There is a way of connecting up the fingers and hands to the shoulders and consequently the whole body and the immovable solid basis of the seat and the floor, so that the body plays as a unified whole. There is a channel of energy whereby the reactions to the actions of the fingers and hands are channelled up the arm and grounded in the shoulder. This channel or groove must be identified and developed and utilised every time you play anything at the piano. If you are not used to playing with the correct coordination, when you achieve this it will feel like nothing you have ever experienced at the piano. You will have a level of power, speed and tone control only dreamed of before.
Of course, for very talented students the Fundamental Action just comes naturally - almost always when they are very young. The child prodigy naturally and automatically uses the only coordination that will work to achieve his or her musical ends. They achieve a perfect coordination long before they ever analyse what they are doing (if they ever do). Look at them on YouTube - they don't play like children, they playing using exactly the same technique as adult professionals. This is one of the greatest possible arguments against the necessity for wasting half a lifetime practising scales and arpeggios: It is not necessary for the talented and it is not helpful for the untalented. But you do not have to be a child prodigy to achieve your own full potential as a pianist. The correct coordination can be consciously and deliberately acquired if you know what to do, and in such cases once students have learned to use it, it will become second nature to them. All pianists capable of playing the repertoire use this technique whether they realise it or not. Why? Because there is no other successful technique to use. Nature does not allow us to pick and choose what technique to adopt in a matter of physiological biodynamics. She lays down the laws and we must follow them. It is a logical absurdity to suggest that Tobias Matthay played a Chopin Etude perfectly by means of weight and relaxation while James Ching played the same Etude to the same standard by fixating the joints. They played - I believe - by using the same technique; the only difference between the two lay in the interpretation of their experience, a difference as extreme as it was personal.
The young, small, extraordinarily musical child instinctively finds a way to express the music by overcoming the resistance of the keys. This they do by getting the upper arm and shoulder involved from the very start. The ordinary student's upper arm will hang limp from the shoulder. Not so with the talented ones. Their upper arm will be working with the forearm as a single unit, backing up the activity of the hands and fingers. I have seen it with very musical children. The correct coordination is being put in place and developed from day one. And as they develop as pianists over time, the necessary coordination develops too, until after a few years - by the age of ten or twelve - they are playing the most difficult pieces with ease. They are unaware of how they got there and so are their teachers. "It's a gift," they all say. But this "gift" has a scientific, biodynamic explanation and this "gift" can be consciously acquired by those who were not fortunate enough to have been born with it. Following the processes taught here will put the same coordination in place deliberately and consciously that the child prodigy naturally achieves. It will be more difficult for us coming to it later and with quite erroneous physical malcoordination already in place. That malcoordination has first to be eradicated and then replaced by the correct coordination. This process is tedious and long; it will take at least one year and probably two or more. But during it you will experience consistent - if slow - improvement, and if followed relentlessly it will lead ultimately to fulfillment of your potential as a pianist. As the correct coordination is achieved everything in your playing falls into place. Every aspect of piano technique will improve. There are no distinct techniques for octaves or scales or arpeggios or finger passages. There is only one technique and that is the Fundamental Action; practise it and everything else will follow.
Generally speaking one should never play anything, and one should never play in a way, that is not directly contributing to the development of technique. The balance of the coordination between hand and shoulder that I call the Fundamental Action is so elusive that both student and teacher must constantly strive to promote it. It must inform every single thing they ever do at the piano. Technique must be acquired before it can be applied to playing a piece of music. You should never try to play a piece of music for which you have insufficient technique.
Whether or not the scales and arpeggios and all the tortuous variations thereof listed in the exam syllabus of the average Piano Academy, Conservatoire, or Royal College of Music should ever be used to develop technique is an interesting point. Just think of the scale of G sharp minor similar motion - in thirds - four octaves, then in contrary motion, then the arpeggio in root position, first and second inversion. The medieval torturer in his dungeon could have learned a thing or two from the academics who think up such ways of tormenting young children in the name of musical education. The teaching of scales is like organised religion; it started off with good intentions but got corrupted along the way. The reason why scales are still forced on every student today is because 200 years ago someone said, "Hey, the music of Haydn and Mozart is full of scales and arpeggios, so we had better get everyone to practise them. Then they'll be able to play." Since then the academics have tried to surpass each other with new permutations of the things. But they got the cart before the horse, mistakenly assuming that playing scales was the cause of technique whereas it is really the effect of technique. The reason why the professional pianist can play scales at lightening speed is the result of having technique; it is not the cause.
