Gravity vs. Relaxed vs. Firm note playing

I have been wondering what is the correct way to play notes since different methods I have heard or read about seem counter intuitive. One teacher said all the notes, soft or loud need to played with the key pressed to the bottom of the note and with conserved motion and fingers close to the keys to avoid wasted motion. Another teacher said that Rachmaninoff had to be played with the weight of the arms and shoulder. And on C.C. Chang's website the chords should be played with the gravity of the hand/arms and while being relaxed - it was not clear to me whether non-chord music should be played with the gravity of the hand.

So if playing single note music with runs (scale-like as opposed to chords), should one play with firm fingers? (making the fingers firm seems to be the opposite of relaxing).

Is gravity used at all for playing scales or is it just for chords - on scales the finger height seems too low to be able to use gravity at all and therefore finger firmness must be used to press the keys to the bottom especially if excess motion is to be conserved and fingers are to be kept close to the key surface.

Can anyone shed some light on how the great piano schools/conservatories or great pianists recommend notes be played?

I can't speak to what the 'great schools' teach, because in my experience their language about technique rarely matches their practice, but I think describing what actually happens to the fingers and the muscles is not nearly as useful as images. In my mind, I think of all notes, whether in scales or chords, as being played with some degree of weight in the forearms which is 'transferred' to the piano key via an individual finger or group of fingers. The fingers need to be firm enough to accept that weight. If a player is going from note to note in a scale and has caused weight to be dropped onto an individual finger, that action will have caused the wrist to drop a certain amount, and before the next note will be ready to play with weight again, it follows that the wrist will have to be raised enough to drop again at the next note. In practice this does not look like a set of giant-sized V's and inverted V's caused by the movement of the wrist. The actual wrist movements are fairly small - and the faster the notes follow one another, the smaller the wrist movement will be - until, with the quickest notes, an observer would not notice the wrist moving at all. However, without that image or thought of the wrist being involved in playing , it is 'normal' for the average player to begin to hold the weight of the forearm up and away from the keys and to play only with the fingers - all unconsciously, of course, because our entire body is designed to 'resist' gravity without conscious thought. Otherwise we'd be lying on the ground at all times, pinned there by gravity. There are the occasional times when we want 'weightless' playing - to achieve certain soft sounds for instance - but those instances are pretty rare over all. The forearm is heavy- so we don't need to use all of its weight on every note - but we control the amount of its weight that we are using by decisions about the dynamics (the volume) of the piece, rather than by the brain's instructions to specific muscles. Just as we know precisely how much arm weight and what wrist motions are perfect for petting the dog vs. kneading bread, so our bodies know (eventually) how much weight and how much 'give' in the wrists and the fingers are necessary to achieve different qualities and volumes of sound at the piano.

Wow! I didn't realize anyone knew this. It is the very germ of the Vengerova system of piano technique.

Greg, Your description about the up and down V's certainly helps me to visualize use of gravity in playing scales. I can't quite tell if my playing is using gravity or whether I am unconsciously resisting gravity and just playing with the fingers instead of arm weight. I'll have to play around with this some. Thanks for explaining the differences.

The gravity drop is not a way of playing piano. It is just a method of learning how to relax. Whiteside said correctly that arm weight itself has little to do with how you play, because for loud sounds, you need to add force to gravity, and for soft, you need to subtract.

But gravity is very useful for eliminating stress, which arises from opposing muscles fighting each other. For the gravity drop, if you have stress, the lifting and depressing muscles are BOTH activated simultaneously and the difference of these muscular forces is what eventually plays the piano. This can be terrible if these forces are large and difference is small. By letting gravity pull the arm down, you learn to completely relax both sets of muscles simultaneously. Now, you can add/subtract any force you need, and that is the correct way to play. This has nothing to do with the difference between chords and single notes

I was just reading the Gravity v Relaxed thread and just idly wondered ... vertical and grand pianos probably wouldn't work in space, would they? Doesn't the return mechanism rely on gravity?

Has anyone designed a piano to work in non-zero gravity?

All pianos are designed to work in 'non-zero' gravity.

Huh? Even in near-earth orbit (which is what most people mean when they refer to 'space' there is no perceptible gravity and objects will float. Of course, there is *some* 'gravity' as 'gravity' is best though of as the curvature of space-time around objects with mass. That is what keeps the spaceship in orbit. - - Gary L. Reply to the newsgroup only

Then what would bring a grand hammer back to rest? It completely depends on gravity to fall back into place.

Quite possibly, a mechanism designed to work in space.

It completely depends on

Therefore, you need to design and test a new mechanism, wouldn't you think? But if ever there were a place for electronic keyboards, space is it.

Probably get less complaints about a metallic ringing...