The 5 Basic Motions of Piano Technique

hi I'm Dr Marianne Lee and I'm coming to you from St Amber's University in Davenport Iowa if you clicked on this video you're probably interested in the five basic motions of piano technique and I learned these five basic motions from my teacher at the Juilliard School in New York City he was my very first piano Professor there and I studied with him for four years doing my bachelor's degree um his name is yorgi shandor he's a Hungarian pianist and in America they like to call him George shandor and I learned many valuable lessons from him uh particularly because a couple years prior he had just published a new book on piano technique so he spoke at length about those about these techniques and these motions these technical patterns at my lessons which I would like to share with you it is they are Concepts that I've held in my entire life and have avoided injury because of them and so I wanted to share these with you and then also dedicate this video to his memory and his teaching Legacy I remember in our lessons and everywhere he gave master classes he always emphasized the point that muscles are in piano playing our work interdependently not independently and that it was futile to try to build muscles in your fingers and all these torturous finger exercises that pianists you know had to endure in the classical and Romantic Period not all of them of course but some of them were um he he felt was um kind of um feudal and so um he told us that they worked independently so that the finger is attached to the hand which is attached to the wrist which is attached to the forearm which is attached to the upper arm which is attached to your back shoulders and then back and then chest and diaphragm and that that everything began with the diaphragm or the breath which I to this day I I really appreciate that he he understood how important breathing was to playing piano um and he also emphasizes that it's important to understand the range of motion that each part of your body is capable of so with the finger the finger can go up Up and Down um the the hands can go up and down and move side to side with the help of the wrist the forearm can go up and down and side to side as well with the help of the elbow and and of course rotation and then the upper arm can go up and down and with the help of the elbow and the shoulder can go side to side and I'm going to add to this um my own personal opinions that we can extend it down to our lower part of our body which includes the butt and the legs and the feet so um uh if you want to get to especially if you want to get to the extreme sides of the piano to the far right or to the far left Sean already said put your leg out to the right to help center yourself and balance yourself and I would add to that you know shift your weight to the right right butt cheek so that you feel always centered and strong try to avoid you know scooching your butt down this way or that way and same thing with the left side you know you put your left foot out and to reach comfortably over to the far left and a very good tip is uh when you're playing but if both hands have to go to the extreme side to lean in with your back and then if you need to play a lot in the very center to lean back so that you're not squeezing the space right here and that your arms your forearms and elbows have room to move okay so I think we're ready to begin uh learning our five basic motions so the first motion is free fall so the general idea of Free Fall is that originates with the lifting of the upper arm and that gravity is doing the rest of the work you just let the arm fall and that's what generates the sound so I like using a ball to demonstrate this idea of free fall and that how natural it is so when I toss the ball up in the air that's equivalent to me raising my upper arm and then you'll see gravity take the ball down and then what's very important is notice the rebound that happens afterwards the momentum of the Fall brings the ball naturally back back up and and then I want you to pay attention to the sound that it creates here we go and so as you saw that the energy was enough to bring the ball all the way back up and the sound was actually significant okay so imagine the weight of your whole arm doing that so chander introduces some simple exercises that you can do just on single notes and then you can do them on double notes and cords and octaves [Music] and it's completely effortless now because you are using gravity you can't rush gravity right then it turns into a different motion so it does take time to fall so um you know you would use the these in musical passages where um at slower tempos up to moderate tempos so I'd like to show some musical excerpts where you would actually use free fall so go ahead and and focus on my left hand I'm going to use the Chopin Sonata in B-flat minor the very opening [Music] so you get a very nice big round sound and you know gravity did all the work so here's an example a second example from Chopin's the opening of the third Sonata [Music] [Applause] [Music] you can see that you can get a tremendous amount of sonority and you know I I hardly felt it felt effortless because I was being so efficient with my movement and I could feel my torso and my breath and then I was making those horizontal adjustments I was telling you about with the body and it was it felt great so that is