note (C) slightly ahead of the accompanying note (Ab) (not my favorite device, though it can help), she began to get the sensation. 

     And that's what it is, a sensation. I showed her how to apply the principle to various triads, featuring each voice. It's fun and an essential skill for all pianists.

     Alternatively, it's possible to play the viola and cello lines in the left hand for the first measure and a half. This can give the anxious player a leg up. I do think, though, it's preferable to play these opening one-and-a-half bars as printed because immediately after it becomes necessary to play the parts as printed. Still, as the melody continues, voicing in the right hand is easier because the combinations of notes place most of the top notes on black keys.

Piano Voices from the Past

      

A student recently brought Brahms's Op. 117, No. 1, the first of three "lullabies of my grief," as the composer described them. This first one always strikes me as being like a barcarolle, waves gently slapping the sides of a small boat. Of course, the image of a baby rocking in a cradle will also do nicely—perhaps hanging from a bough? (There is, though, an undercurrent of melancholy.) 

     We decided that it wasn't necessary to do much at all in terms of

rubato; the notes played evenly in a slow two (slight pulse on one, less on two) with a singing tone would suffice. Normally, I suggest that advanced students workout for themselves the inner meanings, not that music can really communicate specific thoughts. Creating moods, though, is the creative domain of the introspective pianist and sometimes visiting the distant past by means of recordings can draw out a personal point of view. 

     Carl Friedberg was a student of Clara Schumann and mentored by Brahms, himself. Here's his recording of said piece, age 81.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4-oOizOgVU

PIANISTS IN PERFORMANCE: WHAT SHOULD I THINK ABOUT?

      Have you ever experienced in performance what I call mind chatter? This is an interruption in the logical flow of musical thought. It can occur without even noticing; the focus of the playing seems intact, but there is some peripheral distraction. This is akin to being in a theater thoroughly entranced by a film, yet at the same time aware that someone has come in and sat down next to you.

     This concept came up the other day during a lesson in which the student found herself caught somewhere between reading the score and playing from memory. I pointed out that memorizing was the surest way to make the music a part of her psyche. It does not matter in performance whether the score is present or not. But if it is present, the player has to know when and where to look, where on the page is the passage in question. This, then, becomes part of the thought process. 
     

    The great harpsichordist Wanda Landowska, a musician who many thought had a direct line of communication with Bach in the great beyond, was once being interviewed by some eager young 

Wanda Landowska

admirer. "Oh, Madame Landowska, when you play I feel the presence of Bach himself. The music speaks to me in such a special way. Tell me, please, what do you think about when you perform?" To which the great lady replied, "The notes, dear, the notes."
      

     Well, yes, first the notes. But probably not in isolation. The notes are connected to an idea of their relationship to one another and to some concept of how smaller ideas add up to the whole of the piece. When we sit down to play, we must start with the big ideas. In speed, it is impossible to conceive of individual notes. It is better to be like the orator who speaks off the cuff, who embraces his audience with his full attention and speaks warmly and enthusiastically of the big ideas he finds compelling, rather than the public speaker who, not really wanting to be there, reads with precision from a printed speech. Of course, in addition to being inspiring, we pianists are required to be precise, too.
     Once when performing the fugue in Beethoven's Op. 110 sonata, I became aware, suddenly, that in addition to feeling the mounting excitement of the passage, I heard an inner voice chanting, "come on, Beethoven." This was a sort of cheering section, encouraging me on to victory. This had never happened before, but I suspect it had to do with an underlying apprehension of playing a fugue from memory, even though I had already done it many times. I'm happy to report that we were victorious, Beethoven and I.
     Every performer is different, just as each occasion can inspire different results, but I think it comes down to this: Whatever we can latch on to that keeps us in the groove, that keeps us focused on the expression of the music, that is fair game; whatever works. But beware the voice that asks what's for supper. Slap him down and get back to the matters in hand.