Writings
What do I write about?
Piano playing and injury prevention.
The integration of the mind and body much earlier in the learning process.
Why and what is necessary to accomplish the above.
I write instructional material for achieving these ends, whether overtly or covertly stated. :)
Now available: Fingers: a collection of finger exercises
Now available: Fingers: a collection of finger exercises
I am very happy to announce that my book Fingers, A Piano Exercise Book is now available at Amazon.com and Bookbaby.com.
Fingers is a book of exercises that focus piano playing on finger and hand coordination, using off-staff notation and finger numbers. The fruit of two decades of professional experience, this book teaches in an organized and graded way many fundamental elements of piano technique, taking the young beginner from the first encounter with the keyboard to playing a very first scale.
Fingers can be learned as a supplement to a conventional piano method or in preparation for the first piano lesson. Depending on the approach and time dedicated to each exercise, this material can be absorbed in three to nine months.
While the book design is attractive to 4-9 year olds, the content is useful to all those interested in setting a strong foundation for their piano studies, regardless of age.
Here are some passages from my thesis ‘You Become What You Practice: Application of Tai Chi Principles to Piano Playing.’
‘We are in large part the product of our assumptions, of what we know and what we do not know about ourselves and the world. While in life these elements may affect our lives in a greater or lesser degree, in the pianist’s professional activity they make a remarkable difference. Since music making is an art based on instant choices (e.g. where to put one's fingers, with how much speed does one need to accelerate the playing apparatus in order to produce the desired effect, etc.) many of the decisions made under such strenuous conditions depend on what some call 'instinct.' However, what is instinct to some is knowledge to others and knowledge comes from inferences made based on a set of fundamental assumptions about the world. ... [P]ianists carry with them a host of assumptions that are not serving them. These faulty assumptions produce and perpetuate ignorance that leads pianists to harm themselves and through their teaching, to perpetuate the circle of ignorance in others.
One of the chief unknowns and reasons for injury is the lack of kinesthetic anatomical knowledge. Even if he has attended an anatomy class during his general studies, the pianist does not experience this knowledge in his body but takes it as collateral, some-day-possibly-relevant information. For instance, at an ad hoc poll done in a class of 14 beginner college age pianists, 100% of them knew that a finger had three joints but no one knew that the thumb has an equal number as well or that the wrist does not determine the movement of the thumb. Throughout my teaching career I have frequently encountered students who confuse the vertical or side movement of the elbow with the rotation of the radius-ulna joint, located in the proximity of the elbow joint but not being the same with the elbow. This type of ignorance leads to an usage of the joints in a way that they were not designed to work and precipitates injury.
Another major fountain of difficulty is the belief in the artificial divisions between body, mind and emotions which leads the mind to frequently not pay attention to body movements (or the emotions that pianists are taught to express), but to create images of them. Not being aware of where the mind is, of its image creating propensity and its lack of awareness of the body leads to the pianist's belief in those images and the difficulty to check in with reality, to make the necessary adjustments. Organizing the self through a system of hierarchical supremacy of the mind is not useful for piano playing, does not contribute to the efficiency of practicing or the overall achievement of one's goals, and leads to delusion and injury.
Pianists do not kinesthetically know the difference between relaxation and a collapsed frame and have severe difficulties recognizing tension in the body. These difficulties stem from the fact that they do not know how relaxation without collapsing feels or how it feels to move while also being relaxed. They also cannot tell that tension/tiredness is not the appropriate measurement for practicing quality. Such an inability leads again to injury.
... ... ...
However, pianist’s lack of knowledge does not come from laziness or ill-will but from the set of assumptions about the world, the body and the mind which he inherits from society. It is this inheritance that needs to be enriched, enlarged and redefined towards a movement away from the ‘particular vs. global’ that leads to injury through fixation on a small body part vs. the whole, to a process of the ‘particular towards global and the global through particular‘ which sets the particular into the perspective of the totality. In order to relive the stresses that provoke injury, the pianist needs to learn and feel the connection between the body and the mind, understand the characteristics of both, as well as their limitations. Only through this knowledge can he then begin connecting with his instrument and continue his career without injury. Since our Western heritage has not come up with a fully developed, functional model that includes the particular and the global, we have to look somewhere else for a system that has solved this problem. My solution is the integration into piano playing of philosophical and training methods used in the teaching of Tai Chi Chuan on three levels: physical movement, breath and mind (through Tai Chi’s meditative methods.)’ .....
