Learning Abby Whiteside's techniques...
Kirk Dupont
A couple of months ago, I bought Abby Whiteside's classic "Essentials
of Piano Playing/Mastering the Chopin Etudes", and I've been
attempting to teach myself her approach just through the book alone.
If you've read this book, you undoubtedly understand that this can be
quite a challenge without actually "seeing" her concepts demonstrated!
The progress I've made so far has been astounding - I feel that my
technique has come further in three months than in 22 years of using
my "fingers" to play the piano. However, I am stuggling to understand
a few things through just reading alone.
Specifically, I want to understand exactly where and how often to use
my upper arm/elbow to actuate key drop while playing rapid scales (as
opposed to using fingers alone). This is very unclear from the text.
Take, for instance, a basic diatonic scale in 16th notes with a 4/4
meter. What I have been doing thus far is using my upper arm on every
beat, or every 4th note, and using fingers for the remaining 3 notes
(while employing other concepts such as rotary motion where
appropriate). The results are very promising, but I'm finding that as
I play the scale more rapidly, the "upper arm on every beat" approach
becomes quite awkward to coordinate.
Is there anyone here who has successfully implemented Abby's approach
that could give me some advice? Is every 4th note too frequent for
the upper arm or do I just need more practice at it? I should also
point out, and this is VERY important, that I am talking about just an
isolated scale taken out of musical context. I realize that context
will always influence technique - I'm just looking for very general
and "high-level" principles...
Thank you very much!!
Kirk
Sock Puppet3
> Is there anyone here who has successfully implemented Abby's approach
> that could give me some advice?
Outside of Abby herself, only Radu has successfully implemented her
approach....
to using odd metaphors.
Radu Focshaner
"Sock Puppet3" <dont...@try.this> wrote in message
news:dY89a.5452$fa.23...@dca1-nnrp1.news.algx.net...
Yeah, man ! Lots of Hnanons and Tcharnays... and I feeel so HIGH....
Jim Z
disregards classic finger exercises such as Hanon and Czerny.
She regards them as boring, and piano should be as fun as possible.
Fine, I wish my work was always fun but it's not. I believe it takes hard
work to become a good at piano or whatever else you do. You need to
practice and work at what you dislike to make it likeable. It's the old
" I love to play, but hate to practice".
How many people really have heard of Abby Whteside anyway ?
Those that can do.
Those that can't teach.
Just my opinion.
Jim
neocelsus
Here's another viewpoint:
I too was turned off initially, and tossed the book aside in disgust.
Something in her ideas, however, kept gnawing at me, and I decided to
take it up and try it out. That was about 6 years ago, and I have
since made such progress as I would not have believed possible. Let me
tell you that I am now in my 60's and although I had studied piano as
a child, my life-long efforts were mostly frustrating and discouraging
and I had acquired no technique to show for it. Once I grasped the
principles Abby's approach, I started to make steady progress, but
most importantly, practice was always satisfying and fun.
I will be the first to admit Abby was not a fluent writer, was much
given to hyperbole, and could be quite dogmatic. None of this matters,
as long as you grasp the mechanical principles that are buried in her
work. It is up to you whether do the work to dig it out and avail
yourself of it or not.
By the way, at my age, with small hands, and arthritis creeping in, I
derive much benefit and pleasure playing Chopin's Etudes 10/1, 25/11
and 25/12.
LstPuritan
>How many people really have heard of Abby Whteside anyway ?
I have heard of, studied, and objected to Abby Whiteside's philosophy/approach
to piano music for years after 22 years of piano study and performance. A
simple google group search for lstpu...@aol.com + abby whiteside should
reveal many of the longer threads on the subject in which I have participated.
The other side of the argument (presented by supporters of the Whiteside
method) might best be represented by James Boyk, pianist in residence at
Caltech, who has his own website dealing partially with he affinity for Abby
Whiteside which can also be looked up on any search engine.
What it boils down to is my fundamental assertion that theory and practice is
not always fun, and that the fact that such repetetive exercises are not "fun"
does not detract from their usefulness for the developing pianist and anyone
not willing to sacrifice a bit of "fun" for "fundamentals" is--in all
honesty--never going to progress beyond a certain sub-par ability at the
keyboard. No professional golfer that I know of recommends never going to a
driving range, and no professional tennis player who would object to standing
on one's own and practicing serves and returns . . . nor would any baseball
player claim to have never taken infield or batting practice. In the same
vein, there are few pianists who can claim to have never gone through the
relative boredom of repetetive exercises to hone and develop their techniques.
