5th finger droop and skeletality/knuckle collapse

Hi Paul I appreciate your tips and your threads really very much.Keep on writing please. I started playing when I was 5 and now I'm 56, still looking for a better sound, so don't worry... Thank's for caring! Eric

I should probably just add, by the way, to clarify- I don't believe that strength isn't useful. I just believe that if we're talking specifically about an arch that cannot collapse, the level of absolute strength is a relatively small factor in what achieves that impossibility within functional pianism. I don't think there are all that many pianists who have truly perfect coordination when playing in a smallish range, but who are too physically "weak" to avoid collapse, should they attempt to play louder. If we take the hand of a fully grown healthy adult male, I find it extremely improbable that their hand would be typically be too weak to avoid collapse when doing a rubinstein style arm drop. The actual forces needed would be smaller than when simply leaning against a wall. The issue in the collapse is not missing strength so much as poor timing of movement and whether habitual fixations interfere with the capability to deploy that movement. Once we get to the idea of creating a FFF without either an arm drop or a press, the hand needs phenomenal muscular capabilities to generate such movement . I would never deny that. I just don't believe that the idea that considerable strength will serve to make collapse impossible is conducive to feeling the precise timing of simple movement, that really can take it off the radar. In my opinion, any athletic male who lifts even moderate weights in a gym will have all the strength needed to preserve an arch, before touching a piano (I'm not saying females necessarily won't btw, simply that an average healthy male definitely should) if he does a rubinstein style arm drop. The big question (in terms of whether he could consistently preserve an arch without no collapses at all) will be whether he can learn to release impeding tensions and whether he can learn to time correctly aimed movement at just the right moment. People whose hands couldn't collapse in a million years during the large forces of a press-up (even with a rucksack of bricks) will still tend to either lock up too tightly and fail to adapt to the resistance of the keys when doing a rubinstein style drop, or contact with a relaxed hand that misses the movement that can stop by it getting doubled back. It's all down to whether you tackle negative movement with a corresponding positive movement, to cancel it. The more precise the coordination and timing, the smaller the actual force that is required.

The point is, Andrew, that he won't be able to move a key without locking his wrist, which is a big no-no for virtuoso piano playing. The "strength" you need to play the virtuoso piano literature assumes, among other factors, that you can hold a not too heavy object in your "opened" hand (grip) while at the same time moving your hand rapidly in or from your "relaxed", flexible wrist. For octaves, for example, this could be a pencil of octave length, held between 1 and 5. This is a very particular kind of "strength" that few (if any) people have by nature. Your average athletic male will feel quite helpless, whatever weights he is able to lift and push up in the gym. Although for actual playing you rarely apply real raw physical strength to make tone (Rubinstein, for example, who is not exactly the best example of very sensitive key manipulation, plays a perfect and very "physical" combination of Taubman and Alan's Craft), it's the required precision and speed to absorb the results of all that violence (without bracing or locking joints that should stay flexible at all times) that require enormous strength/stability/endurance (or whatever one should call it) in the hand structure. That is: if you don't want to make compromises to what the music actually requires in terms of true virtuosity. P.S.: I may be mistaken, but absorbing the bulk of backward reaction forces in the knuckle bridge is what I see Rubinstein do all the time. That really takes a strong hand. No denying. Paul

