Originally posted February 20th, 2008
Lately I watched parts of Seymour Fink’s DVD, Mastering Piano Technique, and part 12B hit me like a ton of bricks. Avoiding ulnar deviation is not bad!!! This one section about moving the arm into the fifth finger to help it play, exposes a major weakness of my own approach. You can see it in my film: to illustrate the second, transverse arch of the hand, I allow my metacarpal-phalangeal ridge to slope down to my fifth finger. But this lowers its potency! I also demonstrate how to rotate in leaping to a high note played with the fifth finger, thus emptying out the fifth finger’s metacarpal-phalangeal arch and weakening it. I developed these strategies because I saw people trying to bring out the top voice by stiffening the whole outside ridge of their hand and I wanted to cure that.
I had other good reasons as well: I had seen many avoiding ulnar deviation to avoid injury, but they were consequently collapsing their entire arch, and also pulling their thumb away from the board, thus forcing it to make a big, ungainly movement to get back to the board for its next note. Ulnar deviation helped me to equalize the length of my thumb to that of my other fingers, thus, I thought, making my whole hand more functional.
So now comes a major recant: what I didn’t see was this: when I equalized my thumb’s length to that of my other fingers, I dis-equalized the length of my four fingers! I was losing more than I was gaining, but didn’t realize it. Because I rightly saw the thumb’s function as an independent entity from the four fingers making it equal in importance, I tried to make it equal in function as well – but this is stupid! Four fingers can stand as a secure structure more easily than one thumb. Thus it feels much more secure to play with a “fifth finger orientation” as Thomas Mark puts it, and leave the thumb to stick out to the inside as a kind of outrigger.
The past few days I’ve been putting this into practice and changing the entire way I play piano – at age 53 and after a film and two books!!! I really swing my arm forward and in to my fifth finger any time it plays. This does pull my thumb away from the board (what I used to consider a no-no), but that pulling actually helps it feel its independent outrigger function. Look at videos of the greats: their thumbs stick out to the inside; they are not just hanging relaxed. It looks almost awkward – in a way, it goes against nature as Micheal Furstner puts it – but it is functional.
I don’t experience it as fifth finger orientation but more as a 2nd-3rd-4th-5th finger orientation. Those four constitute a wonderfully secure structure, and I feel my whole arm – both its bones – moving in in a straight line behind those four fingers and creating a structural alignment and integrity which is the hallmark of my approach, but ironically enough, which I never fully realized until now! I finally have myself the total ease I have been talking about for years!
It is a fairly muscular action: I feel a real, robust effort in my upper arm which comes forward to make this happen. I also feel my pelvis rock forward in synchronicity with the movement. You can feel the movement yourself by doing the following:
Place your hand on your thigh or a table top and roll it forward so it folds over your fingers. Your fingers lie on their backs and your wrist goes forward over them. Feel how your upper arm participates in this, and your pelvis. You can either feel that the fingers pull the upper arm / pelvis forward, or that the pelvis rocks forward making the whole thing happen. Leave your thumb out of it. Leave your thumb sticking to the inside, and make this a movement only of your hand itself. When your hand finds its functional integrity, it allows your thumb to be fully free and functional too.
Watch Seymour’s 12B to get more ideas on this. More from me later… Any response to this? What happens when you try it?
AFF
Tags: adult piano, adult piano instruction, adult piano lessons, classical piano, classical piano technique, craft of piano method, craft of piano playing, Feldenkrais & Piano, hand arches and piano technique, legato in piano technique, piano and the body, piano forum, piano instruction, piano lessons, piano pedagogy, piano performance, piano teaching, piano teaching materials, Piano Technique, thumb and piano technique
Originally posted February 21st, 2008 at 9:39 pm
1. sparetimeplayer Says:
Alan-
great post, great subject.
In this same context I’m reminded of the book “On Piano Playing” by Mr. Sandor, where a general alignment of forearm and finger is adviced.
Doing this in an extreme way however, I think “swiveling” sideways too much could have a bad effect.
So maybe the truth (as so often in life) lies in the middle…?
(general ‘base position’ of the hand is somewhere between radial- and ulnar-deviation,having both deviations handy if needed.
originally posted April 8th, 2008 at 7:36 am
2. alanfraser Says:
Yes, somewhere in the middle – my current “obsession” with cultivating fifth finger alignment basically stems from my having neglected it for so long. My allowing ulnar deviation stemmed less from functionality than from laziness…
Even more important than fifth finger orientation is the cultivation of a hand arch that goes from SECOND finger to fifth finger rather than from thumb to fifth finger. My feeling is that the thumb functions best not a part of the hand’s arch but as an outrigger strut to the inside of that arch, my latest inspiration being the metaphor of a cathedral but the thumb is no longer a part of the Gothic ceiling arch – it is now a flying buttress!
Originally posted November 29th, 2008 at 12:40 am
3. http://www.engel-bedeutung.de Says:
Hi there I like your post “Seymour Fink on the fifth finger’s role in piano technique” so well that I like to ask you whether I should translate into German and linking back. Greetings Engel
December 6th, 2008 at 3:23 am
4. alanfraser Says:
Dear Engel, I would be very happy if you could translate this – by all means, be my guest. When you post it, perhaps we could share more links – please contact my administrator about that – jocahdj AT gmail.com. Thanks!
AFF
Of course that would be greatly appreciated! Please do!
Best wishes,
Alan Fraser
The 5th finger has been an interesting challenge for me during the last two years or even my whole life though it has not surfaced as a major problem till recently. I noticed, during the summer that my whole fifth finger joint collapsed in attempting to over work and bring out melodies. This actually creates a strangled tone. I had read Sandor’s book before embarking on yours and was using his basic break down of technique to re-figure out the first 12 Chopin preludes; I practiced them at various speeds incorporating more exaggerated movements with wrist and rotation at slower speeds. I was still using too much muscular strength and still could not get the sense of control or singing quality necessary. However, I felt more mastery as I reinvented the wheel (practiced the preludes again) after having read the first two thirds of your book and watching the DVD. Amazingly, everything clicked as I realized how the strength came from skeletal structure and less muscular strength helped to create more sensitivity. However, with another Beethoven sonata, which is also filled with many interesting habits of mine, was not improving. I think I realize the importance of the arm in phrasing, but does working on other movements as described by Sandor, become automatically embedded into my approach, as it seemed to happen with Chopin? Do you find his (Sandor’s) approach useful, as I noticed you did not mention his book in your bibliography?
Thanks for your question. I don’t mention Gyogy Sandor because unfortunately I’ve never read him – it’s not that easy to cover all the bases when it comes to piano technique! Must put it on my list of things to do…
From your other comments I would think that you’re on the right track. Skeletality seems to be serving you well, and yes, we all go through a stage of “overdoing it”, or having to pay extra attention to it, before it gets integrated into our physical repertoire. This also applies to the arm choreographies we devise to shape the phrase. Although I do find that sometimes by my cultivating a really sophisticated skeletal connection to each successive key, the choreography can start to happening automatically.
Best wishes,
AFF