Sondra Tammam on the Taubman approach and why you can’t fight nature
The Taubman teacher on the point of sound, bench height, staccato and why the music holds the answers.
Sondra Tammam is a pianist and teacher who studied with Dorothy Taubman and received the Steinway Top Teacher Award in 2022. She teaches at the Manhattan School of Music Precollege and the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University.
Here are twelve of her best tips, from her Piano Star Masterclass on the Taubman approach on Piano League.
1. Let the music answer your questions
People are frustrated because maybe they’re embarrassed: the teacher’s very famous, or the teacher, they think, expects them to know the piece after two, three lessons. So I just have a sense that if you have a glimmer of this work, you can almost solve things with logic and thinking about the music, because the music is what’s really giving you the answer.
Sondra Tammam
2. Everyone is born with what it takes
The reason she started searching for solutions was to make beautiful music, and she felt that everybody’s born with what it takes, that if you have the right tools, it’s going to lead you to feeling like you can have beautiful tone and facility.
Sondra Tammam
3. Find the point of sound
A lot of pianists have not had the opportunity to learn that the key actually has this depression resistance feeling. If you try several keys, if your piano is regulated, you feel that there’s something like a bump and a little bit of a choke-up, and this is actually what’s called the escapement by piano technicians. So Taubman actually named this point, where you feel like there’s a little bit of something stopping the depression to get to the key bed. She called it the point of sound.
Sondra Tammam
4. Stop scrubbing the key
Many times you see students playing something, and after they get to the key bed they might be scrubbing the key. It almost seems as though what they’re doing is they want more tone to happen, but it’s finished.
Sondra Tammam
5. Don’t fight your hand’s design
The extensor muscles lift us, and we could fight nature, but it’s not going to help. The sad story of Robert Schumann’s piano career is all because we can’t fight nature.
Sondra Tammam
6. If it works, leave it alone
Taubman said if things are working, don’t take them apart. Don’t undo things. You might have a little student and it just seems like the only thing you see is that the fingers are really clenched, but everything else they do is so musical. They shape, they feel the music, the rhythm is good, the balance is good. So maybe you just want to touch a little bit on that point but leave everything else alone.
Sondra Tammam
7. Check your bench height with a book
All you need is a volume that’s going to fit at the key lip and meet this bottom part of the fallboard. All I do is I put it there. If I’m sitting at the right height, the underside of my forearm will rest on the book. If I’m sitting too high, there’s no connection with the top of the book. If I’m sitting too low, it’s going to push the book down and I might break at the wrist.
Sondra Tammam
8. Let your upper body move
How far should my torso be from the keyboard, and is my torso always going to be the same? The answer is no. Your upper body is like a kinetic pendulum, and it depends where you play.
Sondra Tammam
9. Watch the wrist
If I only play with my fingers, you can tell very easily if you’re teaching, because there’s no subtle movement of left to right in the wrist area. If I see this very subtle movement in the wrist area, even though it’s initiating at the elbow, I can tell that the unit is alive.
Sondra Tammam
10. Think down for staccato
A lot of times kids see staccato and it’s like a hot oven, and they feel almost like a tightness because they’re going up and down. It’s like if you go like this a lot without even playing the piano, after a while you’re tired, even though it’s doable. And if you do rotation it’s so much easier. But if you think in one direction for staccato, just down, down, down, and don’t lose the surface, it’s almost like a trampoline effect.
Sondra Tammam
11. Use the rests
So many times the rest is our friend. We don’t want to rush, but it’s our friend to get someplace.
Sondra Tammam
12. Put the pedal down before you start
You can play without hitting and banging onto the bottom of the key. You can slow the key down and have the pedal down even before you start. That’s something I learned as a child from Edwin Hughes: put the pedal down before you start the piece. There’s no law that says you couldn’t. That works in many different pieces.
Sondra Tammam
Quotes are lightly edited for length and clarity. They come from Sondra Tammam’s 2020 Piano Star Masterclass on the Taubman approach. You can watch the full masterclass on the Piano League YouTube channel.
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