The point is, Andrew, that he won't be able to move a key without locking his wrist, which is a big no-no for virtuoso piano playing. The "strength" you need to play the virtuoso piano literature assumes, among other factors, that you can hold a not too heavy object in your "opened" hand (grip) while at the same time moving your hand rapidly in or from your "relaxed", flexible wrist. For octaves, for example, this could be a pencil of octave length, held between 1 and 5. This is a very particular kind of "strength" that few (if any) people have by nature. Your average athletic male will feel quite helpless, whatever weights he is able to lift and push up in the gym. Although for actual playing you rarely apply real raw physical strength to make tone (Rubinstein, for example, who is not exactly the best example of very sensitive key manipulation, plays a perfect and very "physical" combination of Taubman and Alan's Craft), it's the required precision and speed to absorb the results of all that violence (without bracing or locking joints that should stay flexible at all times) that require enormous strength/stability/endurance (or whatever one should call it) in the hand structure. That is: if you don't want to make compromises to what the music actually requires in terms of true virtuosity. P.S.: I may be mistaken, but absorbing the bulk of backward reaction forces in the knuckle bridge is what I see Rubinstein do all the time. That really takes a strong hand. No denying. Paul Hi, I think you're missing my point behind all of this. I'm not talking about a muscle bound freak with perpetual locked wrists. We could be talking about someone with unfathomably loose wrists and fairly average strength. They probably would lock their wrists, still, if they never played piano before. The point is though, they wouldn't be short of the physical strength that makes it possible to avoid collapse. They just wouldn't have a feel for the movement or the timing that preserves an arch without locking. Hence they either lock up or collapse flaccidly. I really do deny what you say in the PS! Take it away from the piano and try the exercise at the the end of my fingers post. You don't need any unusual strength to stop collapse when you push at the fingers with equivalent force to that experienced in pianism. They just need to be already lengthening a split second BEFORE they are met with a force that could collapse them. Yes, rubinstein had a strong hand, but preserving an arch does not absolutely depend on that. If anything, I'd say stamina was the big issue, physically speaking - which meant that his hands didn't get tired despite to constantly activating against oncoming reactions, when throwing his arms around. For the sake of avoiding injury, I wouldn't advise anyone to do my exercise forcefully, but it's the element of stamina more than strength that matters in it. First and foremost though, it's timing the positive movement that eliminates the very possibility of negative movement.

1) In some cases strength is unavailable without stamina... 2) This idea of locked wrists reminds me of someone in a Feldenkrais class of mine who could not unlock his wrists even when there was absolutely no stress being exerted by them or on them! The habitually locked wrist was so much a part of his self-image that he did not even include it among the issues he felt he needed to address in his own technique. Thus many of the other technical strategies he tried and ingenious exercises he devised were, unbeknownst to him, a compensation for the locked wrist, and would not have been needed at all if he didn't have this hidden issue to deal with. The worst of it was, he also unkowingly let this issue colour his teaching so that he would sometimes give misleading advice to students... "If you knew what you were doing, you could do what you want." AFF

Oops. I think I had STAMINA in mind, but couldn't think of the word. Strength and stamina are somehow related though. Paul

1) In some cases strength is unavailable without stamina... 2) This idea of locked wrists reminds me of someone in a Feldenkrais class of mine who could not unlock his wrists even when there was absolutely no stress being exerted by them or on them! The habitually locked wrist was so much a part of his self-image that he did not even include it among the issues he felt he needed to address in his own technique. Thus many of the other technical strategies he tried and ingenious exercises he devised were, unbeknownst to him, a compensation for the locked wrist, and would not have been needed at all if he didn't have this hidden issue to deal with. The worst of it was, he also unkowingly let this issue colour his teaching so that he would sometimes give misleading advice to students... "If you knew what you were doing, you could do what you want." AFF Which particular ones? I've become aware that there was a perpetual stiffness down the 5th finger side of my right wrist, in the compensation for the habitually high wrist and inadequate quality of contact to the connect a suspended chain from the 5th to the shoulder. The version of tapping I speak of here has been phenomenally useful in exposing the moments where the wrist was tightening in compensation for making inadequate preliminary contact to connect to the arm. There are alignments that I simply couldn't get my right hand into (without a crooked wrist) until I started using this one to test whether the starter position was right. I'd be interested in any feedback on which exercises you feel compensate for a maintained tight wrist rather than work at loosening it. What I've become quite convinced of is that my wrist tightening habit was the result of a starter position where finger movement necessarily brought the knuckle down for the ride- causing the wrist to tighten in compensation for imbalance . With better preliminary contact, the knuckle cannot fall when the finger moves and the wrist now releases into a long line, rather than my habitual cramped position.

