I agree with you, roslynmuse. It is all power grabbing think (see depression thread). People have such a strong opinions and they want to hear music played only their way. However, sometimes one can say: May be I would not play it this way, but it was good. People have different personalities and should play differently. Also there is no hight wrists or low wrist technique. Everything depend what kind of sound one wants or what kind of ideas one tries to put accross.
Also if some body doesnt play my way it doesn't mean they are playing badly. There should not be too much ego and people should be more humble.
Nevertheless it is interesting to share ideas how people achieve certain musical results.
I like this thread. I myself often don't know what I am doing wrong. I get inspiration from listening to others and even more from playing together in ensembles. 

You lucky Daniel for not going into competitions etc. There are really talanted people who raise on top no matter what. For example John Ogden or people like him. All this other stuff is going betwee more mediocre performers.
It is better not to be a sour grape and not to think about it.

I was hoping that in this thread people will discuss technical matters, but may be it is too difficult topic.

Yes, a very simple one: make sure everyone learns something about musical improvisation - what it is, where it's found (historically and geographically), how to approach it for oneself, how it relates to other forms of composition, how it could feed into and nourish other forms of music making, where it could be taken... so that musicians are encouraged to think for themselves.

It certainly is, though it's only fair to point out that it has been since some time before I arrived on the scene.

I keep starting to reply to this thread and then realising that the considerations are so complex I can't do them justice.  (So I cancel my reply before posting!)  But let's try again..........

I think another thought going on when this thread started was about music colleges being 'production lines'.  I do worry about this.  I see so many people come out of music college having been taught technique, but not having been taught how to use that technique, or more accurately how to choose how to use the various techniques they have learnt.

And I wonder how this can be good or complete.  I find when I am learning a new work that the emotion of the piece makes me play in a certain way.  Perhaps this is a violin thing, but muscles react differently depending on how you feel, so you have to learn many ways of playing the same passage, in order to convey different feelings  (or at least that is how I would like to see it).  I cannot see how rote learning of a passage does anything for conveying meaning.

I myself learnt through a county scholarship scheme, then privately whilst studying maths at unversity.  After Uni, I learnt a lot through the Britten Pears Orchestra, where performers and conductors spent time trying to coax out different musical approaches from students just out of music college (and me).  And then I aplied to Music College for a post grad.  In the end I am glad I only go on the reserve list, as I probably learnt more from trying for the place than if I had ended up there.

I think teaching at a certain level is only really a guide for people who cannot open doors anymore.  A teacher cannot really get a student to do all the work inolved with learning a piece, or practicing scales, etc.  The Teacher can only inspire a pupil to investigate certain areas, but cannot replace that student's learning from doing the investigation themselves.  Perhaps too the teacher can highlight where a student has fallen into a habit and needs something fresh.

To open up a student and find their inspiration is hard.  Maybe ask about times in their lives when they felt fulfilled, sad, lonely, ecstatic.  And then get them to convey those in the music, and choose which feeling, memory fits it.    That's just one idea, and teachers shoudl play with loads - but I feel the area of playing should be in the realms of getting the student to play with their practice themselves.

Sorry that's a ramble.

I'll probably think of something else and ramble about that soon, if the Universtity thread doesn't catch me......

Tommo

I keep lookint at the name of the thread, but was afraid to touch it.
I had many problems with "technique". May be I still have many unanswered questions.
I was told to play with the weight. It was so important to play from the weight of my arm. I kept thinking about it.
I only can see it when someone is completely stiff.
I can hear better when I play in ensembles. That means that I need inspiration and thinking about technique is useless.

I was tought to play finger legato. However, I noticed that many concert pianists do not do it. I decided that it depends what one is playing. If it is Chopin than it is important to play finger legato. Many people massage the board too much in an attempt to immitate violin I suppose.
Of course I was taught that if one has a musical idea then one will find the technique to do it. There is definately not much legato in Mozart and Haydn.
may be it is important to say to a beginner to hold the key down until the next one is played to have a nice smooth touch, but not to take it to the extreme.

Recently I played with viola student who went to a few master classes. At one master class she was told that her bow technique is good, but that her vibrato is too big and she wobbles too much, also she pushes on the board too much. She worked very hard on that. The other master class teacher said that she has no problems with technique and tried to talk musical things to her. I am not sure that the master classes were much help. I liked the way she played for me first the best.

While I was in Cork I met a girl who can not play anymore (not violin and not piano) and have to play saxophone because of her arms.

I like to discuss things like that, but I am afraid of the subject because it is very confusing.

A lot of talk about 'weight' on the piano is rather misleading. The weight of the apparatus being used (in the sense of whether the weight of the arm is supported by the fingers or not) does not affect the sound, only the speed at which the hammer hits the string can be affected in this respect. Playing with 'weight technique', especially as concerns supporting such weight after a note is struck, achieves little other than to place excess strain on the fingers.


Well, the pianos that Chopin favoured (Pleyels and Broadwoods primarily, though he did also play Erards (with some reservations) and Grafs in the early days) had a slower damping mechanism than most of the Central European pianos which were contemporary with them, causing a certain aftersound even after a note and/or the pedal have been completely released. A really short staccato is practically impossible on many such instruments (there are exceptions). With this in mind, a certain 'finger legato' (which I take it to refer to the type of overlapping-dissonance legato I mentioned in my previous post) may be appropriate if one wishes to some extent to mimic on a modern instrument something of the sound that Chopin was familiar with (though of course this can probably only ever be partially achieved, and other properties of the instruments are highly different, not least in terms of timbral differentiation between registers which can greatly facilitate contrapuntal clarity when playing Chopin).


Yes indeed; it stems from some fundamental lack of understanding of both the human performing mechanism and how a piano works.
 

Beethoven made some quite specific comments in that respect, which I can dig out if you'd like.