More on Taubman method
Chris Daft
method of piano performance. So I thought I'd post a little more
information.
It's a method for playing the piano which is quite different
from the usual techniques, and takes account of the types of motions
which injure the hands, fingers and wrists. Quite a lot of it is
involved with wrist rotation, although this isn't the only facet.
Dorothy Taubman has been writing a book on her technique for years,
but there's no sign of it coming out, alas. What you can get from the
Taubman institute is a video which is a good overview. This is called
"Choreography Of The Hands". Also, they can tell you of a teacher in
your area. The best way to learn the technique is to go to their
summer school in Amherst, MA. I've been twice (for two weeks) and it
is really excellent. They have a set of videos of the teaching at the
summer school, and also videos of Taubman doing master classes at the
92nd Street Y in New York.
I am originally self taught, and I taught myself a really destructive
(for my wrists) technique. The combination of that and too much
computing really did bad things and scared me a lot. Using a speech
recognizer at work to do computing, and switching to the Taubman
technique has really nailed this problem for me. I didn't have
surgery and have no wrist pain whatever now.
Once again, their address is:
Dorothy Taubman Institute of Piano
Medusa, NY 12120
Voice: 518-239-4756 Fax: 518-239-6822
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Chris M.W. Daft <da...@crd.ge.com>
KWC-1336, GE CR&D 518-387-6615
P.O. Box 8 518-387-7512 (fax)
Schenectady, N.Y. 12301-0008