The Point of Sound website and blog are home to a collaborative effort to create an accessible, specific, and scientifically grounded explanation for how to use your body to play the piano, guided but not limited by the insights of the brilliant Dorothy Taubman. As its target audience is a broad public of persons interested in the piano for a multitude of reasons, this explanation will not mystify, or be boring or turgid. It will be pedagogically efficient, and flexible enough to be expressed to different kinds of learners. It will be capable of being structured for all levels of piano skill. It will not assume that only a certain kind of person with a particular configuration of strengths can learn to play the piano well. It will align and realign with currently available hard and soft scientific knowledge. It will traffic with learning theories influenced by neuroscience. It will coach a pianist to intelligently wield forces from within her body at the piano, in ways that she will be able to feel even if no one can tell what she is up to. It will encourage each pianist to trust in her body’s ability to play like the devil with minimal effort, with the benefit of the technical advantages Taubman grasped but lacked the information to articulate as fully as is currently possible.
You could have a fabulous feeling and concept for a piece of music, but without understanding how to create gradations of forces with your body that parallel them, you will not be able to express them at the piano. So, here's to an outrageous, joyous interdisciplinary riot, surrounding a topic that not many of us thought worthy of it: piano technique. Because, after all, music making is not a disembodied pursuit.
© Kathy Malyj Santiago. All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
The Forces of Taubman
About the "Essence" of Taubman Technique
Seven Pillars of Taubman Technique
Rotations Disassembled
The S P Rules for Rotating Your Forearm
Do the S P Rules Yield the Right Movements?
Newsletters
July 2016: Ten Things I Wish I Could Have Understood about Taubman Technique from the Very Beginning
December 2016: Twelve Metaphors to Help You Understand Taubman Technique on a Body Level