The two styles of efficient energy transfer at the piano - acceleration from contact + whipping!

[@paultyrrell8060]

Love your insights and content please keep it up ❤

[@SuperDieu_6666]

Not the AI art 😭😭😭 great video as always !!! 👍

[@cziffra1980]

Cheers, just thought I'd try it for one. I was hoping to get an amusing image of Indiana Jones cracking a whip against a grand piano, but that was as close as it got!

[@zugzwang2007]

Really instructive! I imagine the club head (like the hand in the whipping motion) accelerates because the "break" in the wrists converts all of the arm energy into the radial motion of the club. What you say about how to play the key and get away in time is very convincing (and I loved your Horowitz imitations).

[@cziffra1980]

Actually, there's some complexity here that I don't want to be overly certain about. I used an example with bending and unbending and it's true that clubs do this to at least some degree. However you could also account for lag in radial motion, even if the club were theoretically rigid. It isn't but there are certainly both factors in play, rather than only release of the bend. My suspicion is that the wrists unbending at first provide the radial motion, but that to actively accelerate into contact would then introduce the risk of bending the club head back during contact. I think the wrists initially generate active acceleration but they too have to release to allow the club head to properly unbend the flex. Either way, it's important to experiment with an instant of active slowing at the piano, given the need to deal with keybed well. In golf however, it may be a little more in question as to whether starting to slow a split second before contact allows for greater unbending of the flexion in the club. The only issue is what offers better acceleration, rather than any trade off between withdrawing mass from an impact, vs fully maximising acceleration. I'm pretty convinced by it, but I'd like to see some exact measurement via really precise scientific equipment to measure instantaneous speed at different points.

[@cziffra1980]

By the way, Benjamin Grosvenor also lifts that Horowitz idea from the Liszt sonata. I didn't really do it here, but I also like to bring out the thumb A before the middle line. It results in an exact quote of the first four notes of the prelude to Tristan and Isolde coming out.

[@cziffra1980]

My theory is that the order of events is that arms lead, leaving the club head behind and then the wrists do uncock, thus making a far faster acceleration of the whole club (via the shorter radius of motion from the wrists), but that they then end up slowing just in time to avoid causing further lag into the ball, and to allow the unbending to peak.

[@cziffra1980]

Okay, here we go. www.golfdigest.com/story/hand-speed-breaking-speed-golf-swing-release-golf-iq It makes me almost a hundred percent certain that it indeed involves the wrists uncocking to increase speed but then ALSO actively declerating just in time to unleash the bend in the club. BTW there's a lot of amazingly detailed stuff out there in forums and studies featuring graphs of different parts before impact. I can't understand how we are so far behind in piano playing that people literally think the weight of the arm can produce fast octaves and should fall right into the landing, when people are going so deep and precise in other fields.

[@zugzwang2007]

@@cziffra1980 Makes sense. If the unwinding of the wrists is accelerating the club head, it should reach maximum speed at the exact point when the unwinding has finished (unless there is some other acceleration still going on, coming from the legs, but I think this is more typical of cricket or tennis than golf).

[@cziffra1980]

This is the interesting golf video, that found while I was looking for evidence of the same whipping that applies to piano playing. The example he uses at the start (with whipping out a towel) is very similar to what I have used myself, to show how to land safely from a height. kzbin.info/www/bejne/qaTRZmyufKebidUsi=0OJVDAxlNDeItXSF The concept of lag (where further hand acceleration leaves the club head behind) is very similar to in piano playing. When energy comes from afar (in the body or arm) it isn't guaranteed to reach the fingertip. Although arm and body have a very real role, to simply throw them in at the piano may produce a similar lag. If they move faster than the fingertip/key connection, the added speed of the travelling mass increases impact without even contributing more tone. Although we can START acceleration in the arm as a run up to the key, it's by marginally slowing the arm down that the energy is then properly channeled into the fingertip. Pile the arm right into the landing, and you only produce more lag and more impact on landing.

[@cziffra1980]

This is a full recording of Villani's arrangement of Dido's lament. kzbin.info/www/bejne/hYjUnoN3f7p2qsUsi=QRug3h27kkHNSaHt