The ebook, An Alexander Technique and Triceps Approach to Piano Technique, is published on this website in a PDF format> It is very detailed and practical. It will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create the accurate piano technique you want without sacrificing your body.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
WHAT FOLLOWS IS A BIOGRAPHY AND CONVERSATION WITH JOE CHINDAMO ON THE ABOVE PIANO TECHNIQUE EBOOK.
Joe Chindamo is a pianist, composer, arranger who cannot be categorised easily. With twenty CDs in his wake, many of them topping charts in Japan, countless world tours and a plethora of awards, he can comfortably take his place amongst the best jazz pianists in the world. But like the greatest jazz pianists, Joe’s abilities transcend jazz, as is demonstrated by his work with violin virtuoso Zoe Black, with whom he has formed a formidable duo and recorded a CD entitled REIMAGININGS.
As an arranger he possesses an uncanny ability to personalise any work which enters his orbit. A man with an international reputation, Joe has performed concerts all over the world. Of particular note, the Umbria Jazz Festival, the Tokyo Dome and The Lincoln Centre in New York. He also performed with famed US drummer Billy Cobham for over years.
His formidable pianism has earned him admiration amongst the classical elite. In 2008 Joe was invited to perform three concerts in Italy by the celebrated classical pianist Michele Campanella. Joe was invited back to perform in Naples by Campanella in 2011. The celebrated piano maker Paolo Fazioli heard Joe at the Umbria Jazz Festival and invited him to play at his auditorium in Venice, a venue usually reserved for top flight classical pianists. An enthusiastic recommendation by the formidable Nikolai Demidenko led to an invitation to perform a Mozart piano concert with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in 2013.
CONVERSATION
JOE: I am a professional pianist and studied the Alexander Technique for several years during the mid to late 90s.
Although I am especially known for my jazz playing, I am keenly interested in classical music, and never believed in the idea that a jazz pianist should possess any less skill at the piano than his/her classical counterpart. As such, I’ve always sought ways and means of achieving this.
I bought your ebook “An Alexander Technique and Triceps Approach to Piano Technique” a week ago and although I haven’t finished reading it (I keep wanting to go back to the beginning), I believe it to be the most important book on piano technique in recent times. (I have been aware of the the Bonpensieri book for years, too).
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your great contribution.
I live in Australia, otherwise I’d love to have some lessons with you – to learn music which lies out of my comfort zone (like a Mozart concerto for instance).
I have better technique when I improvise than when I play classical music, and I’d love to imbue the latter with the freedom I experience with the former. People find this odd to believe as I am quite well known in jazz circles in Australia.
Whatever your response, I shall endeavour to study your book and admire your work.
ETHAN: So, I told a friend and Alexander Technique client about you. She is a very fine classical pianist, and she directed me to your recording of Moon River. Susan thought it was wonderful.
I just heard it. You play beautifully.
So, let me play Alexander Technique teacher. Three things I saw instantly.
First, let the keys come to you. Don’t go to the piano with your head and upper body. You can truly be intimate with the piano letting yourself be fully upright and not pulling toward the keyboard. It seems to me that all musicians who love their instrument pull toward the instrument to connect. I don’t see a problem with letting the instrument come to you.
Second, send your hands to the keys, which is another way of saying let your hands and head be in Opposition to each other. Opposition is the Alexander term for allowing the distance between you and what you’re doing, or between parts of the body.
Third, let your hands and fingers be soft when a finger is not playing. So, don’t hold tension in any part of your hand in preparation for playing a key.
Hope you’re ok with these things I wrote. It is amazing to me how much less work a pianist can do and play better and better. You already play with great ease. Why not play with even less work? One of my favorite teachers in my Alexander training had a mantra she repeated over and over and over: “Do less.”
JOE: Ah, the performance on the restored Steinway. Thank you for your very kind words. I realise every time I use the word kind in a sentence that it must seem like I’m attempting a pun. Please thank Susan as well. There are more virtuosic performances there as well. One of these days I will send you an unreleased track or two of the Goldberg variations. I’ve composed a violinistic twin to accompany the original keyboard for all 30 Variations. It’s been recorded but not released.
Sometimes I think it’s a result of too many years of playing jazz where even at the highest level one can opt for an easier path if the technique is not quite up to scratch that day. I was never satisfied with this, of course.
You’re very generous to provide me with such feedback, thank you. I wish I could walk around to you and have lessons. You see I started life at the age of six on the accordion and switched to piano at 15 and have been largely soft taught, except for the odd period when I travelled to Italy to study. I’ve always been searching for better ways.