A child or adult beginner playing a scale using the wrong coordination is engaged in a completely different physical activity from the concert pianist practising scales. They are simply not doing the same thing. And the former will never lead to the latter. In that respect what the child or beginner is doing is a pointless exercise. Furthermore they are so tedious and unmusical that they will put off more students than they will ever help. That alone is enough reason to wipe every scale and arpeggio off the face of the musical earth. As an intellectual exercise they may be of some use. As a means of learning key signatures and the shape of a scale they may be helpful, although simply learning the chords of each key as the Fundamental Action is developed would be much more useful. But that is not why scales are taught; they are taught supposedly as a means of developing technique, and as such they are not just useless, they are worse than useless. They are highly detrimental to the development of technique as they do not develop the necessary relationship between hand and shoulder. When a student without established technique plays a scale, they are forced to press down with the forearm in order to back up the activity of the fingers. Repeating this activity daily has two effects which together will cause irreparable damage to the student's pianistic development. The first relates to coordination: the student who has not got sufficient natural ability to have established the correct coordination by a very early age will spend all those years of practise instilling and reinforcing the erroneous technique of downward forearm pressure which will inevitably lead to complete failure. The second effect could be even worse: repeated long hours of practising using the incorrect coordination will cause strain to the muscles of the forearm which work the fingers to the extent that tendonitis will probably set in, leading to seizing-up of the playing mechanism and almost certainly serious physiological damage. What should be taught instead is the gradual application of the Fundamental Action. After all, what is the purpose of piano teaching? It is to develop a workable level of technique that will enable the student to play pieces of a moderate level of difficulty in the shortest possible time.
Technique can be defined as the extent to which the hands and fingers use the shoulder and not the forearm as a solid basis against which to act. This I believe is the only meaningful and practical definition of technique as it contains within itself an actual explanation of how to play the piano. Once the coordination of the Fundamental Action is achieved, music which was previously impossible, or playable only with strain, loss of power and mistakes, becomes easy, and the most difficult piano pieces can be played with beauty and speed. It feels and looks miraculous but it is merely the correct application of unalterable laws of Physics. If a student is failing to apply sufficient power to the keys it is because he or she is to a greater or lesser extent using the forearm and not the shoulder as the source of stabilisation. Furthermore the extent to which a student is failing to play brilliantly is precisely the same extent to which he/she is using downward pressure of the forearm to contain the reactions of the hands instead of allowing the reactions to go through the forearm and upper arm and be grounded at the shoulder. In other words there is a direct relationship between all the elements that go to make up what is called talent, and the extent to which the student's hands and fingers act against the shoulder and not the forearm - that is to say the extent to which they play using the Fundamental Action. Achieve and apply the Fundamental Action to one's playing and even a mediocre, seemingly talentless piano student can play reasonably well. Of course I mean technically well; musical intelligence is another matter and cannot be altered or improved quite so easily.
One final point: don't give up the day job. The whole transformation of your piano playing can be accomplished by expending no more than an hour or two of your time each day over a period of two years or so depending upon the individual. When you can play to the best of your ability you can then decide whether to take to the concert platform (you probably won't want to then).
If you weren't born a pianist, if you weren't a child prodigy or at least able to play the Chopin Studies by the age of 16, then there is only one way you will ever be able to fulfill your potential as a pianist - whatever that potential may be. There is only one way to play the piano properly - with speed, beauty and ease - and that is by using the Fundamental Action. Piano technique is nothing less than the correct application of the Fundamental Action. The Fundamental Action is Technique. The Fundamental Action is Talent.