Richter may be one exception, who claims to have never practiced any scales and
never practiced more that 3 hours a day in his life (VHS: "Richter: The
Enigma") but whose wife argues with the rebuttal that he often practiced 10 or
more hours a day including scales. Lizst, in Walker's second volume of his
three part biography entitled "The Virtuoso years" describes Liszt's habit of
claiming to "never practice much anymore" despite his own letter describing an
intense period of several years in his 20s practicing 12 hours per day during
his temporary retirement from the stage playing scales in a variety of
intervals with many different fingerings to prepare him for the improvisation
and sight reading he would do during his most active periods in performing.
Glenn Gould discounted his own practicing as "virtually nonexistant" and
refused to answer any questions about his personal playing although from his
personal journals he payed distinct and explicit attention to the position of
his fingers and his practice schedule almost obsessively throughout his
lifetime---he admits in his letters spending 24+ hours in slow practice with
the goldberg variations observing his fingering and specific attention to
different polyphonic lines to the point of near-absurdidty before performing or
recording any of the variations.
There has been for some time a reaction to the overemphasis of repetetive
drills and exercises at the piano which adherents to Abby Whiteside's and
other's methods claim are counterproductive to a 'musical' education and
progressive development of pianistic skills.
But decide for yourself: how much objection to pure and mindless repetition is
'too much' and how much is 'just enough' to not lose interest through boredom
while still retaining interest enough in the keyboard instruments to further
pursue its study for a lifetime?
Best,
--Justin
gregpresley
"LstPuritan" <lstpu...@aol.com> wrote in message >
> What it boils down to is my fundamental assertion that theory and practice
is
> not always fun, and that the fact that such repetetive exercises are not
"fun"
> does not detract from their usefulness for the developing pianist and
anyone
> not willing to sacrifice a bit of "fun" for "fundamentals" is--in all
> honesty--never going to progress beyond a certain sub-par ability at the
> keyboard.
I could never respond to Justin's complaints about Whiteside until I read
her book, which I now have done. I don't believe that the debate has
anything whatsoever to do with whether or not practice is fun, etc. The
question is really, "what is the most efficient way to achieve the goal" -
that goal beaing of course a performance that sounds fluid, easy, natural,
(including all the original notes being present) etc etc. (A goal which I
think most performers share). However, to those who believe that only
intensive study of exercises and scales can ever lead to performances that
sound fluid, easy, natural, etc, any other approach obviously seems like the
musical equivalent of paint by numbers or attempting to learn a subject by
putting the book under your pillow at night. I think this is the perspective
that Justin is coming form. But what I gathered from reading the book was
that the lady was very interested (perhaps consumed) by the search for a
more efficient means to come to the same end. That does not mean that hours
and hours of practice aren't needed, merely that those hours would not be
spent doing exercises, but working on repertory and problems found within
the repertory.
As a teacher I have had a number of students who have come to me with the
ability to play hanon exercises at 120 or faster to the quarter, the
majority of whom I would NEVER describe as having good technique - even
though they could play the Hanon evenly and loudly, or whatever is
considered correct for those exercises. I say that because they haven't even
begun to understand what the exercises were meant to teach, and they haven't
learned anything through doing them that has given them any insight into
technical problems that occur in repertory - never mind MUSICAL problems
that might occur in repertory. And I imagine it was this kind of frustration
that encouraged Whiteside to look for other answers.
I regard music technique as analagous to sports like sprinting, or even
long-distance running. These are not sports in which exercises or drills
play a role - other than perhaps drilling that first moment at the starting
block. Instead, the effort is spent on the analysis of efficiency, form,
kinesiology, and then using that information to practice "doing it". In
other words, the runners don't practice something else in order to be better
runners - they simply practice running, and listen to the coaches,
trainers, etc to get feedback on what they need to do to be easier, more
efficient, faster, more fluid, more natural - (hey anybody, recognize
some goals in common with those of music performers?) And of course, they
spend a lot of time on mental work and strategizing races - and the best
performers in my opinion have spent a lot of their practice time on mental
work away from the piano......