free fall our second motion is Five Finger scale and arpeggio shondor really believed in alignment he felt the finger always needs to align with your wrist and your forearm so whether it's the thumb or the third finger or the fifth finger you should be able to draw a straight line from the finger through the forearm that is good alignment okay and so I'm going to show you the horizontal adjustments that happen when you go play from finger to finger from first finger to the pinky and back notice I'll put my second my left hand finger here and now just notice how the wrist how much the wrist travels as I play from second third fourth fifth do you see the distance it traveled it's not small and back so those micro adjustments are really important for the hand to feel balanced and um and and so it's very important not to play in a fixed position um and here it is in the left hand foreign addition to the horizontal adjustment there's a vertical a very um on a microscopic level the vertical adjustment so you know our finger our fingers the thumb and the pinky are our shortest fingers right and then we've got these longer fingers in the middle so we need to kind of help these these poor little guys out and so if you look at the shape of the hand you know the thumb is sitting quite low compared to the rest of the fingers so that's why the thumb likes to stay low now I'm going to pinpoint with my other hand where the wrist is now watch how microscopically it when I play second third fourth fifth how much the wrist has gone up to help the pinky and on the way down foreign so when we play scales we kind of use both that horizontal and vertical adjustment so watch how when I play a simple C major scale how my I kind of start with a fall and I kind of rise up and as I go on every time the thumb Falls my hand goes down and then when you get to the end of your scale as you're heading towards the center it's quite easy you just stick out your elbow and Zoom your back in so you know I was thinking like why why is that for One Direction you have to move and go up and down so much and then the other direction you don't have to move as much and I realize it's because you know towards this part of the hand in the right hand you're running out of fingers to play and you need the thumb again so the thumb has to jump over all these other fingers to get to keep going so that's why I suggest when you're um when you're getting to the end of a group you go that that finger right before the thumb is very important to kind of give that thumb a boost bam so that the thumb can easily go on to the next group horizontally [Music] and of course it's very important that the thumb actually move up and down and be active for the left side it's the opposite you know as you go to the center you just like in the right as you're going to the center you just stick your elbow out so on the left side you do the same you stick your elbow out and the reason why again it's so easy is because when the thumb plays it you know it can um you flip over to the next note and it's it's much closer to the thumb so it doesn't have to work as hard as long as you're moving it up and down but when you're going that direction again you do need that thumb liking to be low Rising falling makes sense because your the thumb is you know farther away from the other fingers and has more to travel so that's why we have to help it out um in um in the music it's oh one one thing I do need to mention in exception to that rule of the thumb being at its lowest and Pinky being at this highest is the idea of when you have an actual phrase when you have an actual phrase as you will see below the rule of the beginning of the phrase where you drop you'll always be your lowest at the beginning of a phrase and highest at the end of a phrase here's another longer one watch when I have two note groups down up down so it's a pinky normally I would be high but because it's at the beginning of phrase I'm going low and raising up down and the last example down up down up down up down okay um the same is the same concept for the scale is with the arpeggio except with the arpeggio the notes are farther apart so I'm going down I rise up and I got farther to travel and again I stick my elbow out I would say because the notes are farther apart you have farther to travel the elbow and the shoulder are really important in playing arpeggios because you need to cover more ground horizontally so I have some musical examples you can see the score below this is from Beethoven's Sonata Opus 2 number two first movement after the the staccato notes you can see the phrase of with all the notes running like a scale down in the same direction that's how you know to use five fingers foreign [Music] another example so sometimes the technical phrasing is different and and sometimes it's unmarked um but if you see for instance in chopini to Opus 10 number four if you see groups of four notes in a row like this that's when you know you've got the five finger grouping motion so you can see the arrows up and down and in the score you can see the dotted technical phrasing that's indicating technical phrasing so and then here's the beginning of a four note group and down again up down up down and then it goes into a different motion in the Chopin Etude Opus 10 number one you can see the right hand has these bigger more arpeggio motions here's another example where you have