Ten Things I Wish I Could Have Understood about Taubman Technique from the Very Beginning
2. You must know how to settle the arm against the wrist, and the wrist against the bones of the finger.
Taubman technique relies a great deal on rebound effects. That is, you get to the next place easily because wrongly tightened muscles aren’t stopping you or slowing you down and other muscles are helpfully recoiling in a desired direction. A huge part of making all of this work is getting the playing finger to bear the weight of the arm, which also creates beautiful tone.
Thomas Mark’s What Every Pianist Needs to Know about the Body has many wonderful insights for anyone trying to understand the backwaters of Taubman technique. (I see no conflict between Mark's approach and Taubman's: in fact, Mark is heavily trained in Taubman.) Among them is the idea that the bones of the arm and hand, like the stones of the architectural arch, basically press their mass against each other down the line and into the piano. The resulting load-bearing arch allows the arm to rest on the playing finger.
When this arch is in exquisite alignment (alignment that shifts depending on which finger is playing) you may experience an ephemeral but completely adequate bonding at the wrist, as if two puzzle pieces fit perfectly together for an instant. It is a delicious sensation. I think you will recognize the perfection of this bonding, and I'm not sure anyone can do this for you. The amount of physical labor involved in playing the piano will be greatly lessened because of it, and you will be able pull the richest sound out of the piano. Your upper arm and shoulder girdle will then be maximally freed from the responsibility of holding your forearm and hand up. The essentially meditative work of learning this skill is well worth the time.
When you understand the feeling of this “down in every note” you will be in the position to experience three crucial benefits.
First, the feeling of resting on the keys will help you loosen up everything that doesn’t need to be contracted. It will help you understand just how little exertion is necessary, rotational and otherwise, to optimize the technique for yourself much more quickly. Your brain will then be able to build the timings of intermuscular coordinations much more efficiently.
Second, you will always be able to get a rebound effect, or push off, toward whatever comes next. This gives the feeling that "it just goes"--that the piano practically plays itself. This is one of the main reasons, I think, that pianists who truly understand this technique are so crazy for it.
Third, your body will start to learn to quantify the force necessary for each gradation of sound, according to the movement patterns that are part of this technique. Force, after all, is just a scientific word for explaining how the work of playing the piano gets done, on the basis of an internal calculator that every pianist has (unless she plays with arbitrary tone and dynamics). As the artist begins the work of retooling her technique should she not be simultaneously rebuilding that calculator of expressivity, according to the new set of inputs?
How do you learn to settle your arm into every note? You need a good wrist, and you need to meditate on the feeling of resting your arm on the finger. This is difficult if not impossible to learn while also learning all the particulars of single and double rotation--so it's important at first to practice this in isolation. This is also impossible to do if you are clenching your upper arm and shoulder girdle to stabilize your forearm/wrist/hand. For that not to happen...