Arioso7's Blog (Shirley Kirsten)

Piano Technique: Practicing 4 varieties of detached notes

This evening Big Mike, whose hands are impressively large, finessed various types of staccato. He proved that elasticity is more influential than finger length (and related) in producing clearly articulated notes in diverse colors.

We started with a B minor (Natural form scale) enlisting a forearm FORTE staccato, then continued to a soft range, still forearm generated articulation– A wrist staccato followed that concluded with a rendering in tenuto (press lift without snappy or crisp key releases) Tenuto is usually notated with horizontal lines, and dots under them.

Mike scaled new heights at his lesson and received a deserving shower of praise!