Difficulties With The Fifth Finger On The Left Hand

Hi, I'm an amateur pianist from the United States. I've owned The Craft of Piano Playing for about six months, and the concepts in the book have been very helpful in my technical development. I'm especially satisfied with the improvements in my right hand. It was my stronger hand to begin with, so it didn't take an awful lot of tweaking for it to attain the structural stability described in the book. Everything else, for the most part, came easily to me after that. I've had less success with the left hand - I couldn't find that same well-aligned, secure structure. Many of the concepts in Mr. Fraser's book depend on first having that structure in place, so I've been unable to make significant progress with my left hand. The major problem lies in the fifth finger of my left hand. When I try to "stand" on the fifth finger, the distal interphalangeal joint collapses very easily. I've tried a variety of ways to help the finger stand up on its own, but they have either failed completely or come at the cost of reduced functionality. I've tried making the pinky stand up in flat, curved, and "straight as a ramrod" positions. I've tried re-aligning the joint with my right hand when the joint collapses. I've experimented with the idea of "grabbing" the key with my pinky, and this worked to an extent - there is a sense of stability, but then the fourth finger curls and stiffens in sympathy. I can't seem to find a way to make my fifth finger bear the forces coming from the arm without sacrificing the ability to move the fourth finger freely. I might note that the tip of my left hand pinky turns slightly inward. When I rest my left hand on the tabletop, the pinky sits slightly on its side rather than the pad. I've tried playing the pinky both on its side and on its pad, to no avail. My right hand is different - the pinky on my right hand lies flat naturally. Should I be concerned about my left hand? If so, is there anything I can do to fix it, or is this just a natural deviation in the shape of my hands that I'll be able to work around? Any help will be appreciated, and many thanks in advance.

A not uncommon problem, very nicely described here... hard to say over the internet exactly what it is, but I am thinking that the problem in this case may lie further "up" the arm - in the shoulder, torso or hip. In my own experience, the "root" cause of the perceived weakness of my left hand compared to my right had its origin in the organization of my whole left side. It was as if each side was overly tense but for entirely different reasons: the right from overwork, the left by contrast simply inert, dead - stiff from UNDERwork as it were. Thus to remedy it you may want to try some Feldenkrais lessons, Tai Chi, Alexander Technique, or whatever "bodywork" discipline appeals to you, to wake up that left side sensorily. At least, notice how you sit, and instead of worrying how your fifth splays or not, cultivate a sense of skeletal connection from its tip all the way to your spine when you use it. Let me know how it works out!

I will tell you how i made my left hand fifth finger stronger. I used to play lot of funk music on piano and still do.It is very rhythmic and fast music with lot of fast figures in the left hand.Most of those figures usually end up with fifth finger which you really have to slam so you can feel the rhythm.That really helped me out,slaming the fifth finger on they keys,that's how i actually started to feel it. What you can try is to sit down the table,put your left hand on on table and parctice your fifth finger"againist" the table.When you hit the finger,try to stay down a while and feel the power of the finger and it's connection to the table.If you do it a lot,it might hurt a bit,but i am sure you will strat to feel your finger.

... Thus to remedy it you may want to try some Feldenkrais lessons, Tai Chi, Alexander Technique, or whatever "bodywork" discipline appeals to you, to wake up that left side sensorily. At least, notice how you sit, and instead of worrying how your fifth splays or not, cultivate a sense of skeletal connection from its tip all the way to your spine when you use it. Let me know how it works out! I am so glad to find other "bodywork" mentioned by a Feldenkrais proponent! It's a pity when things get ideological... lucky for me that I have lately found an Alexander-Teacher who doesn't ideologicalize too. My sincere hope for this forum is, to be a place for such open-minded discussion !

