Collapse Finger Joints

This is why I told Bin Wei to have her daughter do it very gently. It is the lack of force that allows the learning to happen. There is another learning that comes from actually doing a vigorous exertion, but that comes much later. You have to kind of play it by ear when judging which type of learning is needed in any particular situation. By the way, Bin Wei, your daughter is doing extremely well - very talented! Because she is so small she tends to use the force of her arm to move the keys sometimes. This is a normal problem for someone her age, but still it would be good to address the problem rather than just putting up with it. I recommend the finger lifting exercise for her - done as a game. Take any passage VERY slowly and before playing any note in the passage, lift all the fingers except the one standing on the previous note. Lift them all, and especially lift the one that's going to play the note. Then when she does play that note, immediately lift the finger that was standing to the sky, really try to touch the ceiling. If she keeps her arm loose and flexible as she does this, it should help things a lot. All the best, AFF

Anon: thank you for sharing your ideas and experience on this problem. I'm so glad that here we have so many great professional pianists that can help, I really appreciate it. And also thanks for sharing the videos of your performance. I was very impressed: excellent interpretations and virtuosity. Let me know if you have more videos in your website or maybe on youtube? Alan: thanks for your compliment on her playing. About the finger lifting excercise, can I just use some simple finger-excercises (such as Schmitt's 5-finger excercises) or it has to be a passage from a piece? Bin

"This is why I told Bin Wei to have her daughter do it very gently. It is the lack of force that allows the learning to happen. There is another learning that comes from actually doing a vigorous exertion, but that comes much later. You have to kind of play it by ear when judging which type of learning is needed in any particular situation. " Yeah, it surprised me just how light I have to go. It's barely possible to really "hang" from the finger- being more as a case of ever so slightly touching down with the tip of the finger. I have to adapt the exercise slightly, and start from well above with an extremely curved finger that tries to stay curved that way as I slightly lower the arm- otherwise it collapses entirely and I find it impossible to find the shape. However, it's just about becoming possible to gradually end up getting it to support a little more weight, with something that could reasonably start to count as 'hanging'- rather than 'holding' my arm over faint contact with the surface. I think I'll definitely have to try this over a period of time and see if I can get used to them more.

Sure, use Schmitt or whatever you feel like. She needs to get familiar with this in any context. AFF

Slowly and easy does it! AFF