A Study on how Relaxed Technical Approaches affect Perceived Tension and Performance in Pianists

The pianoforte is one of the most popular musical instruments that has attracted by any individuals at any age in any part of the world. Much of the music that had been composed for various keyboard instruments in different periods of history is often performed in the present-day acoustic piano. As a result, many music students who enroll in piano study are regularly at risk of acquiring poor technical approaches at the keyboard, which often leads to physical tension, continuous pain, injuries and a slower rate of progress. Therefore, this pilot study explored relaxed technical concepts which may help pianists to be more efficient technically in their performances. The purpose of this research study was to examine how the application of an appropriate technical concept to a technically challenging extract of a piece of music affects the perceived physical tension of piano students. It also sought to determine whether the implementation of physically relaxed approaches aids in diminishing physical tension and increasing the performance level of piano students. 26 undergraduates studying piano at the University of Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo, Sri Lanka participated in this research study. The technical approach termed ‘the underwave and overwave motion’, a relaxed technical approach of Ortmann and Taubman was applied to minimize physical tension. Participants of this research study were required to perform and record their playing for two days and the music tracks were adjudicated by five judges. The collected data were statistically analyzed by the Shapiro-Wilk test to verify the relationship between the use of piano technique, performance, and perceived tension. The perceived tension difference was computed based on the collected data as ‘performance difference = day one performance minus day two performance; and perceived tension difference = day two perceived tension minus day one perceived tension’. Based on the results, the application of appropriate technical approaches to technically challenging extracts of music minimized the perceived physical tension and also improved the tone quality of the performance.