I think the same.When i started to read proffesor's writings and the book i really felt good because he does never get ideological for the sake of being ideological,i feel that in his writings he really manages to express in the most scientific way what is correct for us and what is wrong,and always providing the correct information and background and always explaining things to all of us in a more understandable manner. You see i was tired all these years of seeing many piano proffesor's telling me that i am not a good pianist,and when i ask them for advice to know that their response is to do weight lifting wrist building exercises on piano and to follow the weight school of Deppe,and Breithaupt (overrelaxization style of teaching). While many of these proffesor's were good pianists none of them really had the knowledge and experiance to introduce me to the things that proffesor Alan did.And all that through a book!I know that piano forte cannot be taught by a book alone.But the greatness of those articles in the book is such that even if you do not have proffesor Alan with you,you can easily understand and feel the difference. I rediscovered my body and my inner self,i became aware of things that i had never felt before in the way i play,in the way i sit in and the way i do things in my everyday life. I would just like to add that sometime in the past i suffered from the problem of collapsing pinky too.After reading the book i understood that the reason that this was happening to me was only one:Overpressing the key.I was stiffening my joints so much that this was the result. My mistake was that i was lining the forearm muscles with the pinky plenty of times and not the thumb-i was doing this in order to follow the old advice of strengthening melody lines and to strengthen the bass that most of the times it is the role of the 5th finger to do such a work-. That way my hand was out of aligment.5th finger was weak as a result,and to cure the weakness the forearm muscles came as the "big brother muscle support" to help me for the lack of structure.Unfortunately in such situations you cant have your cake and eat it too!That stiffening made my hand lose the natural shape,and i felt like i had only 2 joints in my 5th finger (second,and first joint were like one unit,and i felt a slight discomfort in the shoulder and uparm area!) Unfortunately i feel that there is no quick fix for this.The reason for me lied in wrong organization that probably existed for much time.You probably need to re-learn how to stand on the fifth.For me learning how to align the hand with the thumb,doing a little more pronation and putting the hand more to the inside of the keys -(by moving the hand towards the piano,raising the wrist a little and curling the fifth finger while i did that)- helped me understand what i was doing before was wrong. But i think that this is curable now for me.I just need a new organization.I think the book has good advice regarding this. Hope this helps you! Best regards

In my opinion, is key. We use (just one specific example) our hands/arms 24h hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year and so on.... beginning in the cradle, grasping toys, and going on for all our lifes, possibly grasping piano-keys. And as we get older, we lose too much awareness and gain too much habits (in Alan Fraser's words "parasitic contractions"). From this I came to understand that In all of this, general is in the realm of objective, scientifically proofable fact that most of us should be able to agree upon. Yet, as far as I know there still isn't any technical device out there, which could "scientifically" analyze, what exactly is going on, when we play a single note on the piano... from brain, through body to fingertip to hammer. So the only thing we can work with, for now, is our own perception, which is a most complex and sometimes deceiving thing in itself.

Lately I have been reading back through old posts on this forum, taking stock, so to speak, of readers' questions and concerns, and sometimes discovering out old threads that somehow I neglected to answer. This is one of those. Here I would add one exercise to help your weak left hand fifth finger. This one is useful for any medial-distal joint that seems not to work as it should. I call it cliff-hanging and I don't really recall how it got left out of my first book. It will be included in my upcoming volume, Get your wrist way down under the keyboard, as low as you can. I sometimes have my students sit on the floor for this one. Grab the edge of a key with all four fingertips, and pretend you are hanging from the edge of a cliff: if you let go, you fall to the rocks far below. At first just hang there, feeling what that does for your arm, and for the distal-medial joint itself. Eventually begin to pull yourself up, using only your distal phalange, that is, curling only at the distal-medial joint. All the people who say "Don't curl, just curve the finger. Avoid using the deep flexors to avoid tendonitis," are going to kill me for this one! Do it CAREFULLY. Don't use force but gently explore the working of that part of your mechanism. Try to feel where in your arm there are muscles working to make this happen, and try to develop a feeling of potency in the distal-medial joint. Eventually try doing this with your fifth finger alone. Previously I recommended body-work to awaken your entire left side. Now it occurs to me that my cliff-hanging exercise offers a direct approach that could be of real help here. Let me know if it does help, and what has been happening about your original problem in the time since you first posted! AFF

It seems that the root of my problems with RH octaves is a collapsing 5th finger. But it seems to be the opposite of what is going on here - the proximal-intermedial joint is the one collapsing. Would the cliffhanging help here too?

Interesting how each person's physical organization is distinctive - I cannot collapse the proximal-medial joint of my 5th finger no matter how hard I try! I can collapse the distal-medial no problem but not the one that is causing you concern... In any case, I believe cliffhanging would help this too. Try it and see! AFF

Something I've been trying recently that seems to be helping somewhat - curl the 2nd & 4th finger, and stick the 3rd straight out. Also other combinations of this kind of thing. Watch Horowitz playing the Scriabin etude in D# minor () and you will see he sometimes does this with octaves. It seems to somehow reenforce the hand so that the 5th can align more easily ..