This article on muscles is helping me significantly
pianotechnique.net/michael-f … planation/
Particularly a suggestion by an editorial comment afterwards:
- If you place the fingers of your left hand on the underside of your right forearm just above your wrist, where you would normally take your own pulse, and flex your right fingers fairly strongly, you can clearly sense the tendons tightening under your touch. Now try to curve your right fingers gently, without causing those tendons to tighten - leave them loose. When you do this, the lumbricals remain inactive and it’s the interossei that take over the movement. At the keyboard, if your finger can curve/curl in freely but remain almost limp, like pieces of rope, again when you find this much subtler way of manipulating the key you will have effectively eliminated the strong work of the lumbricals. See my article on the work of Kathleen Riley for more on this.
To achieve trills/fast fingers without tension, we must use the proper muscles. Practicing my ass off hasn’t fixed this, but this has.
Why? You learn to move fingers without tension, and then you can add arm weight/shoulder in freely.
Not all of us are natural. Actually, I think that I built up tension by trying to be precise from the beginning.
Anyway, see if this helps any of you, because it sure has helped me.