Ten Things I Wish I Could Have Understood about Taubman Technique from the Very Beginning
9. That you strongly tend to “overshape” as you move from higher finger to lower, and “undershape” as you move from lower to higher.
Doing an overshape (a function of moving the arm in curves) toward the thumb makes it a lot easier to get the weight of the arm behind it. This, in turn, helps solve the challenges of using the thumb advantageously and of making it sound like the other fingers. Then, when you under-shape toward the pinky, you are better able to get a nice little forward jolt from the ulna to keep your playing energized.
I suggest that you not worry about the few situations where this rule might not apply. First of all, it almost always does, and you’re better off developing the habit of “overshaping” toward the thumb and correcting the rare exceptions, rather than treating each situation as if it could be either. Second, you would have to be playing something extraordinarily hard and fast before you absolutely needed that rare undershape into the thumb. In other words, there is so much advantage to using the arm in curves rather than straight lines, that always overshaping into the thumb will create advantages in practically any situation with this technique--so you might as well start building the habit as soon as possible.
You can in all likelihood do this work with little input from a teacher as long as you are secure with the previous facets of the technique that I've mentioned. (Just be sure to maintain awareness of your arm continually realigning itself on each successive finger.) Another valuable feature of having this habit is that it can lead quite nicely in the direction of teaching the shoulder girdle and upper arms to “breathe”—to continually release tensions that they pick up in the heat of the moment. These associated habits, once secure, can eventually become part of how you approach the artistry of playing the piano.
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