Notes from a Studio

This is an online journal where I share thoughts about topics related to music as well as
discussing my ongoing Zen meditation practice as it relates to the art of music.

Enjoy, and please let me know your thoughts and suggestions for further entries
peter@petergach.com

June 2026

What is Technique?

My friend and musical colleague, the singer/pianist Ann Chase recently asked me for my definition of technique. The question prompted me to consider exactly how to define the term as it applies to the art of playing the piano. If you read reviews of piano performances, critics will often use the phrase “brilliant technique” to praise someone’s playing. This implies that technique is the ability to play fast, to play cleanly with crisp, sharp articulation. One rarely, if ever, hears a critic use a phrase like “the pianist played with a subtle technique.” The association of the term technique with the ability to rapidly play fistfuls of notes is an incomplete understanding of the word. Making music at the keyboard requires a whole range of qualities. To make subtle gradations of dynamics, from the softest whisper to the roaring clang of heavy chords, to use the pedal in such a way as to blend harmonies or to clarify a musical texture, to choose the right fingering to make a passage secure, to memorize a composition so that it can be confidently communicated regardless of the piano and the setting, to breathe with the phrasing in a natural way - all of these and more are aspects of a well-rounded, fully developed technique.

The pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy had this definition of technique:

Technique is the means of expression.

This captures the essence the word. We do not acquire a technique simply for the sake of having a technique. We use our technique to express and interpret through the filter of our own mind/body, the composer’s notated score. Purveyors of various ‘piano methods’ try to sell us a package of movements and approaches to playing that they assure us will result in a virtuoso piano technique. The 19th century developed a fascination with such collections of exercises. The first of these was probably the Gradus ad Parnassum of Muzio Clementi. It promised that if we faithfully worked through the exercises, we would attain the heights of technical prowess at the keyboard. Composers thereafter, including Chopin, Liszt, Brahms and others created various collections of exercises in this mold. You can judge for yourself those that have lasting musical and artistic value. Perhaps the most notorious and most woodenly unmusical of all of these were the Hanon Exercises still unfortunately being used among pianists today. There is not some limited benefit to be derived from systematically working through a multitude of note-patterns that acquaint one with various combinations of notes on the keyboard. But in and of themselves such exercises are a highly limited way of developing technique. In fact, the mechanical, mindless repetition of such exercises will probably have the deleterious effect of paralyzing a musician’s aural imagination, if not deadening it entirely.

Henry Neuhaus, in his excellent book The Pianistic Art wrote the following:

The clearer it is what we have to do, the clearer it is how we must do it.

This points out a fundamental truth of technical development. All music starts and ends with sound. There are two locations for this sound – an external location and an internal one. The external location of sound is when we look at the score, follow the directions the score gives us, and then move our fingers on the keyboard with the proper timing to turn the musical symbols into sound waves produced by the piano and transmitted via these sound waves to the listener. We can call this the ‘ear drum version.’ The eye sees the symbol, the brain interprets this into commands to the neuromuscular system, and the fingers move as directed to produce the sound. The pianist hears the result, comparing it to the notated score. The internal location, often overlooked, is the aural image. The aural image resides in the imagination, or inner hearing of the pianist. It is fundamental to both technical development and effective communication of the composer’s notated score to the listener. Simply put, there can be no successful musical communication without a well-developed aural image of what we want to play. To paraphrase Neuhaus:

"The clearer our aural image of what we have to do, the clearer the path to discovering the technical means to do it. This is ‘inner hearing’ as opposed to ‘outer hearing.’"

It is this constant comparing of the internal aural image of the music with the external sound we produce that leads to technical development. Absent that, all the methods, techniques and exercise books in the world will lead us to a dead end and our technical development will be stagnant if not non-existent.

This aural image is not a static, fixed image. If we are fully aware of the music as we are learning it, we will notice that the aural image undergoes continuous development as we go deeper into a composition. One of the indicators of the staying power of a musical work is that the more we study it and practice it, the more our insights into the music in all its aspects (harmonic, structural, emotional, etc.) deepen. We can return to a piece after a hiatus of years and discover yet more possibilities in something we thought we had already mastered. We can bring to it the technical mastery we have already acquired by the ‘deep listening’ we have practiced with other pieces.

