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  • Robot hand trains speed by wiggling human fingers

Just a fun little article I found.

You’re practicing a new song on piano. One part keeps tripping you up. No matter how many times you try it, your fingers just won’t move fast enough. Then you put on a special device that looks like a robotic hand. Its motor wiggles your fingers faster than you could move them on your own. When you sit at the piano again without the robo-hand, your fingers can now hop into high gear. You’re playing the fast part that seemed impossible before.

https://www.snexplores.org/article/robotic-hand-faster-piano-fingers

Do we play piano with the fingers coming from an immobile hand and arm (motor apparatus, to use Woroniki's term)?

Good question! The article contains a video in which you can sort of see how it works. It looks like there's a strap below the base of the fingers, and it's unclear if there is any attachment below the wrist. But the arm appears to be totally free.

Also, it appears that the thumb does not move.

Thank you for the extra video. I see the hand stays in one place, in closed position, on white keys.

I started working on trills and especially extended trills two days ago. If I tried any kind of speed eventually I'd get jerky and close to cramping. (Extended trills can last a whole bunch of measures). I looked at all kinds of info on the physical side of trills. Among the things I found was:

  • don't raise too high above the keys, or maybe, don't let the keys lift all the way
  • Fitch had a thing of finding the keys' "sounding point" and only raising that high. My Kawai DP has a construction that tries to mimic a grand with an escapement so I could do that.
  • Fitch also suggested "walking" the hand a tiny bit so that you are not stuck in one place, and this stops the system from locking up.
  • another source talked of feeling the keys with your fingertips and the feedback does something to your nervous system.

I played with all these things. My trill became effortless, sustained over time, and almost too fast. My hand felt as if it was "melting". Now - when I look at that device, it might block me from feeling the depth of the key, or it's upward push after release for riding it. I don't know what happens with the gentle "walking forward and back", the little movements in the arm, to keep it relaxed.

Having just had that experience, I couldn't help thinking about these things when I saw your post and this idea.

    Didn't Robert Schumann ruin his hand doing something similar back in the early 19th century? Some things never change...

      Sam I was thinking the same.

        Sam Didn't know about Schumann so I looked it up. Interesting! Still, I would trust this more than what Schumann had. Schumann's purported machine was a strengthener, meaning you had to strain your fingers against it. The exoskeleton prototype just wiggles them, with no effort on the part of the pianist. (But I wouldn't use the robot hand in its current state--it's just a prototype for a study, and it appears to be limited to actions requiring no wrist movement and only four fingers. But coincidentally I think it might be helpful for a passage that's been vexing me recently.)

        PS. the Schumann article I linked above notes that there is "plenty of room for skepticism" about the finger-ruining-machine story. There's evidence that Schumann had syphillis, and the mercury treatment common at the time could have been destroying his dexterity. So he tried to strengthen his fingers, but mercury kept on destroying them. In other words, mercury was the cause of ruin, and the machine was his attempt to reverse the effect.

        PPS. Another interesting part of the article:

        ...they only used the device on their right hands. Yet their left hand’s speed also improved! “I was stunned by that, actually,” says Hatsopoulos.

        It suggests that the effect is not in the hand itself but in the brain.

          keystring My trill became effortless, sustained over time, and almost too fast. My hand felt as if it was "melting". Now - when I look at that device, it might block me from feeling the depth of the key, or it's upward push after release for riding it. I don't know what happens with the gentle "walking forward and back", the little movements in the arm, to keep it relaxed.

          It's interesting you say trills feel effortless, since the article says the same thing about the study participants:

          The pianists often told Furuya that their fingers felt “very light” after using the robot.

              Schumann definitely had syphilis, at least in my uneducated opinion. We will never know for sure, of course. There is this aura about him and mental illness or schizophrenia but I think it was really the syphilis. Since we can treat it now to some extent, we never see people that are really suffering or terminal because of it. I had doubts about it for a long time, since Clara and the kids clearly did not have it, but it does go through periods of not being contagious.

