Alexander Technique and Piano Technique
I’ve noticed from social media groups that pianists have strong feelings about technique. I’ve seen comments and heated discussions about everything you could imagine: use the fingers, rely on the arm, use arm weight, or even that arm weight doesn’t exist!
What I love about Alexander Technique is that it allows the technique we have to work more fluidly. And sometimes it might highlight the fact that our technique could use a little tweaking.
I was taught to use arm weight by my undergraduate teacher, and my teacher in grad school continued to support that. If I wanted to play forte, I was taught to let more arm weight through, and if I wanted to play softly, I was taught to use less arm weight. Sounds simple enough.
But as a former athlete, I couldn’t help wondering where the arm weight was going when I used less of it. Yet when I asked my teachers about that, I was never quite satisfied with the response.
I didn’t get my answer until I studied Alexander Technique and learned how to access the back to support my arms. I realized I had been integrating arm weight into the upper trapezius, and that caused pain in my neck and shoulders. It’s a familiar pain for a lot of pianists—my peers and I used to walk around the practice rooms clutching our shoulders and stretching our necks!
Learning to integrate arm weight into the whole back and especially accessing the lats has allowed me to play without the neck and shoulder pain I used to have. The following video offers an exercise to help you learn to do that as well.
That’s one of the exercises that we do in my Intro to Alexander Technique classes for piano teachers. You can sign up for a class on the Workshops page if you found it helpful and if you’d like to learn more practices for yourself and your students.
After working with good teachers, I felt that I had a pretty solid technique. I was able to resolve technical issues pretty easily in my own playing and help my students do the same. But when I added Alexander Technique to the mix, it took things to a whole new level.
It enhanced my technique, rather than conflicting with it. Even though I changed how I do some things (like how I go about allowing more arm weight through to play forte), it actually made everything feel easier. And I know it’s a more sustainable approach because I don’t have the pain I used to have.
I started out writing this article thinking I could say that Alexander Technique is neutral and that it would support any technique, and I guess to a certain extent, it can. But I also think that if you really start to experience it, your ideas about technique will change. And is there anything wrong with that? I have three performance degrees and my ideas about technique are still changing!
Change can be frightening, especially when we’ve done things the same way for a long time, and because we often consider the knowledge passed on by our teachers to be sacred.
But changing our minds about what we’ve been taught doesn’t mean we’re disregarding those ideas—we’re just considering them from a different perspective and making them our own. And as teachers, it’s very important for us to stay curious about what we think, or our teaching will suffer.
If you’re a pianist and teacher, you might resist the idea of changing your technique, and I can certainly relate to that. But if you want to be sure to pass along good habits to your students, I’d encourage you to seek out some Alexander Technique ideas. I think it will make things easier for you–not harder.
A good place to start is our free pdf guide, which will give you ways to incorporate Alexander Technique into your teaching. If you opt in to our mailing list, you’ll receive weekly emails with more tips to help you use Alexander Technique in your playing and teaching. Comment below and let me know what you might be questioning about technique!