Thank you for your generosity in sharing these wonderful pieces of teachings, clear and to the points. I am an adult student . I can’t stress enough how important it is to start with the right and healthy way in playing. It would have saved so much frustration and the risk of getting injured. I believe there will be more successful adult learners if there are more teachers like you, very good at explaining and demonstrating all these important fundamentals!
Thank you. No many people are teaching techniques. You are an experienced teacher knowing what is needed to accomplish better piano playing. Thank you. I am a beginner. So I am si happy with your approach.
Thank you Prof! New adult learner here, and had lot of difficulty in hand positioning causing wrist pain and tension in the arm. Thank you for your videos!
Dr. You are So helpful with what you are saying. Many thanks!! Your advice is helping me and others to dodge hand/wrist injury at a future unknown point. Never having one lesson myself, your information is truly golden. Thanks again.
I am so glad that I discovered your channel yesterday! Watched a couple of videos then, and I've been working through these technique videos this morning. Thank you for providing such a great resource!
So helpful!!! But can you clarify, what you mean when you say that "rotation helps bring the weight of the hand behind the fingers", and where it's applied? This phrase really puzzled me😮
When you rotate your hand into the keys, it provides momentum, or weight, to make the key go down and your finger doesn't need to press into the key. Therefore the rotation motion allows the weight of the hand to put the key down, rather than the weight of each individual finger. A really good (very detailed) resource I'd recommend is What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body, by Thomas Marks. Here's a link to my resource page with all my book recommendations: thepianoprof.com/books/ Good luck!
Very helpful! The rotation around the pinky really helped me focus on speeding up my octave tremolos that I’ve been struggling with in my left hand. Something else that I think is helping a lot are shoulder and arm stretches. Really stretching my upper chest and back out as well…it’s noticeable that I can rotate my hand faster and get that ‘loose’ feeling. It’s slightly the same motion in my right hand picking on mandolin…but I’ve always felt my left hand and forearm was very stiff. Then when I began piano I learned they are definitely tense. I think this is going to solve a lot of my problems. Thanks…
Thank you for doing these great and informative lessons! Would it be possible to do a video on applying forearm rotation to practising scales , perhaps demonstrating it on a few different keys? thank you
I agree with a lot of what you say and I've been planning a video making a similar point about 5 being the natural anatomical centre of rotation. However, there's a big contradiction if we make this a permanent static centre. The upper arm allows adjustment so *any* finger can be rotated around as a centre. I believe changing the centre around any finger is vital, but this can't be solely done from the elbow down, without subtle upper arm rotation. Most notably, if 5 was always the centre, we couldn't use the rotation to offer a significant assistance to that finger. You deliver energy around a central axis, not *to* the axis itself. We could only rest down on it. Reversing the thumb rotation by simply uncrossing the bone around that centre wouldn't very notably drive that centre down, or at least it wouldn't have a fraction of the power afforded to the thumb, due to distance of the radius from the center. So finger 5 would have access to the LEAST assistance rotation can ever offer any finger. It wouldn't much help out the weaker finger unless we can do something from the upper arm to also change the centre. I just posted a video that was particularly about rotation around finger 5, but it also shows how we would also need to be able to rotate around our thumb, if rotation is to send finger five down into the key. I believe ability to switch the centre back and forth explains a good deal more. 5 is the default centre of rotation from the elbow down, but it would be very limiting not to use the upper arm to allow any other finger to serve as a centre.
You provide many excellent points, thank you! For some students there can be other centers of rotation that work well. For many, five works best, but many others are able to play very well with other centers of rotation!
@@ThePianoProfKateBoyd yes, I'm thinking that 5 is the single most natural centre and important to know and work around, but that I want all fingers to be capable of functioning as a centre to turn the hand around (although this does require at least a subtle bit of upper arm involvement in the rotation). I posted a video now today about the Pathetique tremolos, in which I went into the anatomy and how slight upper arm movement allows the thumb to become a centre too, allowing alternating pivots for the hand. If you did have a chance to watch, I'd be very interested if you have any thoughts.
Wow!! thank you so much Dr. Boyd for a wonderful clarification of the rotation technique. It’s one of the clearest explanations I’ve heard. It gives me excitement as if I was back studying(1997-8) at Jordan Hall again. ❤🎹
Hi Prof. Boyd! I've found your videos incredibly helpful. Thank you for taking the time, it is much appreciated. I am an accordion player and have been rethinking my technique a lot... Could you perhaps advise on how the concepts of in-out/rotation/circles might translate to the accordion and pipe organ? The keyboard touch is obviously very different from the piano, and I'm wondering what your take is. Thanks again and all the best!