I found Whiteside somewhat hard to read, because I don't think she
dissected her ideas in a very scientific way, and consequently dispensed
them in a somewhat scattershot fashion.. But I don't think they're stupid
or useless ideas. I think they're worth experimenting with and refining.
Cc88m
>principles Abby's approach, I started to make steady progress, but
>most importantly, practice was always satisfying and fun.
Could you kindly cite several examples of her ideas that were most helpful to
you?
C. C. Chang
Cc88m
(1) Uselessness of exercises such as Hanon,
(2) Importance of making music,
(3) The folly of thumb under,
(4) Importance of rhythm,
(5) Distinction between exercises such as those in Czerny (bad) and the etudes
of Chopin and Liszt (good),
(6) Using your whole body (when defined correctly -- which she does a poor job
of),
(7) Use of outlining (which she never clearly defines),
(8) Importance of relaxation.
Some of her faults are:
(1) her writing reads like a book originally written in Russian and translated
into English using software from Microsoft,
(2) too verbose -- she takes three pages to express something that can be
stated in a few sentences,
(3) repetitive -- total lack or organization in book, so you never know where
to find what,
(4) many wrong ideas that were not carefully thought out, such as dogmatic
teaching (but this was partly necessitated by the fact that her students were
the guinea -pigs in her experiments), etc.
In summary, the book is too poorly written by today's standards, and her ideas,
some of which were new in the 1950s, are now mostly well known.
C. C. Chang
M. Slater
Mark
Edward
> Here are some ideas I found useful in Whitesides:
> (3) The folly of thumb under,
Are there any "real" piano players (i.e. that I would have heard of)
who use thumb over? I have asked both my teachers about thumb over
and they thought I was joking (and they are both accomplished
performers).
Edward
Christof Pflumm
We had this discussion before. "Thumb over" is actually a misnomer:
Look at
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=thumb+over&meta=group%3Drec.music.makers.piano
for a description
Bye,
Christof
Kirk Dupont
attempting to assess the value of Abby's teachings or her recommended
practice materials. Rather, I am just trying to make sure I
completely understand the physical mechanics she is suggesting. As
for practicing, I have no problem with working VERY hard. Many years
ago during my conservatory days (I was a compostition major), 4 to 8
hours of practice each day was the norm for me. However, I'm getting
older, I have family commitments and I'm ivolved in many musical
projects that take much of my time. I'm finding that I need to use my
practice time very wisely, working "smarter" instead of harder.
My experience with Abby Whiteside was very much like the experience
related by neocelsus. At first, I thought her claims were outrageous
and, quite frankly, stupid! I tossed the book aside for a while.
However, there was just something about her presentation that lead me
to believe that her teachings might have real intinsic value. I
finally gave them a shot and I couldn't believe the results!! Things
that were always just out of rage for me became MUCH easier. I am
currently working on Chopin's etude 10/12 and prelude 28/16 and having
a great time with it!
Thanks again!
Kirk
neocelsus
I have felt for a long time that a critical appraisal/restatement of
Abby's work is badly needed and deserves a serious effort on the part
of someone who can write (she couldn't). I've been hoping that some
of the good writers in this group, such as Boyk or Presley, would take
up the task. It would have to be someone who is not part of the
entrenched pedagogical establishment. Perhaps after I retire I will
give it a shot. Yeah, right. In the meantime, here are some sketchy
ideas I have been mulling over:
Abby Whiteside belongs, as Seymour Fink said, to the holistic school
of piano playing. She may not have originated the concept, but she
certainly was the one to bring it to the center of attention. She did
this in large part by her outrageously exaggerated claims and her
scathing attack on the traditional approach to technique, i.e., Hanon,
et al. Unfortunately, her rhetorical style is an obstacle that many
readers cannot get past.
