Dear Mr. Chappell:

My piano teacher told me never to bang the piano. How can I avoid doing that?

— Intimidated

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Dear Intimidated:

This is one of several bits of inherited “wisdom” that, to my annoyance, continue to circulate in the piano teaching community after making an appearance at least a century ago. I will list the main ones here, starting with your issue.

I imagine that “don’t bang the piano” might have meant “don’t play loudly” to certain prudish persons who wished to discourage excesses of expression from their piano students. But you can’t realize the great piano literature with a limited dynamic range.

The piano was built for sound, and is in fact named after its property of playing both softly and loudly (since it was originally called a “pianoforte” or “fortepiano”). I am hoping that you will, in fact, play very loudly when the composer asks for it.

Perhaps it was feared by some teachers that “banging” could damage the piano as well. That is simply not a concern, unless you attacked it using some kind of heavy tool instead of your hands. The piano is built to take a tremendous amount of force from its players.

To “bang” the piano could only mean one thing to a reasonable musician: don’t make harsh sounds on the instrument. If you remain relaxed, especially in your wrists, it will be impossible to make a harsh sound no matter how loudly you play. You can also minimize harsh sounds by keeping the wrist low and curving your fingers. A high, unbending wrist combined with straight fingers will bring you a harsh sound quite easily. Try it. Some piece that you play might call for just such a sound.

Also: Every day, thousands of piano teachers tell millions of students that Middle C is the middle of the piano keyboard. It isn’t. It is not the middle of any instrument. Instead, it is the middle of the grand staff. It is the note on the single ledger line between the treble staff and the bass staff. If you start at both ends of the piano keyboard and play chromatic scales towards the middle, you will end up on E and F above Middle C. This is the center of the keyboard. If you want to utilize every possible advantage in your piano playing, sit with this center in front of you. It maximizes your reach in either direction on the keyboard, unless your arms are noticeably different lengths.

Also: It seems to be an accepted fact that you should change fingers on repeated notes. This is not always desirable. If you have repeated notes that must be played fast, then it is almost always the best thing to do. And if you have repeated notes that are slow and should each sound different, as if they were different syllables and vowels sung by a singer, then you should change fingers on each note. But if you have repeated notes that are of a slow to moderate tempo, and if you want identical sounds on each note, then you should make identical movements with your hands to create those sounds. Use the same finger over and over again.

Also: I am sometimes approached by concerned students who try to match the tempo marking in a piece of music to the suggested range for that tempo as it appears on their metronome. But there is no absolute and objective number of beats per minute that equals "allegro", "andante", or anything else, and it is meaningless to follow these well-intentioned general indications. Only the actual experience of playing a specific piece of music can give you the range of its tempo, which will lie somewhere between the slowest speed and the fastest speed at which it can be played without sounding ludicrous. In addition to this, there is the fact that different composers used the same words differently. "Lento" for Chopin is probably faster than anybody else’s, while Beethoven’s "adagio" might be slower than anybody else’s. Only the study of many works of music, both by different composers and also by the same composer, can develop your sense of appropriate choices for tempo. Use the metronome for what it does best--to help practice maintaining a uniform tempo. But as to what the tempo is, that is your choice, not the metronome’s.

My main point is that you should do everything that you do as a conscious choice. Don’t just do something, or not do something, because somebody taught you that. You should know the results of each course of action you take and you should know the reasons why you take it.

— J.C.