Oops. I think I had STAMINA in mind, but couldn't think of the word. Strength and stamina are somehow related though. Paul True, I think that makes sense of the seeming conflict. I don't think rubinstein necessarily needed absolute strength to bear huge forces (not that I'm saying he couldn't do that too) but he had the ability to deploy well timed forces without getting tired from the experience. This is what I'd personally stress over the relevance of how much *absolute* force an arch can bear against a static surface. Until I'd done Beauchamp's tapping, I honestly didn't realise quite how little force can produce so much, via the 5th. Interestingly, my fifth finger muscle is growing notably bigger due to acting from this new setup- but the startling difference to the result came (if by no means with reliable consistency) was experienced in the first session where I tried it. There was no time for strength to evolve, but simply a different coordination from which to transmit energy, that I'd never used.

Which particular ones? I am afraid that to answer that I would have to sit with you... it would be a very involved answer and unfortunately I think outside the scope of what we can accomplish on the forum... Sorry! AFF

Okay, I just uploaded videos to illustrate this exercise is practise. In the first, I deliberately started in the position of 5th inversion that I spoke of (slightly exaggerated, although my 5th does do this when I strive for it to be passive, rather than prepare it for action with contact against the key surface). Note how severely the knuckle droops. It does the same if I start from that position and strive to move the fifth- the whole thing falls down. Note how the arm and wrist start to realign and the finger starts to make better contact. After a little while, the taps are going straight through the series of bones, rather than bringing the knuckle down. Incidentally, this adaptation has now become instinctive. At first I had to do conscious things to find it and from trying it on students, it's definitely not something that just converges by instinct at first. However, in the film, my conscious awareness was only of tapping and the adaptation to both hand and arm were made unconsiously, simply by continuing to tap. It's not immediately visible, but I started the wrist in my old bad habit state. As I did the exercise, it naturally dropped down and lengthened out behind the fifth finger- releasing the slight habitual bunching forward and pinching that would impede transmission of movement. Mentally it was all passive, but if my hand itself had been physically passive (without prepping itself mildly against the key resistance), the knuckle would have fallen down every single time. I've not yet tried it on anyone whose knuckle didn't fall massively first time (due to failure to stand lightly against the key), but with a few tweaks they usually get to the position where the 5th can transmit the tap effectively. In short, when I play from the starting passive position, my knuckle falls down with any finger movement and my wrist tightens slightly to compensate. When I find the end position (with a trace of standing against mild preliminary weight) the wrist can stay free and the knuckle stays balanced- whether I'm tapping the finger or moving it directly. I have to let go off the impediment in the wrist and rest it down a touch more, for it to work. Sorry Alan, but for me this is preliminary "weight", however I look at it. If i don't do that, it doesn't work. My wrist pinches when I fail to apply this subtle weight, for the finger to stand up on. On the second film, I played a few bars of Marcello/Bach normally first. Although my regular playing has improved from the exercise, you can see the slight habitual inversion of the fifth finger knuckle, which wants to droop (and the finger wants to point up). There's also some bobbling of the arm. After doing the exercise a few times, you can see the drastic difference in the shape of the hand- more like a string players bowing hand, in shape. Not a model by any means yet (the lateral movements didn't get properly behind each finger as they should and the wrist alignment is poor), but before I started this exercise by finger was never in position to move without either dragging knuckle down, or straining due to missing support of the arm. Here, the fifth finger knuckles are no wanting to spiral down- because the movement transmits better from the finger activity due to a sense of standing more against the keys. Following that, are a few bars of the rhapsody. I haven't practised it in over a month, since I filmed it for my website and again it's no model. However, notice the length down the 5th finger side of the right hand on the repeated Cs- just the same as what my arm finds while tapping the finger. Getting it properly standing against the undepressed key is what has been making that possible I literally could not even get into that position not too long ago. The finger tapping releases the slight pinching on the wrist (that still recurs in many spots there) and gets the finger into a position where it's aligned to move properly. That's the alignment I want to be getting into as standard, rather than still as the exception. Plenty more work to go yet, but the differences are accumulating very quickly.