to travel a little farther same idea you see the dotted notes are grouping every four and so there's this fall and Rise and Fall Again foreign that is five fingers scale and arpeggios our third motion is rotation so rotation I love using rotation because it's so easy to see in the score whenever you see a zigzag of notes rising up and down like this like like the example below you know you have rotation on this so the technical term when you're rotating towards your pinky is called supination and when you rotate to the thumb it's called pronation and don't forget to a lot of people make the mistake in not prepping the rotation so it's very important to before you rotate to lift and the finger and to get enough momentum going it's kind of like when you if you shoot a haboo an arrow you have to pull back on the Arrow to go forward or in baseball when you you know the yes the ball leaves your hand here but in order to throw the baseball you got to pull back and then go forward that's how you get the momentum to go very far okay so um I have some musical examples here in the uh this is from the bachwell tempered clavier book two Prelude 15. um look at the right hand again we have that signature zigzag thank you and um you know in The Classical period there was a lot of Alberti base Alberti basis is just rotation um one thing I forgot to mention early on is shondar always um told us to be very aware of white the white keys the Plano the white keys and The Black Keys and that The Black Keys are higher slightly higher elevated than the whites and that does make a difference in how you play because you're constantly maneuvering between the whites and the blacks and adjusting and so I just noticed when I when I was doing the Alberti base that whenever I had a a black key I had to slightly adjust and anticipate that change that slight change that's the same in Scales uh when you know if I'm playing D major I have to be anticipate that sharp ahead of time and I forgot to mention that earlier oops um a famous example of rotation is um is the Winter Wind Etude which is again has the zigzag motion so you know you need to do that and then shandor actually if you see he makes the technical grouping of every four so he kind of groups it in every every four notes [Music] let me slow it down speed up rotation is always is also fantastic for playing notes that are far away for leaping um and making big jumps um I saw an interesting video where they had two two I think they were physicists and they were comparing how how fast a ball could travel whether it was faster to go in a straight line or if it was faster to go in a curve and every single time the ball that followed the curve beat the the ball that was going in a straight line every time so in and it just goes to the point that rotation is really useful if you need to travel uh and great distances and a famous example of that is La Campanella so um I'll slow it down [Music] so you see I even traveled two octaves and I use rotation I could travel three I could go four five as long as you're you're you're throwing your arm and of course the the farther away it is the more the elbow um is important and you always try to keep the elbow in the middle of it and then you make these little micro adjustments whether it's white key to the black key here's another white that I have to adjust for [Music] and that's rotation our fourth motion is staccato okay I love doing staccato because it's it's a it's like a throwing motion and it's actually the uh the book cover on Sean doors book has this the cut the arm staccato motion and it's like a blur because it is such a fast motion um and it's it's I would say akin to dribbling a ball I'm a horrible dribbler but so the arm is throwing the upper arm is throwing the hand the wrist the hand the fingers and it's all going simultaneously So It Begins the motion begins with a lifting of the upper arm much like the free fall but the difference is in free fall I let the ball I let the arm drop but in staccato your your um doing a throwing motion it's a very active motion and so watch what happens when I when I I'm sorry my hand bounces right back I didn't do anything and it it's an instantaneous rebound unlike Free Fall which remember you dropped and then there was a rebound but it was slower it came after the action in staccato it's immediate and because it's you're actively throwing down you're generating a lot of speed and when you generate a lot of speed um you're you get loud sound [Music] um so he gives some simple exercises you can do double notes and octaves [Music] I have a musical example below from Beethoven's piano Sonata so you know he's at the Beethoven's asking for piano so I'm using a little more of like wrist and fingers staccados and then he added and oh Free Fall there but um and it's very easy to see in the musical score because obviously there's staccato marks in there it's not always the case but a lot of times it is um and I really um and then there's also um you can use Arm staccato for playing a big octave passages here's an example from Tchaikovsky piano concerto foreign [Music] the whole arm in the arm staccato you can get you can generate a lot of speed and a lot of sound and that is the key to playing fast octave passages and Loud passages especially in concertos you can also do Legato fast Legato passages like in Chopin's famous Etude Opus 25 Number 10. so here