In fact, one of the reasons I was attracted to your method is that you’re the only other person to mention the brachialis in the playing mechanism.
Where your method differs from what I learnt in Italy is that there is no triceps push and the lift and play is provided solely by the extensors and flexors lifting and striking the keys, all the while backed up by the weight of the forearm (switched off brachialis) I love your phrase “switched off “or “turned off “rather than relaxed, by the way.
It’s interesting that you noted that I lean towards the piano. One of the first things I corrected after reading your book was the concept of opposition and creating space between myself and what I’m doing. Very powerful stuff. You’ve got me thinking about finger work now!
1. Am I to assume that in your technique the extensors are by and large kept switched off, and the back of the hand relaxed at all times? In other words, there is never any lifting of the fingers and they feel like they want to stay with the keyboard as the forearm lifts (like melted mozzarella)?
2. A ‘lift and play” on every note will only work in relatively slow tempo. If I have a sequence of 16 notes (say in a Mozart concerto, where there are pages of them in a row) at a fast tempo, can I assume that’s the lift only happens once every four notes and the other three are shifts. Lift shift shift shift etc. Would you recommend doing this in a uniform fashion (always 4 at a time) or does it depend on how the phrases are constructed eg. 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 for a hypothetical case?
3. How does this apply to broken octaves and trills – for the latter you recommend shifting the wrist slightly from side to side to help the fingers, I have tried this but find it difficult not to turn this into rotation at a quick tempo. Does the shift only happen once every 4 or 8 notes at speed?
4. Finally, when the brachialis lifts the forearm, the upper arm must come forward so as to keep the fingers on the keyboard during the lift. In actual playing where the lift is minimal, is this forward movement from the upper arm necessary?
P.S. I have worked out what my Christmas presents are going to be for my musician friends!
ETHAN: 1. There is no lifting of the hand when the forearm lifts, so the hand and fingers are released when the forearm is raised. This means the finger tips are almost always in contact with the keys or very close, so the amplitude of the forearm lift is not much. It is an amazing feeling for a pianist to never hold the hand straight out from the forearm with the extensors.
2. The lift is done at the beginning of note groupings. So the lift can be done every two notes at a slow tempo, or you may group as many notes together as works, from 2 to 5 to 6 or possibly more. This makes the grouping act like one note or one gesture. This truly capitalizes on fingers being in motion before they play, but what comes out of the piano are effortlessly articulated notes in sound.
3. In broken octaves the lift is on the first note, and even though the second note is four fingers away, it is treated as a 2 note stroke with the hand shifting sideways to align with the second note. So, a series of broken octaves is a series of two note strokes.
In a trill you lift on the first note, and then the back and forth between the two notes is a shift side to side, treated as one gesture. Even if you play a 10 note trill, it is experienced as a side to side 10 note stroke. The shift back and forth is so minimal it feels like it is doing itself. The side to side of the wrist is a lateral movement, it is not a rotation. (When the hand is rotated, it is actually the biceps heads taking turns contracting to rotate the forearm, which is not part of this technique.)
4. This forward motion of the arm is necessary, and it is done from the front of the deltoid, which is the front of the shoulder. This ever so slight going forward of the arm from the deltoid is so small, that unless you’re aware of it, you probably won’t feel it. Put a long door mirror beside you and observe it.
This piano triceps technique is so unusual because it seems like you’re moving more than the traditional just moving the fingers technique, but with the fingers almost always touching the keys and the elbows not held away from the body, it is so minimal and powerful with the triceps backing up the fingers.
JOE: This is incredibly generous of you. Thanks so much for your insightful answers.
Joe: I have a couple more questions which you can add to the thread. They concern passing the thumb under fingers and vice versa. For the former, is this done by Lift and play or Shift play or either? Does the thumb itself articulate at all? I find Shift and play more difficult for fingers over thumb and therefore assume this is always a Lift play situation, similarly when I am travelling from a white note to a distant black one. Hope this is ok.
Ethan: You don’t always need to lift when the thumb passes under the fingers, or when the fingers pass over the thumb. If the note grouping requires that either one of these happen with the thumb in the middle of the stroke grouping, then simply do a Shift. The reason this works, is because you always articulate the thumb, whether on a Shift or a Lift.
Remember that the fingers always play whether it is a shift or only a lift, and that on the lift the finger plays simultaneously with the downward motion of the forearm by the triceps. It is very easy to slip into dropping the hand to move the thumb into the key, but if you always articulate the thumb like the fingers, then you don’t compromise the hand position.