Thanks for your comment! Glad you're finding the videos helpful. Honestly, I don't play accordian or organ, so I'm not aware of how these principles apply. I imagine there are some carry-overs in terms of not wanting to isolate the fingers and using your hand/wrist to group notes, but the issue of weight transfer is totally different, and there is the need for legato touch in a different way, so I think there are significant differences in that arena. When I have watched people play the organ (or dabbled myself) I have noticed that there is less wrist motion. Organists and accordian players: feel free to chime in - any thoughts?
Thank you Prof Boyd for your wonderful video. You have given us non-music degree student a real gift! I play for pleasure but was lucky enough to once had a retired music professor / concert pianist as my teacher before he became too ill to teach. I had since (15 years ago) stopped practicing / learning new pieces as I couldn't find anyone to help me do them . Your videos remind me of much he had taught and more besides. Your methods are instinctive and practical. This 2 note rotation video is helping me through the Op 13 passage like a dream - This was the last piece my late teacher & I had started before stopping. Do you have any tips on the next jumping passage? The Dohnanyi series is fantastic. Do you plan on doing videos on other classic teaching aide such as Chopin's Etudes? Once again, thank you for your generosity in sharing your knowledge!
Glad you're finding the videos helpful! Can you tell me the measure numbers of Op 13 that you're looking for tips for? A friend and colleague of mine, Jocelyn Swigger, made a wonderful series of videos about the Chopin etudes. You can check out the playlist here: ru-vid.com/group/PLG3ZEdYdKJEVjnEqsm3f6APIYyxuCRxOt&si=yDGKhmUhayDvEpyH
@@ThePianoProfKateBoyd Thank you for your reply, so kind of you to take the time! I will have a look at the etudes videos. You might find it strange but I never used the metronome (because I had trouble listening to it over the piano) so my teacher used to tell me the speed and count me in... I suppose, in my head, it is allegro? We never got very far with this movement as I didn't understand what my teacher called "roll" the left hand part (which you have very helpfully solved for me with this video). When I try the next part, my right hand often got caught while leaping over the left hand or got so high I lost my way. I know it's probably not very clear what I'm asking but I never learned the normal way and my teacher was very indulgent.
Love your style of explaining. Your videos are interesting and I learn alot. You don't have a lot of traffic, but I have a feeling if you continue doing videos, they will come. Anyways, I am currently learning Czerny op 849 no 1 and I think it would be a good video to make to help us with when to do wrist rotation. Thank you and keep the videos coming!
I appreciate that! Thanks for the suggestion to look at Czerny Op 849 No 1 - I'll take a look at that after I get through the next series I'm working on. My quick answer is that I don't see a lot of single rotation in that piece - the notes go around and around, not back and forth. So the RH technique I'd use is more focusing on using impulses on the 5th finger, dropping weight into the keys every 2 beats, and releasing it over the course of the half bar, while focusing on maintaining a loose thumb. It's the "drop and hoist" idea I talk about in my video about weight transfer: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RBoBNG82iCE.html Hope this is helpful for now!
Very helpfull, especially the advice to keep the ulna stable when the radius turns around it when pronating. I suppose you also have to keep the radius stable when suppinating? In that case the ulna turns around the radius?
The radius always turns around the ulna, regardless of which direction you rotate. There is a fantastic explanation of this in Thomas Mark's book "What Every Pianost Needs to Know About the Body." amzn.to/3xavNIo
Thank you so much for taking time and explaining this. The thing I do not understand well is where to put my three middle fingers when I am doing rotation between 1 and 5. I see that people put them simply on the white keys and do the rotation without pushing those three fingers down. They just stay there. But when I try to do rotation I automatically lift those three. I would appreciate any information
Thanks for your question. It really depends on factors like the span of the interval you're rotating around, the speed you're playing, and the black key-white key patterns you're playing. I would say that the most important thing to keep in mind is to not flex or tighten your 2-3-4 fingers. For me, if I'm rotating a 5th between 1 and 5, my 2-3-4 fingers are slightly elevated, because if they were to rest on the keys, my hand would not be able to rotate freely. Hope this helps!
@ThePianoProfKateBoyd thanks for answering my question. Knowing what I am doing or not doing wrong stops me from worrying and I actually got a lot better at playing. If it wasn't for the good people like you learning would be extremely hard for people like me who cannot afford a teacher. Please keep making videos about tips and tricks that beginners should do
![Forearm Rotation at the Piano [Foundations of Technique, Part 3]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
