How Hypnosis is Cool (In Piano Technique)

Sometimes (quite often actually) when you play an actual piano as opposed to a synthesizer or whatever those things are you hear as electronic backbeat in modern music, you have to vary the weight of your hand. I mean that literally. To play pp (very softly) or ff (very loudly) depends on how much force is applied to the key. There are two ways to transmit force: by how hard your finger strikes the key and by how much arm weight you allow. In other words, you can play either heavy-handed for loud tones or light-handed for softer tones. This technique prevents finger fatigue during passages with extended ff for one thing and provides more control over long passages where you might be playing a left-handed bass clef line and a right handed treble-clef line in the upper octaves, where you really need to make them sing out. The right hand will have to be heavier in order to transmit more force to the higher keys.

So I've read various suggestions on this. One was to think of one hand as a 500-pound wrestler and the other as an 80-pound ballerina tinkling lightly along the keys. The image of Stone Cold Steve Austin straddling one arm while a lithe Lithuanian Prima Donna clung to the the other was simultaneously appalling and arousing, so I had to abandon that notion because I was getting nothing accomplished but fits of unconstrained giggling.

However, there is an effective visualization performed by stage hypnotists--including me--which is known as "the light-and-heavy-hand." Now if this isn't beautifully synchronistic then I'm not known in certain circles as the Ron Jeremy of the American Midwest. I tried it. I visualized a huge bouquet of helium balloons tied to the light hand and an enormous, leather-clad (not ballerina) but dictionary balanced on the other. For good measure, I placed two large, blue bowling balls on the dictionary. For this to work, by the way, you have to really SEE these images, and feel the weight of the heavy objects and feel the pull of the helium balloons. If you close your eyes, hold your arms out in front of you and do it correctly, one arm will begin to drop while the other will begin to rise as the "balloons" pull it into the air.

I did this visualization until I could summon the sensation effortlessly. Then I practiced my troublesome passage. I could immediately tell a difference in the hand's independence. I could easily make the left hand lighter and the right hand heavier. It takes a little practice but man does it add another valuable tool to your kit, and much faster then trying to learn it by muscle-memory, without the aid of visualization and auto-suggestion.

I think the reason this works is because the body already knows how to react to light and heavy stimuli, so there's no need to re-learn an entirely new skillset when all you have to do is apply what you already know to a different situation. I wish I could do this with scales and arpeggios; I would accelerate my learning curve immensely.

I don't know how many people actually read this blog. I mainly do it to keep my thoughts in order, and because I don't have anyone to discuss piano with, and I love it so much sometimes it sort of bursts out of me and I have to put it somewhere or I can't concentrate. Sort of like mental binge/purging. But if you do read it, do you enjoy how it starts out as one thing and then ends up as something else; like how fish evolved into reptiles, then apes, then into men; and then in the Southeastern United States back into apes?