              As far as this device, I would be very careful. What if your hand is in there and it malfunctions? Or there is a bug?

              rsl12 It's interesting you say trills feel effortless, since the article says the same thing about the study participants:

              I am trying to indicate that playing the piano involves more than fingers wiggling in a particular order. The point was actually the various factors involved - that may not have been clear. We had the sensation of touch, feeling the release, resistance, and depth of the keys. We had the act of subtle movement in the arms as opposed to staying in one place statically. These were two of a number of things. I am trying to indicate that many things are involved in playing the piano. I'm not that comfortable with the focus on wiggly fingers, or only on fingers. It can lead someone down a wrong path.

              Otoh, the fact that these were pianists, perhaps the good habits were already in there, and the device added something extra.

                Thinking about this again today. I'm wondering if there may be a secondary effect going on. Sometimes we slow ourselves down or add tension by being "too effortful". By letting the device move the fingers, and with a pianist's training to relax the hand, if the fingers are being move passively, maybe that in itself is part of what makes it work for these pianists. I'm thinking of recent experiments in learning to let the piano keys lift the fingers after playing as opposed to raising the fingers (Feuchtwanger) which is also about removing effort.

                  A 6% improvement in speed is not very much. The Chopin etude In thirds takes around two minutes so a 6% improvement in speed would shave about 6 seconds off the total time.

                  Yes, but it was only 30 minutes, and as far as I can tell, no real physical or mental effort needed on the part of the participants. The fact that, for expert pianists, it was better than continuing regular practice for 30 minutes is a little surprising.

                  To clarify, expert pianists gained an average of 6% speed over their plateau ceilings, according to the abstract. (We know they were close to their ceilings by the fact that 30 minutes of regular practice yielded no improvement.)

                    I don't want to come across as Ms. Negativity and tried to find a positive angle in my last post. But we are also learners or at least 'lifetime improvers' so:

                    rsl12 (We know they were close to their ceilings by the fact that 30 minutes of regular practice yielded no improvement.)

                    Immediately I am looking at what "regular practice" might mean. We have tons of discussions on the nature of practice: there is the Molly thing discussing "traditional" routines, and so on. If "regular practice" means playing a new piece slowly, then gradually increasing the tempo until you can reach your current maximum speed, then the existing ceiling would remain the current ceiling. If you then do something specifically for increasing speed, then the device will make a difference.

                    But good and effective practising has many dimensions. There are ways of practising for particular goals: increased speed in this case. You might play in bursts. You might examine how you're reaching things. Bursts can mean 2 fast notes, then 3, then 4, then 5 - then the same with a next (overlapping) group. And other things I don't know about.

                    If comparing, one would have to compare the device to targeted practising which aims for speed.

                    Ofc speed isn't the only thing. It must be musical, nuanced.

                        If you are trying to say that you cannot learn to trill musically simply by having a robot hand wiggling your fingers, you will find no argument from me.

                        keystring Immediately I am looking at what "regular practice" might mean.

                        From the abstract:

                        Although the skill of moving the fingers quickly plateaued through weeks of piano practice,..

                        And from the article:

                        The researchers then divided the 60 pianists into five groups. The first group wore the robo-hand as they played that tricky pattern. It moved the fingers faster than the musicians could manage on their own. For the second group, the device moved the fingers slowly in the same tricky pattern. The third group experienced rapid finger motion, but all the fingers moved at once. Two other groups didn’t use the robo-hand. One of these continued to practice the tricky pattern on their own. The final group just rested.

                        Putting these two together, I conclude the participants, who were expert pianists, practiced in their normal way (whatever that meant for them) for weeks prior, and their speed quickly plateaued. The variable group that was allowed to practice for an additional 30 minutes on the final day showed no additional improvement on that last day.

                          Another possible flaw In the experiment is that the double note trill using 2-4 and 3-5 occurs so incredibly infrequently, if at all, in actual music that the pianists didn't know of an effective way to practice it. In its present form, the device can only work when the hand is a fixed position so even if it works it has extremely limited practical use.