Looking at technique often ignores a fundamental fact of our physical existence: We are temporary, and our bodies change as we move through time to our life’s inevitable conclusion. A technique for a ten-year-old may not be the same as the technique of a 40-year-old pianist, or a pianist in their 70’s. “Powering through” a piece as quickly as possible to learn another piece as quickly as possible may be appropriate for a young musician, but using the same approach in one’s autumn years will lead to frustration, unneeded tension and a stunted musical interpretation. Technique must respect the physical possibilities of a pianist as those possibilities change over time. Furthermore, all technique must be characterized by resilience and adaptability. There are maybe a handful of pianists in the entire world who travel from venue to venue with their own nine-foot concert grand piano, accompanied by their personally chosen technician who tunes and grooms the piano to the lucky pianist’s specifications. The rest of us pianistic mortals must adapt to different pianos (we do not play the piano, we play a piano on any given day and time.) Our technique must be flexible enough to adapt to the different personalities of each piano we play – different keyboard feel, the depth of descent of the key, the key weight, the brightness or dullness of the piano’s tone, the feel of the pedals, and acoustics of the room/hall. This is resilience in responding to the externals of playing the piano.

There is also the aspect of the pianist’s awareness of his own body when playing. We can call this awareness proprioception. Proprioception can be defined as the awareness of our body in space. The ability of our hand to land on exactly the right position on the keyboard. Leaping from place to place as in the stride bass of a Joplin rag – bass note chord, bass note chord – is an example of proprioception. The other aspect of proprioception is sometimes labeled as interoception - our ability to sense and perceive the internal state of the body. We are using interoception when we sense we are hungry, or sleepy, or need to scratch an itch. The more highly developed our technique is, the more refined both our proprioception and interoception will be. Sadly, many pianists have a limited awareness of their bodies when playing. For them this awareness starts with the eardrum, which receives the sound vibrations of the music, and jumps to their fingertips touching the keys. Everything in-between and beyond this - the muscles of the shoulder, arms, the spine and the body’s core, the pelvis, and legs and the feet - all of this disappears into a black hole of unawareness. What I don’t need I don’t heed, because all I need to do is move my fingers and listen to the result. Playing in this way will not lead to technical development.

There is an evolving field in the sciences called Embodied Cognition which speaks to this. It seeks to dissolve the illusion that the body is only a robot responding to the brain’s commands. It examines the role the body plays in determining, rather than merely carrying out, a brain-directed cognition. The body shapes the mind just as much as the mind shapes the body. If you make gestures when you are speaking, you are demonstrating embodied cognition. Having an aural image so strong that we can perform a piece on any piano at any time is an example of embodied cognition. We carry the piece around in us. It resides not in just our brain, but in our body. There is a scientific experiment that illustrates this for piano playing. Ask a pianist to imagine five notes from c through g, a five-finger pattern (c-d-e-f-g), then attach some sensors to the pianist’s fingers. As the pianist is imagining the sequence of notes, without touching a keyboard, and without any physical motion whatsoever, there will be invisible, microscopic muscle movements detected by the sensors in each of the fingers that would play that pattern at an actual keyboard. No keyboard, no sound, and yet the pianist’s body is responding to the imagined sequence of notes with microscopic movements undetectable to the eye and not even in the physical awareness of the pianist! Embodied Cognition as manifested in an acute sense of interoception is vital to a pianist’s technical development. Francis Sanzaro in his book The Zen of Climbing says this about Embodied Cognition: “Being fully embodied does not mean being beholden to the body but having the ability to discern all the signals our physicality is emitting and then, on an intuitive level, managing the signals for a specific performance. The Mind and Body interface is characterized by complexity and multiplicity.” And if this is true of the sport of mountain climbing it is just as true of piano playing.

There is a possibly apocryphal anecdote about Chopin that also illustrates this. One day, Chopin was asked, “What is most important in playing the piano, the head or the heart?” (Here I interpret head to mean the brain and heart to mean the body.) In other words, should I think (head) when playing or should I feel (body)? His response was “We should feel with the head and think with the heart!"