As I see it, the over-riding principle is the effective organization
of resources, including the mind and all the body parts that are
involved in any difficult physical task. Whereas the traditional
approach focuses on the control of peripheral parts, i.e., the
fingers, with emphasis on independant actions, Abby insists that the
focus must be on the most proximal parts, namely, the upper arms and
the muscles that control them, including the shoulders, back and
chest. William S. Newman, in his excellent book, speaks of a similar
principle in terms of stabilizing the base of the levers, in order to
have any kind of control. I feel that Abby's view is the more
comprehensive, in that it identifies the upper arms as being the the
initiators of action, not merely a larger base. In other words, the
upper arms are given the role of managers in an organized system. If
the mind is given the role of the chief executive, as it should be,
the upper arms are the top managers. Their task is to direct, support
and facilitate the work of the subordinate members, i.e., the forearm,
hand, thumb and fingers. The chief executive does not have the time
or ability to attend to the behaviour of every last member of the
organization; he must rely on his direct reports to manage the rest of
the organization. Any attempt to do so would result in chaos and
failure. This principle applies no less to the organziation of the
parts of the body in performing complex tasks, be it golf, figure
skating or virtuoso piano playing.
The difficulty of this approach is in translating the principles to
pedagogic practice. Whiteside may have been an effective teacher
herself, but her attempts to set down her ideas in words, were far
from a brilliant success. Part of the difficulty has to do with the
nature of the upper arm: it is not a body part which we normally are
conscious of specifically controlling, unlike the hand and fingers
which we can focus on in exquisite detail, at least when we have the
leisure to do it. Abby had to rely largely on imagery and metaphors,
some of which were just weird. Someone in this thread called it a
scattershot approach. I agree. She seemed to think that if she threw
enough metaphors on the wall, some would stick. I would think that
there are exercises that can be developed to gain conscious control of
the upper arm.
A key principle is the whole notion of muscular tension. Whereas most
writers mention muscular tension only as something to be avoided as
much as possible, Abby emphasizes the necessary role of tension in the
entire apparatus, which must always be balanced, controlled and
gentle. One of Abby's better images is that of the gently cupped hand
cradling a baby bird or other delicate object. The idea of tension is
more widely embraced now. By the way, Seymour Bernstein has some good
exercises for developing this "good" tension, which he calls
"tautness" in his books.
Another image I found useful is that of a hierarchical arrangement of
supports or canopies to support lower-level actions. This probably has
direct analogies to the structure of the arm, but needs further
development.
It would appear that the ability to start from metaphors and
translate them to one's physical system is a necessary part of
Whitesides's approach. It seems to me that in order to benefit from
her teachings , apart from a high tolerance of bad rhetoric, one must
have the ability to imagine, visualize, analyze, integrate and make
intuitive connections from abstract ideas to the bodily mechanism.
Not everyone has these abilities (the right-brain/ left-brain thing?).
Possibly those who lack it are the ones who prefer to spend years
playing Hanon, where no mental or creative work is required or even
possible. Others are unable or unwilling to engage in endless
repetitious activities in which the creative functions of brain must
be disengaged and find the Whiteside approach a godsend, or rather
Celsus-send, and the gateway to musical expression. I hope I haven't
engaged in too many Abbyisms.
Neo_Celsus
Tom Shaw
in your retirement. Your stuff isn't any clearer than hers...a mish mash of
half baked ideas.
TS
"neocelsus" <neo_c...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1e8c0b61.03030...@posting.google.com...
Jim Z
To describe the act of playing the piano by virtue of
physical kinetics is in my view impossible.
I believe technique from person and person will
vary a wide degree based on one's own physical
attributes.
It is a combination of inborn talent,
and learned physical technique that will get
you to play well. The neuro-network developed
between your brain and muscles through practice
cannot be described by a few generalizations such
as "use your arms, not your fingers", or "hold your
hands like you cradle a baby bird."
I believe the process is so complex and
so variable between individuals, you can probably
write a dissertation on the process and just scratch
the surface.
Jim
gregpresley
ability and physicality and so forth. I worked for nearly 20 years of my
life as a musician in dance. About half of the great dance teachers I worked
with used imagery almost exclusively to teach technique, while others would
get very specific with the physiology and kinesiology involved in a
particular movement. It seemed to me that some students responded better to
the "scientific" approach and terminology, while others (perhaps the
majority) responded immediately and clearly to the image. The fact is that
no one can in any kind of succinct way describe how a mental command,
traveling by means of a chemical/electrical signal down a nerve, can
activate not one, but usually a broad phalanx of muscular reactions to
result in the final effect of a finger striking a key with a particular
velocity at a predetermined time. I read somewhere, that if humans had to
understand all the laws of physics, motion, etc that enabled them to walk,
no one on the planet would be able to do it. There is a specific movement in
a modern dance called a contraction, which is a very sharp pulling backward
of the abdominal muscles, which at the same time lengthen, and cause the
small of the back to bow out backward and the pelvis to tip upward toward
the front. This is very hard for most people to visualize from the
description I just gave. However, if I told someone to react as if someone
just made a move to slug them full force in the center of the stomach, that
person would instantly create a perfect modern dance contraction. Hence this
image is MORE powerful and direct than the scientific description in getting
the desired physical response from muscle groups. But having tried out a
zillion different images in teaching piano, I have found that the same image
does not always produce the same physical result from two different
students, so I have to experiment to find the right ones for each student. I
also try to explain how the muscles work - but for most students this is NOT
the way that they think about things at all.news:jddaa.8297$3g.13...@newssrv26.news.prodigy.com...
