Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Anyone Use the Tausig Exercise?

Just played through this (hands separate, twice each hand at a moderate tempo), and boy is it a beast! Of course, you have to be very careful not to overdo it with this one, but I recommend at least giving it a try.

http://youtu.be/4RUrHr-9NiE


Definitely NOT for the faint of heart, haha.

I've been playing three continuous octaves a day. It took about 2 months before I could even begin to endure playing the three octaves. Now that I'm past that I'm working out the evenness of the notes and beginning to pay attention to legato. Each key is it's own little adventure. Definitely a long range project that requires daily attention.

He lost me at "play through the pain."

(Regarding the exercise itself: it's similar to some more advanced Czerny exercises and some of the Dohnanyi exercises. Which must be played with careful attention to relaxation and coordinated movement in order to avoid fatigue and pain.)

I've spent a lot of time on that one. My teacher had a set of derivatives that ultimately lead up to that exercise, starting with the hand in a basic 5 finger position. Definitely stay relaxed!

so I had a few months of fatigue while playing the exercise. The fatigue would pass within ten minutes after finish playing it. Now after a few months I play 3 octaves without any fatigue. What's the problem? I hear this argument all the time on this forum. How can the muscles/tendons develop without some initial stress? I still haven't heard a good explanation of muscle/tendon development without some fatigue.

'Stay relaxed' is too general, you must cite (to yourself) where and when. Amongst other things, this is an etude for the thumb. The thumb only plays once per revolution. What is it doing when it is not playing? Many parts of the hand are tense when they are not playing, when they don't need to be, and this exercise shows that very well.

Stop in the middle of a revolution, on any 2-4 or 3-5, and feel your thumb. If it's locked, unlock it - while holding down the notes you're one - and continue on your merry way. You may need to do this on every note, until your hand learns how to enter a situation without tension.

He did a good job explaining the dangers of injury if this exercise is poorly done, IMO. The important part was when he said "there's good pain and bad pain." Good pain isn't really pain per se, just a little fatigue from getting used to these movements. He's not talking about serious joint pain and what not.

Is this excercise intended to improve finger dexterity or to help in familiarizing the player with the chords?

I've tried it, but I'm not ready for it yet, I think.

I immediately closed the tab as soon as I saw the name "Cory Hall". What a douche.

Mostly dexterity, with a little theory thrown in by connecting Major, Minor, Diminished, and Dominant 7 structures. I'm just glad there isn't an Augmented version, LOL. Man, would that hurt.

And please, enlighten me on how Cory is a douche. Seems like a bold claim when talking about someone who has dedicated so much time to teaching students.

Vandelay, I disagree. There's no theory here. I would say what it offers is 'understanding the keyboard.'

. I'm ok with the dexterity, and I know the chords. But I don't know chords well enough to play them automatically. So, even though I know them, I can't switch fast enough between them to be able to play with others or participate in a jam session.

Based on that, would this be helpful for me? When I tried it before, it was just an experiment, and I didn't pursue it.

The man in the video may play the piano very well. This I don't know. What I do know is that he doesn't understand the physiology of the playing mechanism, the fingers/hand/forearm collaboration. In his demonstration he shows the fingers lifting and separating from the hand, which is not what we do in speed. He thinks it is necessary to build strength. It is not. A small child child play the piano. He thinks it is okay, even necessary, to experience pain. It is not.

There is no good reason to practice this exercise, or any exercise, unless you just enjoy doing them. In the latter case, please play it correctly, with an understanding of how the body wants to work. That is, avoid stretching and pulling away from the hand. But, of course, of you know how to play the exercise correctly, there is no reason to play it, since it is not necessary (or even possible in the fingers) to build muscle mass or develop a capacity for endurance.

If you find a piece with this sort of passage in it, practice that. Look at the Schumann Toccata, for example.

This is untrue. Exercises are incredibly useful for the encoding of discreet patterns of play and command over the playing mechanism as a whole.


This is also untrue. Fast play and play requiring acute control of the fingers requires the development of the interossei muscles of the hand which prevents the antagonistic forearm group from firing.

It's difficult to explain in words without demonstrating, but I'll try. Can you hold your forearm in front of your chest with the palm of your hand facing the floor? The fingers/hand/forearm are a unit, like a tennis racket, though not rigid. the wrist is a level bridge between the hand and forearm. Now turn (rotate) as a unit in the elbow axis toward your chest, then back to the floor. This movement is called forearm rotation. It is something the body was designed to do. We can do it very fast and never get tired. It is in fact our fastest movement and it underlies everything we do at the piano. I know, this last comment is hard to wrap the brain around without some demonstration. But, I hasten to add, it is an underlying tool and not the final result, not the only movement we use to propel ourselves laterally up and down the keyboard.

From your comment about muscles and tendons, I see that you don't have an understanding of the best way to play without fatigue. It is possible, of course, to make music at the piano using different technical approaches or no particular approach at all. I chose to play using the body in the way it was designed to be used, not work against it, which is what causes fatigue.

Here is my demo: Forearm Rotation
Here is my demo of Octaves

The motor for any activity is located in the limb behind the one acting. We (I) don't isolate my fingers from the hand and forearm.

Precisely! The interossei muscles of the hand are responsible for fine motor control of the fingers, not the antagonistic forearm group, which is used for the wrist. Using the forearm group in place of the interossei muscles of the hand is "the hard way": it locks the wrist because the group fires antagonistically, and the load on the motor cortex is more than it needs to be (even with a well balanced and trained CNS) because this group has more innate territory than the interossei muscles. This is the reason that one must train (knowing it or not) the interossei muscles and their usage apart from the forearm group.

You are quite right. These are muscles that allow us to open and close laterally. (I at first confused these with the gripping movement, which we don't need.) Even so, you can't really think that these muscles require serious training? Without going into detail here, we also use the forearm to assist in this opening of the hand. It's called a walking arm. It sounds as if you come from a background of what I call finger isolation. For me, this is counter productive. Finger independence is a musical result and not a physical activity.

No, no he doesn't.

And I must say, actively training the interossei and lumbrical muscles of the hand with the aid of a physiologist has completely changed my technical facility on the piano. Everything becomes much, much easier.

Just curious: what did you do to train the interossei and lumbrical muscles, and why?