                            pianoloverus It's just a prototype for a study. It's not meant to be an actual training tool. But the study results suggest interesting possibilities.

                              I imagine any effect from this is probably related to building mind-body connection.

                              I think a similar effect occurs when you have e.g. a right hand part with both melody and inner voices and practice voicing by playing the melody with the RH and inner voices with the LH. The mind is better able to reproduce "good" once it has heard what "good" sounds like, and doing this makes it easier for you to hear the actual sound you want and improves voicing when you go back to playing it all with the RH. This device would be like that, but showing you the physical (rather than aural) experience of "good" (many caveats here, not in the scope of this comment) that lets you then reproduce it more easily afterwards.

                              "You're a smart kid. But your playing is terribly dull."

                                @rsl12 thank you for the additional thoughts and quotes. I read the info and I think I read it in the original abstract. I hope I can get my thoughts out. It may really be worthwhile to look at all sides of this and not just the device itself.

                                How practising is done is crucial for getting any skill needed for playing a passage, or type of passage. This is not looked at, at all. It suggests there is no awareness of this factor. The quote refers to frequency and length of practice, but not nature of practice.

                                We can look at the experiment two ways:

                                a) Those practising in normal ways (with some variants to frequency, etc. versus those doing so but also adding this device. That is the presentation and mindset.

                                b) Same as above, versus doing a practice that is aimed directly at the skill of speed (using the device). You have two things going on.

                                You might find, for example, that if you had one group doing an extra type of practice that aimed specifically for speed and not the piece, that they might also increase their speed by 6%. The new factor might be "aiming at speed in various ways", or "aiming at speed via a device", or "the device".

                                I found this in the article about the person who came up with the idea, and then had engineers develop it within their expertise:

                                Furuya used to be a professional musician. “I practiced [piano], like 10 hours every day,” he says. He practiced so much that he developed a movement disorder in his hands. It’s why, he says, “I changed my career from pianist to scientist.”

                                His hands are doing better now. And he still plays and teaches piano. But a few years ago he also started imagining a new way for musicians to practice. “I was thinking maybe we need some kind of a robot that can teach how to move the fingers,” he says.

                                He practised 10 hours a day and he ruined his hands, but managed to recover. How did he practise? How was he taught to practise? Possibly along the lines of what MG describes as "traditional" or similar. We have But a few years ago he also started imagining a new way for musicians to practice. It is very likely that he only knows the way of practising that he himself was taught and did. "new ways" (various) already exist.

                                We tend to be too enamoured by things that are scientific, and that went through trials with one group doing this, another group doing that. These trials are artificial and restricted. They do not contain the many things that excellent teachers do in their quiet corners that only their students are aware of, if they even caught on to what is behind the scenes of what they were taught during their years of instructions.

                                There MAY BE something useful in this device. It may be due to what it intends to do, or what it accidentally ends up doing right. I just want to look at all sides of this issue.

                                Broad thoughts:

                                In practising, in overcoming problems in our practising or reaching toward what we want to do and can't yet do - we have to look at how we're doing it. This also includes the real nature of the problem, and then solutions. The solutions might be surprising and coming from unexpected sides. In that sense, the device might play some kind of role.

                                When I looked at why I was "snagging" in the long trills, one element was how deep I was playing into the keys, and how high to do in releasing them. A device that wiggles my fingers up and down will not give me that - it's not going for the problem and its solution. If I'm being "effortful" and the device trains me into a more relaxed passivity in the hands, then it would help in that area.

                                What bothers me is if people people we play the piano with the fingers, and this device reinforces the idea. There is the whole motor apparatus. Plus, we don't just play in 5 finger position on white keys staying in one spot the whole time.

                                It is certainly interesting to think about among many (countless) things. But if "fast fingers" is the main concept, I'd want to go quite a bit broader than that.