Originally posted by: johnjohn320
Originally posted by: DLeRium
Originally posted by: johnjohn320
Not to get all deep/technical, but I follow the school of thought that piano playing is something that is a normal motion-that is, any healthy, normal, human body is capable of it. Where the "talent" (from solely the technical standpoint that is) lies is in how easily you find these technical feats. Too often we hear "he has fast fingers." His fingers are no faster than yours, really, he's simply learned to coordinate his muscles in a certain way that his body can make these motions on demand.
It's late..and i'm tying with one hand. Sorry for any weird sentences...
Often you hear this from people who aren't too musical. Maybe you have played piano or maybe you haven't, but I'm sure you're not someone who plays it very seriously or very well. I've taken music classes in school and I see people struggle through it. You can tell there are people who listen to music and can sing very well but aren't musical at all. We were doing a listening test, and people had trouble telling 3rd and 5th and octave intervals apart. I don't know, but I always found that to be the easiest thing ever since I was a 3-year-old. I could and still can tell intervals almost instantaneously with very little flaws (we're talking augmented and diminished intervals too). Did I get practice? Hell no. It's just something that comes with talent. Talent determines how fast you pick something up and how easy it is. A lot of people see music notes as simply different frequencies. I see the notes when I hear any song. It's not just relative pitch, but how you would play it on the keyboard.
I think it takes a lot more than fast fingers and correct key pressing. What determines a good singer or a good artist? Expression. That's the unique part. Anyone can type 100wpm with practice, just like anyone could probably play Bach's 2 part inventions with a little practice, but how well you play it is up to the individual. And that separates us musicians....
Nice assumptions, but actually I'm pursuing my BM (Bachelor of Music) as a Piano Performance major at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (ranked #2 in the nation for keyboard studies, last I heard).
You completely misinterpreted my post. I was saying that the physical motions of piano playing (not getting into musical expression/intellect/ear at ALL) are something that the human body is naturally capable of. Pianists dont necessarily have something in our fingers that makes them move faster, we've just trained our technique, which is essentially coordination of muscle contractions, to perform very quick/large/rapid/whatever motions efficiently. Talent of technique lies in how naturally this coordination occurs. For some, it comes very naturally, to the point where they rarely even consider or think about it. Some hit barriers in technique, and have to concentrate very hard on how to make things work, in order to make it part of one's playing... So hard to explain through typing, but hopefully you get my drift.
EDIT-Gyorgy Sandor (great pianist) sort of discusses what I'm trying to say in one of his books: "As I mentioned before, piano playing is not a matter of muscular strength or endurance. We have a rather complex set of muscles at our command. Some of these muscles are small and weak, others are strong and powerful. If we can activate these larger muscles properly, we do not need to strengthen the weaker ones. We must learn the kind of coordination that enables us to put to use the necessary equipment and to play without any trace of fatigue, no matter how demanding and difficult the passages we must perform. Every normal living thing is born with the degree of coordination it needs to fucntion within its environment and to survive. After only a few months, infants, develop this quality remarkably well...it is well known that some child prodigies possess a miraculous ability to coordinate, and thus they are able to perform the most demanding and seemingly strenous technical feats with the greatest ease." etc etc
I've done a lot of research on the "Human performing mechanism" due to my chosen profession, and the fact that last year I suffered from piano-related tendonitis in my left hand for months. I've examined technique very closely, explored Alexander, Taubman, and other such techniques/approaches, and read countless articles and talked to many physicians. Understand this: I know piano technique
😉 Talent IS INDEED a factor, that was one of the main points of my post. And of course, musical interpretation is both a matter of talent and experience/intellect.
