Twelve Metaphors to Help You Understand Taubman Technique on a Body Level
Gymnastics Springboard
Notice how, in his critique of a girl’s two attempts at a front handspring, the coach in this short clip focuses on her approach to the springboard rather than the form of the handspring itself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPLX87eassk
To my eye, the second handspring is neater and more polished looking. However, the coach doesn’t seem to care about what the particular handspring looked like. He is laying the groundwork for his student to be able to execute more complex maneuvers. This particular student will need to run faster as she approaches the springboard because extra speed will translate into a more powerful landing on the springboard. Once on that springboard, the trained gymnast’s body is free only to change speed in an upward direction (this is what physics calls angular momentum).The resulting upward velocity, translated from the speed of the run, creates time and space to do fancy stuff in the air, so it is ever so important for aspiring gymnasts to learn this skill well.
Piano keys are not created specifically to spring you back upwards after you have landed. However, consider that when a body exerts a force on another body, that body will exert an equal and opposite force against it. Otherwise, you would not be resisted by the keybed but gravity would drag your fingers into its lair at the center of the earth, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (or so I have heard, though I don’t believe it myself). So is the force equal and opposite? If that’s how you cultivate things muscularly, yes—but that would not be desirable. With looseness in all the right places and optimal alignment, what you get instead is “angular momentum” (maintaining the speed of some body part while changing direction). This happens in gymnastics (whether the hurdling is done with a springboard or not) and it happens with piano if you cultivate it.
The coach in the clip notes that the girl flubbed the second attempt because she chickened out and slowed down before reaching the springboard. She therefore lacked the upward spring, and distance, that she would need for more complex maneuvers. At the piano, the equivalent of this chickening out entails hurrying off the key before there is a good down (because you can't see how you are going to get to the next note quickly enough otherwise!), which ruins all prospects for conserving momentum.
The message behind the metaphor: Landing into a note is as much about getting to the next place as about the quality and timing of the sound made. If you cultivate both general and specific habits of looseness combined with good downs, you can then use the “give” you have allowed for a free ride toward the next note. This is one reason that good downs are worth all the time you spend to cultivate them.