Tom Shaw
TS
"Jim Z" <jszo...@tricomachine.com> wrote in message
news:jddaa.8297$3g.13...@newssrv26.news.prodigy.com...
LstPuritan
>news:<20030306183549...@mb-cu.aol.com>...
>> > Here are some ideas I found useful in Whitesides:
>>
>> > (3) The folly of thumb under,
>>
>> Are there any "real" piano players (i.e. that I would have heard of)
>> who use thumb over? I have asked both my teachers about thumb over
>> and they thought I was joking (and they are both accomplished
>> performers).
>
Without trying to swim through AW's rhetoric and start babbling about the whole
'thumb over' thing again, I think this can be settled easily. Each person
needs to go to a piano teacher to learn proper hand position. From then on,
piano music may be produced simply by using the fingers to depress the correct
keys at the correct time. Your milage may vary. Hanon and Czerny are means to
develop the physical acuity needed to use the fingers to depress the correct
keys at the correct time. Anytime someone has a problem, I say work from the
hands up. You can involve muscles of the arm alone, but you can't invole the
fingers without involving other related parts of the human machine. So anytime
the 'armpit fullcrum' or 'neck apex' or 'hip modulator' is mentioned as a
necessary component in the chain of command for the pianist, I get very . . .
very . . . suspicious.
My left toe happens to be the center of my piano playing. You all know that I
don't like piano benches and prefer a sturdy folding card table-type chair
because personally when I play the piano I have my right foot on the pedal and
my left leg is positioned somewhat off to the left side well behind the front
leg of the chair. Why should anyone care about this? Because when I have to
jump to high notes my left Big Toe pushes to lean my body over to the right and
when I have to jump back the left Big Toe has to move distictly backward and to
the right in order to move my torso to the left. Therefore, the key to playing
the piano-for me--clearly is my left toe.
--Justin
[In all seriousness, I have been known to use my forehead for black notes and
nose for white notes while improvising and lacking enough fingers for middle
voices. "Thumb melody" Thalberg has nothing on my ability to utilize the face
to allow three center voices with hands operating in alternation in their realm
and/or with the middle voices.]
tom...@gmail.com
I'm 63, playing since 6, amazing at 10, hit brick wall at 12.
My Renaissance began around 50 when I realized piano technique was a true Marshal Art: Speed, Strength, and Accuracy. I immediately realized always practicing slower and louder with the fingers was NOT the way to do it.
Arm Weight and Rotation I've just learned about in the past couple months and I'm making progress again.
However, I refuse to invest countless hours practicing a dead end approach. So I am absorbing all the information I can from text to performance.
Valentina Lisitsa appears as an anomaly compared to Horowitz, Buniatishvili, Wang, Lang, Kissin, etc. (although she might be closest to Horowitz's usually flat finger approach.
Lisitsa said something in an interview which really hit me. When asked about her style of technique, she said all her teachers tried to change it and she refused. She said it is not Taubman or Alexander... and DEFINITELY NOT RUSSIAN!
What did she mean by the Russian School? I don't know what that school is, but I'm thinking Rach and his ability to rip every Hanon in every key at what 200?
My interpretation of Lisitsa's remark is that she does not indulge in Hanon.
Another insight may be revealed by Rani Shankar, the sitar master. He said that nothing but scales and exercises are done for a number of years before even the first piece of music is learned.
Perhaps Hanon has merit when one is developing. Once Rach got to 200, obviously it was maintenance since then.
Personally, my wish would be to play with the visual artistry of Lisitsa's hands. It is a ballet of the highest order.