2nd And 3rd Finger Relations

Hi Alan, Despite not having much time to practice, I decided to perfect my techniques by capturing each problems which I usually just by-pass in a hurry to play pieces I like in the limited time. Here's one problem that I encounter frequently: When playing a white key with 2nd finger right after the 3rd finger on the adjacent black key, I found my 2-3 finger platform collapsed. I discovered it long ago and tried to correct it, by "walking" with them in that configuration, maintaining a strong structure, etc, and with some effect. Yet despite the effort of experiencing with different adjustment, I just can't find the flowing, light feeling (ability to just fall my finger on the key effortlessly at high speed). Right after the longer 3rd finger playing on the higher black key, the 2nd finger just couldn't strike the white key (which is rather low) without some "pushing" or "pressing" of the hand. I understand as soon as the pressing feeling is there, there's simply no hope of playing fast and effortlessly. Any fingers (or the thumb which is the case in scale) that have to move afterwards are simply hindered by the re-generation of the hand afterwards, which slows down the hand and create the "cramped" sound. If I tried to maintain the flow of my hand by relaxing and not moving much, my 2nd finger simply has to straighten a bit, which is another way of losing the integrity and creating a sound that's not firm. I've found that this is actually connected to my thumb-2nd finger assembly, which together just disabled my hand a lot (even though I'm improving on the whole, slowly) Is there any ways to correct it? Alvin

This is really pertinent question, one that I address in my own playing every day. I solve it in two ways: 1) I try to make my hand 'larger' by 'dangling it down' to barely reach the keyboard instead of 'standing it up' ON the keyboard. My fingers feel like dangling strings or ropes, and they expand out to their full length to touch the key. When my finger has touched, I avoid then 'pressing in' but instead use a minimum of subtle muscular action to establish connection to the key and manipulate it. This gives me more space to work with, more 'room to move,' and somehow by letting my hand adopt a new position, one that I may not have thought of before but which appears as a possibility because of the state of my newly loosened, enlarged hand, the fingers can both play with neither of them collapsing. 2) One part of this adjustment of hand position is a little more or less rotation. For instance, to move from black key 3 to white key 2 I would pronate a little more. I would generally move 'forward' a bit as well, towards the backboard - again to increase the sense in my hand of space and room to move. Can anybody else add to this? I know Anna could, because she has had me do something else but I can't remember it well enough to describe it. 'Anna' by the way is Anna Zenzius-Spengler, my 'sounding board' and fellow-pianist-investigator of all things less and more esoteric about technique... AFF

I don't know much about this issue myself, but the information on the following page might be relevant: There it says that in most people the Flexor Digitorum Profundus tendons to the index and middle finger are independent of each other. But in about one out of 10 people there is an anatomical linkage between these tendons. (The FDP tendons insert into the finger tip.) This linkage apparently makes it difficult to play chords such as B-D-#F-B where the middle finger is on the black note and the index finger is on the white note, but it doesn't interfere when the situation is reversed. Perhaps this is the source of your difficulty with fast passages involving the configuration in question, rather than technical habits. Unfortunately, there is no solution suggested.

This is really pertinent question, one that I address in my own playing every day. I solve it in two ways: ... 2) One part of this adjustment of hand position is a little more or less rotation. For instance, to move from black key 3 to white key 2 I would pronate a little more. I would generally move 'forward' a bit as well, towards the backboard - again to increase the sense in my hand of space and room to move. This sounds very similar to the Taubman approach: rotation plus moving "in" (their term). A Taubman trained pianist would also lower the forearm/wrist a bit (shaping) to allow 2 to reach the keybed comfortably. You might be doing also being doing this, it is the natural thing to do. ocd

What I would try is actually pulling the hand away while straightening the 3rd - allow the 3rd finger to straighten out so that you are using the whole thing as a unit. Then see if you have enough room to drop the 2nd. If worse comes to worse, you may have to play the second in between the black keys. ------ If you with your giant mitts have to make your hand larger to accomplish this, where does that leave the rest of us?

About my humongous paws... it's all relative! And when you get that sense of space it's the change in that is crucial, not the increase in distance covered... And your point about straightening the 3rd is another definite possibility, something closer to what Kemal might do. One thing I would add to my own post is to imagine your finger in its crescent moon shape dangling from the metacarpal ridge and swinging towards and away from your body. If your 2nd finger crescent moon is swung more towards you and your 3rd finger crescent moon is swung further away (but both fingers more or less the same curvature) this will also give you the space you need for both fingers to be comfortably on their notes. ... about the Taubman approach: interestingly enough, if you read a large part of the introductory materials, Dorothy and I would seem to be doing the absolute same thing. "Coordinate motion," "removing physical blocks," "aligning bones to avoid jamming..." I agree with all of it. It's only in the implementation that we sometimes disagree, and in the basic premise that you have to limit your movement range to avoid injury... AFF

This is really pertinent question, one that I address in my own playing every day. I solve it in two ways: 1) I try to make my hand 'larger' by 'dangling it down' to barely reach the keyboard instead of 'standing it up' ON the keyboard. My fingers feel like dangling strings or ropes, and they expand out to their full length to touch the key. When my finger has touched, I avoid then 'pressing in' but instead use a minimum of subtle muscular action to establish connection to the key and manipulate it. This gives me more space to work with, more 'room to move,' and somehow by letting my hand adopt a new position, one that I may not have thought of before but which appears as a possibility because of the state of my newly loosened, enlarged hand, the fingers can both play with neither of them collapsing. Alan, Is the rope image compatible with the "walking on the keys" concept. It might be my misunderstanding but in my mind I have linked "walking" with "standing it up". Thanks, ocd

GREAT question, which gets right to the point: in STAGE ONE of my whole method you teach your fingers to stand, then walk and run. The image is of the hand as the mini-body standing on leg-fingers that support it securely. In STAGE TWO, you throw all that out the window, and turn your hand into a hovercraft. Ironically, the standing that empowered your hand eventually becomes a hindrance to free movement. You needed to learn firm, potent standing in order to acquaint your hand with the function of its structure. Now to take it to a higher level of function you must let the hand be totally loose. The hand doesn't get floppy and flaccid because its structural function has been recorded, hard-wired into the CNS through the standing/walking exercises. But when it dangles like that, it moves more freely than it ever could in standing. Perhaps you'll see the connection better if I explain it like this: you are still standing but you weigh only 2 grams instead of several hundred grams. You are standing weightlessly. It is the state of standing fully upright instead of the slightly lowered, more stable center of gravity of T'ai Chi walking.

So it is similiar to the 3rdfinger-5thfinger octave stretching la campanella you-can-start-to-play-these-notes-legato arm rotation thing, right? That was something I understood.

Not exactly. The 3rd to 5th stretch is a rotation thing, this is letting your hand be further from the keys and dangling the fingers down so they barely touch - no rotation at all. There might some rotation but that's just by the way, it's not the focus of the technique. AFF