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Mt. Airy Piano Lessons

Brendan Cooney is a Philadelphia-based piano teacher well-versed in both Jazz and Classical piano traditions. Brendan spent many years studying the Taubman Approach to coordinate technique and was certified to teach the technique through the Golandsky Institute. Brendan teaches out of his house in the West Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Brendan teaches on a 1911 Steinway A.

on technique. on “injury”

Technique is not everything, but our ideas are only expressed through our bodies, so having an organized understanding of how to move at the piano is a great asset to any pianist. My teaching of piano technique is primarily informed by years of study of the Taubman Approach to Coordinate Technique. In the Taubman Approach one can find a highly thoughtful and systematic understanding of the complex interrelation of different motion required to play the piano- forearm rotation, in and out motions, shaping, tone production, timing, the interdependence of the arms, etc. I have found this understanding to be completely transformative for my own playing, allowing me to play literature that I previously deemed out of my league, and allowing me to play much more expressively. I have also found it to be quite transformative for the students I have had the privilege of teaching the work to.

But the Taubman field is also riddled with outdated conceptions of repetitive stress injuries (RSI). One will hear Taubman teachers claim that bad technique (curling, stretching, low wrists, etc.) leads to “injuries” like tendonitis, carpal tunnel and dystonia. From my research, and from my own experience, I have come to believe that this notion of “injury” is wholly flawed. The modern science of chronic pain pioneered by figures such as John Sarno M.D. and Howard Schubiner M.D. strongly suggests that RSI are mind-body disorders, not the result of actual physical injury. Their research has shown that repressed subconscious emotions are resonsible for most chronic pain conditions. Furthermore their phsychologically-based treatments have shown in randomized controlled trials to produce much stronger and more consistent relief than physical interventions.

Most interestingly, Sarno and others argue that belief in the physical causes of chronic pain is a strong contributor to the chronic nature of mind-body symptoms. Without this belief in the physical cause of the symptom the symptom cannot serve as a distraction from the underlying emotion and it loses its power. This means that repeating the myth that chronic pain is a result of physical injury is actually a harmful act. Perpetuating the myth actually perpetuates the symptoms. For this reason I think it is important to emphatically state that you cannot injure yourself from playing the piano, even with bad technique and hours of playing. If you are a musician with a chronic symptom such as tendonitis or dystonia, I highly recommend that you do not go looking to change your technique in the belief that bad technique “injured” you. This will only sustain the false belief. Instead, I recommend reading “Unlearn Your Pain” by Howard Schubiner.

Within the mind-body field there are a host of modalities that one can pursue for recovery. Some of the best resources are:

Dan Ratner’s Crushing Doubt site

Nicole Sachs’ Journal Speak program

the Curable App

“Unlearn Your Pain” by Howard Schubiner

the Pain Psychology Center

I continue to use Taubman principles to analyze passages to improve my own playing and the playing of students, but I do not do this to avoid “injury”. I do it because it makes us better players. It demystifies difficult music by giving us the tools to understand the motions required for each specific passage.