The Physical Laws of Action and Reaction and the Law of the Lever

Let me illustrate what happens with another image that is easy to grasp. The girl in the picture is throwing a basketball at the basket. The action of throwing produces equal and opposite reactions which are contained or negated or absorbed by the solid ground beneath her feet. But in the second picture when she is on roller skates there is no such grounding of the reactions and so she is pushed backwards as she tries to throw the ball. Her throwing action is the equivalent of the action of the fingers overcoming the resistance of the keys, and she can only throw the ball if her feet are solidly grounded. Her being pushed backwards when on rollerskates is the equivalent of the hands and arms being displaced by the reactions to the actions of the fingers and hands on the keys because of the lack of a solid basis against which to act.

Or imagine your car won’t start and you have to push it. You push forwards with your hands and arms to overcome the resistance of the inertia of the car. While pushing forwards you will experience backwards reactions which flow through your body downwards until they meet and are counteracted by the solid ground under your feet. So your actions are channelled in one direction and the reactions travel in the opposite direction. The power of these equal and opposite reactions can be seen very clearly if you are trying to push your car on an icy or slippy surface.The car will not move but the reactions to your pushing will cause your feet to slip on the ice and actually slide backwards in the opposite direction to your pushing. Or think of the images we have all seen of astronauts in the zero-gravity environment of the space station or shuttle. If they try to "walk" on a solid surface the action of their feet and legs will push them away in the opposite direction, because there is no (downwards acting) gravity to counteract the upwards  reactions to the activity of the feet and legs.

The exact same thing will happen in piano playing if the reactions are not grounded in a solid basis. The actions of the hands and fingers will cause the rest of the playing mechanism to be displaced backwards and upwards and some or all of the power exerted by the hands and fingers will be wasted in reactions, resulting in a greater or lesser - and in some cases total - loss of power and control. With the correct coordination, the reactions are grounded in the torso at the shoulder joint and every unit of force generated by the fingers and hands is transferred directly into key depression. This produces not only maximum power but, equally importantly, total control over the force applied to the key, which translates into total tone control. The necessity for tone control is about the only point upon which all major writers on piano technique are agreed.

The lever is one of the six simple machines known to the ancient world and classified by Greek philosopher Archimedes in the Third Century BC, the others being the wheel, the pulley, the inclined plane, the screw and the wedge.  The definition of a machine is something  that provides mechanical advantage to magnify the force necessary to overcome a resistance. The historian Plutarch reports Archimedes as famously saying about his discovery of levers, "Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth."

There are  three classes of lever which differ in their configuration of the fulcrum, load (also called resistance), and force (illustrated below from left to right). Class 1 levers have the fulcrum in the central position, with the force applied at one end to move the load at the other end in the opposite direction. Examples are the crowbar, claw hammer (when used to pull out nails), and the one every child is familiar with - the seesaw. Even a child knows that a heavier person nearer the centre of a seesaw can balance a lighter person on the other side at the extremity. That is a perfect example of a Class 1 lever in action. Class 2 levers have the load in the central position with the force at one end making it move in the same direction around the fulcrum at the opposite end. The best example of this is the wheelbarrow. Class 3 levers apply the force in the central position, with the fulcrum at one end and the load at the other, for example, baseball bats, tennis rackets, human arms hands and fingers. There are numerous excellent videos on YouTube which explain the three Classes of lever and the effects of each.

The class of lever that we are interested in when it comes to piano technique is the Third Class, where the force is applied between the load to be moved and the fulcrum. If you look at the illustration above you have to imagine it upside down to see how it equates to the piano-playing finger or hand. The load to be moved is the piano key, the lever is the finger or hand, and the fulcrum is the knuckle joint (for fingers) or the wrist (for hands). The force is applied between the resistance (or load) and the fulcrum by means of the long tendons which are attached to the underside of the fingers and hands being pulled by the muscles in the forearms.

 Levers of the first and second class are commonly used to help in overcoming big resistances with a relatively small effort. But the interesting thing from our point of view about the Lever Third Class is that it does not magnify effort but rather increases speed and distance travelled.

The arm is a third-class lever. It is this lever action that makes it possible for you to flex your arms so quickly. Your elbow is the fulcrum. Your biceps muscle, which ties onto your forearm about an inch below the elbow, applies the effort; your hand is the resistance, located about 18 inches from the fulcrum. In the split second it takes your biceps muscle to contract an inch, your hand has moved through an 18-inch arc. Therefore, as the muscle has only moved an inch, and the hand has moved 18 inches in the same period of time, the hand must be moving at 18 times the speed of the biceps muscle. So we see that using the arm as a Third Class lever has an enormous multiplying effect on distance travelled and therefore the speed of the lever. Any study of the numerous articles and YouTube videos dedicated to Levers will show that it is common knowledge that the Third Class of Lever instead of magnifying power like the first two, actually turns power into speed. When we apply this to using the fingers and hands as levers, the same result is obtained. The muscles in the forearm are connected to the fingers and to the palm of the hands by long tendons. When the muscles pull on these tendons the speed of the finger reaction is magnified in the same way as it is in the movement of the forearm just described, the exact amount  being a function of the length of the tendon and the size of the muscle. Suffice it to say that a finger acting as a third class lever has the ability to move a piano key with  a speed  many times greater than a finger not acting as a lever. The effect on piano playing is enormous but it will only be felt if the wrist is stabilised so as to act as a fixed fulcrum.