Then what exactly is the pianist doing when developing her technique? She is on the constant hunt for sources of tension in the body, and subtracting tension so that the least amount of effort produces the greatest result. She becomes a vigilant tension hunter. Her hunt for tension resembles the work method the sculptor Michelangelo, who said that he was not creating a statue from a block of marble, but rather he was taking away pieces of marble as he sculpted in order to release the statue that was inside. Likewise, the pianist is not creating a piece of music, she is releasing the music from her body by removing all unneeded tension so that only the energy demanded by the music and dictated in her aural imagination is expended in playing. This is the constant work of subtraction.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." – St. Exupéry

Acquiring the skill to recognize tension anywhere in our body is the fundamental characteristic of good piano technique. The more technically advanced we are, the more skilled we become at sensing tension in our bodies, wherever it resides, and releasing it. Our playing becomes easier because we are constantly letting go of tension. Perfection is subtraction.

Here are a few final thoughts and suggestions about developing technique:

Approach all discussions about technique with a sense of curiosity. Be curious both externally, reading books about technique, watching videos, attending live performances, etc. and internally, constantly scanning the body for evidence of tension, not just in the arms and fingers, but throughout the body.
Question every suggestion about technique that you encounter (including the ones in this discussion.) Ask “Does this suggestion work for me? When using it, do I feel more at ease? Does my playing feel more natural? Does my playing feel more secure?”
One way of looking at a technique that works is not that it helps me to play the right notes, but that when I use the right technique, I can’t play the wrong ones.
If a way of playing feels stiff, unnatural and awkward, it may not be for you. Give a technique a chance to sink in, and if it still doesn’t feel right, look for another solution. Never continue to play a certain way because someone more famous, successful or in authority tells you to do so if it doesn’t feel right for you.
A fully developed technique exists throughout your body. Be aware of your sitting posture, the position of your feet, your breathing when playing. Be able to locate any source of tension, even in the soles of your feet!
The ultimate determinate of good technique is sound. Ask “When I play this passage a certain way, does it sound better?” If you try a certain way of playing and there’s not change in the sound, try another way.
If the physical feelings of ease, security and naturalness are not present when playing a certain way, then that technique is not for you.
The how of playing – the technique – must always start from and lead back to the what of playing – the aural image.
Experiment, test and verify your technique through performance. Even performing for just one listener can reveal lapses in your technique that you can take back to the practice room to examine. I don’t get a technique, I develop one. This is an ongoing, never-ending process.
Neuroscientist Frank Wilson describes piano playing as small muscle athletics. This is a good description. In the sports world (the world of large muscle athletics) enormous resources are expended in training and developing athletes so they can win on the playing field. We can use this as an excellent resource and borrow a few ideas from the monetarily richer world of competitive sport. Look for discussions of ‘sports psychology’ and ‘performance psychology’ for valuable ideas that can be applied to the art of the piano.
Beware the Admiration Trap. This is the phenomenon of being so enthralled with the ‘brilliant’ technique of a pianist that our energies are spent admiring a performance without observing things we could use in our own technique. It’s tempting to say “I’ll never be as good as pianist X, so I’ll just spend my time listening and admiring to him or her.” This is a loss for your own musical talent as well as for potential listeners to whom your music is a gift.
Violinist and Teacher Tadeusz Wroński, suggested that one way to develop technique is to choose a piece that is just beyond my current capabilities, something that challenges me just enough to stretch my abilities without being so difficult that I end up straining and tensing, creating more bad habits than good technical breakthroughs. An experienced teacher can be helpful here.
Remember that the human body is designed to work in circles and curves. We adapt our circular movements to the up and down motion of the keys and to the sideways keyboard movement (across the keyboard, right to left, left to right) i.e. the vertical and horizontal planes of the keyboard. Solving the riddle of how to adapt the body’s circular movements to the linearity of the piano is at the center of piano playing. It is a lifetime task.
The criteria of ease and naturalness, the ultimate standard of any technique, is not achieved in a direct linear pathway leading from point ‘a’ to point ‘b’. Rather, technique develops from the release of tension and the concomitant recognition of ease and naturalness in our playing for short moments many, many times. Look for those short moments, and the long line of fully developed technique will evolve, guaranteed!
"Training in attentiveness is the artist’s most important resource." – Garth Greenwell

Previous Notes From a Studio

#2 December 2025

#3 February 2026

#1 September 2025