"Keybedding" solved- how to avoid impact and strain. After a brief intro, at 2:05 I demonstrate that two popular explanations are just myths. From 9:05 I offer a simple (yet rationally plausible) model for how you genuinely can land the keys safely and easily at even the loudest FFF.

To "relax" after a key lands might seem to work for some people. However, it simply offers no insight into how a key can first be grounded without already causing great impact. Whether or not you relax after is a separate issue from what makes a safe landing. Those who think this way, yet succeed, do so for a whole other reason than than this mere fairytale. For those of us who didn't instinctively luck on what actually matters, no amount of relaxing after an impact can help undo a bad landing.

Trying to slow down a key before the keybed is clearly implausible in a loud dynamic, leaving another model that tells us nothing about what might allow the keys to land safely. Worse still, moving the keys cautiously can be attempted rather literally in quiet playing- with disastrous effects. Cautious movements cause muscular tightness and a complete physical disconnect of the arms and body from the piano. A model that encourages caution about depressing the keys is loaded with problems.

Although it's very common to speak of using the mass of the arms and body in piano playing, what is almost never said is that they serve primarily to receive and absorb movement, not simply to actively drive into the keys. Amidst all the hyping of mass as an accelerator, we tend to completely overlook the inherent consequences of piling mass into a head-on collision. Keybedding is essentially synonymous with driving too much mass into the keys and then having it jam up at the collision with the keybeds. You can't cure this by just winding the intensity down, after all the corresponding momentum has already piled into collision. It works for real only if you can sense how to use the keybeds as a comfortable platform to push mass away from. Only by first learning this action can we also find ways to safely send a little more mass inward, without triggering a high impact collision into the keybed.

Good movements simply can't jam up in the first place, and thus leave no need for caution or backing off. To relax out of the jam (following a bad movement) is like putting a plaster on your hand after punching a wall. Freedom is earned by using the keybed to create the right kinds of responses.

#piano #pianotechnique #matthay #armweight #keybedding #pianist