Double Stuff

Alan, I want to tell you about some benefits I've had from working on your Rearing Horse exercise for drilling thumb motions. You emphasized this exercise in our lessons and I've been working on it a lot. I'm sure you have been saying this all along, but something about this motion finally sank in. The thumb moves keys using abduction. Okay, I can see that in print a hundred times and pass a written quiz about it, but that didn't mean I actually was doing it. As I practiced your Rearing Horse exercise it occurred to me, "hey, there are a whole lot of occasions during my playing that I'm just not 'opening' my thumb. I don't even think about its playing action being an 'opening.'" I noticed from the videos of our lessons that in many chords I do an extra, kind of preparatory, motion in my forearm, an attack before the attack, Double Stuff! You have worked to get me to let go of my preparatory "setting" of the hand, to let my fingers just drop like ropes. I wondered where this "setting" was still coming from when I'm playing chords. I found that it comes from not letting my thumb "drop like a rope," because in this case dropping means an abduction, an opening motion, and I wasn't thinking about opening. When I'm doing my Double Stuff chordal attacks, I'm basically sticking my thumb out immobile and whacking with the whole lever of my forearm. Maybe not so bad as that, but enough to make me brace my arm and produce an extra, visible hitch before the attack. When I open the thumb on chordal attacks (and octaves) the Double Stuff in my forearm goes away. I know you just wrote a book all about the thumb! So far I've only read the portion that I proofread for you. Here's another benefit of the Rearing Horse that resolves a question that has puzzled me my whole life. I talked to you about my weird habit of curling my fifth finger. When I worked on the Rearing Horse I found that as soon as I really open my thumb, my fifth finger lays down flat. Example: Chopin's double thirds etude. You said the secret for this etude lies in the thumb. In the last double third sixteenths in the piece, 1-3 to 2-4, my fifth finger wants to curl up. This is my typical habit. However, as soon as I play my thumb by really abducting it (and rotating a bit towards it), my fifth finger lies down. I really wanted that, and not just for appearances. I always thought the curling of my fifth finger said something about unnecessary tension in my hand. And now I know that to be true, because when I open that thumb for attacks, the whole other side of my hand finally lets go. I feel it and even see it. Jai Jeffryes