the these these staccatos are octosticatos I am doing it but I'm staying so close I'm staying so close to the keys that my fingers uh remain afterwards and then notice the all the arrows he has up for Black Keys down for white up down and that is staccato so the thrust is our last and final movement it's motion number five and it is by far my favorite one because you can generate a tremendous amount of sound um because you are facilitating all your larger muscles in your body and you are um it's you start unlike free fall and staccato you are actually starting on the keys from the keys and then very uh quickly you contract your muscles and quickly release after foreign if I were to demonstrate this with my ball watch the difference as opposed to the free fall and the staccato how much of a rebound is generated once I throw the ball down and that is happening because I'm uh uh incorporating my whole body into that motion that quick motion and releasing it right after so uh when I teach this to my kids I um I I have them go usually against the wall and I have them do like wall push-ups okay but I have them really push off quick and if if they are not um going being thrown in the opposite direction I know they're not fully letting go and being free if they're doing this you know and and their body doesn't go all the way back then you're being inhibited so you need to let go you know as the song says Let It Go um and then I have them do put their fingers to the wall and then also push off okay and then we transfer that to the actual piano and [Music] and if you add petal of course the sound the sound really rings and it's it's it's it's wonderful um and a lot of fun it's good for extended cords for making big sounds uh in a musical example I like is the Chopin Prelude in C Minor [Music] thank you or the Tchaikovsky the very opening of the Tchaikovsky concerto [Music] awesome about that is because you generate so much momentum that when you go watch when I go to the next chord [Music] ently there I don't make a separate motion to go from here and then move it's just I release I'm there and now watch I gotta go I have to travel uh five octaves down [Music] bam because I've and also you do need very active fingers to participate [Music] so um and and that's why I enjoy doing it because it's easy and it's it's uh you get a tremendous amount of sound [Music] and that is thrust so now let's use all of our tools and see how we can apply it to our musical scores so um you'll see an example of Opus 10 number four and um if you just look at the score you'll see that in the right hand we discussed it uses five finger and watch here you see there's rotation because you see the zigzag and then five finger arpeggio really because the notes are so far away while the left hand is doing uh what's it doing I guess you can free fall and and you know the uh five fingers and then you've got staccato motion even arpeggio staccato so um and then you can put it all together so I I didn't even need to play that for you you could have deducted that just by looking at the music another example we have is the pathetic Sonata we have that you can see right away in the left hand that you would use rotation because you've got that zigzag motion and the right hand not much going on so you got free fall and then you got staccato so notice the difference staccato has the the short staccato markings and the Free Fall are the half notes in the next line you've got thrust because you got these meaty cords so it's it's it's a lot of fun to take a score now and start to identify these motions and it's very easy to do and it it makes a lot of sense and um it helps you solve technical problems if you're struggling because it gives you tools to analyze and dissect things and it's also a lot of fun I'd like to thank you for watching this video If you like this video I hope you will tell people about it and share it and I hope you will like it and if you have any comments for me please put it down and if you have any questions I'll try to answer them for you I'd like to say a special thank you to St Ambrose University and the Becky endowment grant for humanities for allowing me to shoot this video giving me the funds to shoot this video and to my great team at top Notch for helping me put this video together for you I had a so many wonderful lessons with shandor and so I'm happy to be able to share now all this wealth of information to all of you I hope you enjoyed it thank you for watching

Channel: Marian Lee

Views: 196,227

Keywords: #pianotechnique, #Sandorpiano, #marianleepiano

Id: rto4hOS105A

Length: 34min 54sec (2094 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 25 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/efferkah]

Super interesting. Didn't know I needed that until I saw this video. Totally saved for later. Thanks!

[u/lynxerious]

This is a very well explained video but rather short. It's very similar to the Taubman approach I uploaded here, if you want more detailed here is the link, there are 10 lectures on multiple topics on how to move on the piano: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvkbo8TSMYZ6EXbSK80Qor5EZuAQNaNOH.

[u/ImprobablePianist]

I was watching this the other day. I have a teacher but technique isn’t super emphasized during the lessons. It’s more bringing the musicality out of the piece. Still, this video definitely has some helpful pointers.