Abby Whiteside (Aug 27, 1881 Vermillion, South Dakota – Dec 10, 1956 Menlo Park, California) was an American piano teacher. She challenged the finger-centric approach of much classical piano teaching and instead advocated a holistic attitude in which the arm and torso are the conductors of a musical image conceived first in the mind. Life Whiteside majored in music at the University of South Dakota. After a period spent teaching at the University of Oregon, she studied in Germany with Rudolf Ganz. On returning to the United States and teaching first in Oregon and then New York City, she slowly developed the ideas for which she became known. Ideas The catalyst for the development of Whiteside's philosophy was the realisation that, as she wrote, "...the pupils in my studio played or didn't play, and that was that. The talented ones progressed, the others didn't--and I could do nothing about it." Whiteside praised the natural ability of the child prodigy and the jazz pianist, and sought to understand how an untutored technique could be capable of virtuosity. One of her teaching principles stemming from that view was that piano pieces must be assimilated not so much as muscle memory, but as an intrinsic memory of musical content. One of her pedagogical devices to achieve this was to practice works in different keys, or cross-handed, even simultaneously cross-handed in different keys. Then, upon returning to the correct key, hand positions, and tempo, many of the previous problems in technique had been overcome. Another important device—used especially in the correct tempo of the piece, no matter how fast—is what she calls "outlining": skipping notes provided that the basic rhythm and body dynamics of motion were maintained. (Her term "basic rhythm" is explored below.) The pianist uses these techniques to establish the musical content as firmly in the mind as possible, replacing note-to-note technical concentration—and the attendant note-to-note musical attention—with accomplishment of the larger musical phrase. In "Indispensables of Piano Playing" Whiteside describes a fulcrum system that a pianist uses for effective playing. She states that the finger is the fulcrum of the wrist, the wrist the fulcrum of the forearm, the forearm the fulcrum of the upper arm, the upper arm the fulcrum of the shoulder, and the shoulder the fulcrum of the upper body. Whiteside believed all these parts needed to act as one in order to produce good sound and the