Twelve Metaphors to Help You Understand Taubman Technique on a Body Level
Laying a walkway with heavy pavers
Here is my front walkway, which I arranged from rocks that were really!--heavy (sometimes upwards of seventy pounds) for me. I was picky about the placement of these rocks. I tweaked the placement of each--sometimes just an inch, sometimes more like three or four. Did I lift one of these rocks up to the height of my hips before shifting its position a couple of inches? Of course not. I grabbed it by its edge, lifted a few inches, and dragged the rock to the desired location. If I wanted to move the rock to the right, I grabbed the right edge. To the left: the left edge. If I wanted to nudge it over to the right a bit more, I grabbed and lifted the right edge again. I didn’t do this out of native mechanical genius—anyone not in search of some demented workout opportunity would have moved the rocks this way.
Your forearm in Taubman technique can be likened to one of those heavy rocks getting lifted over and over again, and as far as the piano keys are concerned, they are receiving the weight of something very heavy indeed. You’re not going to lift your forearm from the elbow (or from higher than that in the body) to play just a step or two over—the muscles that do that are too slow, anyway! Rather, you can move through microscopic rotational movements from side to side in order to lift the fingers for the next note. Lift (rotationally) the right side of your forearm (relative to the piano) to bring it toward the right, and vice versa.
The message behind the metaphor: The direction in which you rotate does make wonderful intuitive sense. To fill out your understanding of which way to rotate when, check out the 6 S P rules.
On the other hand, if you use and abuse the wrong muscles when you play it might begin to feel like you’ve been doing some major heavy lifting!