When the hand and fingers act as levers, the load or resistance to be moved is of course the piano key and the wrist acts as the fulcrum for the action of the hands, while the knuckle joints act as smaller fulcra for the actions of the fingers. But as we know, a fulcrum will only work its magic in creating a lever if it is fixed. That is to say, the wrist as fulcrum does not need to be fixed in space, but merely in relation to the levers acting against it. It becomes fixed by not reacting upwards or backwards to the actions of the fingers and hands. This happens only if the forearm is immobilised by not moving at the elbow joint and the hands act through the elbow joint against the shoulder. Of course nature has designed the fingers and hands to act as levers. This is not something peculiar to pianists. But when the finger or hand has the added resistance of the piano keys to overcome, they will only continue to act as levers if the fulcrum is fixed by there being a solid basis to absorb the reactions. A finger or hand that keeps the attributes of a lever while depressing the piano keys will have immense speed and power compared with a non-lever. The difference is astounding and it is what makes the difference between an amateur and a professional pianist. To recap, the wrist becomes a fixed fulcrum for the actions of the hands and fingers, fixed by means of the solid structure (forearm and upper arm) between it and the bedrock of the torso, seat and floor. As the fulcrum is not fixed in space - the wrist is constantly moving all over the keyboard - but is fixed in relation to the lever (hands/fingers) and the solid base (shoulder-torso-seat-floor), it could be called a "floating fixed fulcrum".

James Ching recognised the necessity for a fixed fulcrum and concluded that therefore muscular fixation of the joints was necessary. This however would lead to unworkable levels of stiffness which is not the case with the Fundamental Action.This coordination can produce the required result of power transmitted to the keys by the levers of the hand/fingers without any stiffening and with a feeling of complete relaxation in the arm. The most important phrase in the preceding section is what I referred to as the "solid structure" between the fulcrum (wrist) and the solid base. If there is no "solid structure" the Law of the Lever cannot be applied. It would be like trying to move the rock using a rubber stick or a stick that keeps breaking. In our case the solid structure is the forearm and the upper arm acting as one single solid unit. This is the most important element of the Fundamental Action and the most difficult to acquire.

The illustration above shows the tendons of the left hand with the palm facing upwards. Take your own left hand and look at it. When you move the hand towards you with a sharp pull what is happening is that the tendons which connect the forearm muscles to the palm of the hand through the wrist pull like little wires on the hand to jerk it upwards. Likewise longer tendons running down each finger are pulled by other muscles in the forearm (identifying the precise ones is not important) to create very fast movements of the fingers. Turn the hand palm downwards on the piano keyboard and you have a perfect set-up of the Third Class of Lever ready to overcome the resistance of the keys.  Then, like all third class levers, the force is applied between the fulcrum and the resistance by the tendons attached to the hand or fingers being pulled by the muscles in the forearms. All that is required is the fulcrum.

The two Physical Laws of Action and Reaction, and the law of the Lever, are really two aspects of the same physical phenomenon. The rocket and the girl both need the solid basis of the ground to act against; so too does a lever need a solid basis to act against, a fulcrum. The fulcrum for the hand and for the thumb is the wrist; the fulcrum for each of the other four fingers is its individual knuckle joint. When the Lever Third Class is applied it produces speed; the Law of Action and Reaction produces power through stabilisation of reactions; and together they bring about the conditions necessary for pianistic virtuosity. Only when the two Laws of Physics here invoked are combined, can the miracle of speed and power with ease in piano playing be achieved.

But the Law of the Lever will only be applicable if there is a fixed fulcrum; and the Law of Action and Reaction depends upon the presence of a solid stable basis for the fingers and hands to act against. Both these physical laws require the same thing - stability behind the hands, backing up the hands and fingers, stability between the wrists and the shoulder joints so that the whole of the solid basis of torso and body and seat and floor are called into play. For this to happen there must be the capacity to provide a solid structure between wrist and shoulder which means that it must be possible to have control over the elbow so that it doesn't "give" or "break" when you don't want it to; that can only come about through the acquisition of and application to piano playing of what I call the Whole-Arm-Action. Having the ability to play with a Whole-Arm-Action is the only way to provide a fixed fulcrum and a stable basis to absorb reactions, and how to achieve this and apply it to your playing will be discussed in the next section.