How Much Can The Fifth Finger Improve?

Although I took five years of piano as a kid, nothing was said about technique and I think mine was terrible. I'm just starting to explore good technique "for real." I'm aware how weak my fifth finger is. The middle knuckle collapses with nearly any use of it. I've noticed that if I practice a five-finger exercise and fingers 1 through 4 are down, which I believe is reinforcing the arch, I can play 5 very gently without collapse. This hints at the possibility of improvement. I am also aware that if I play with the fifth finger held straight and send the force down the length of the finger, it doesn't collapse, but this is tricky in most situations. I'm aware now that the collapse of the fifth finger ruins any ability to control it or play above mf. I can slam my fifth finger down as hard as possible and it barely gets to f, probably because all the velocity gets taken up by the collapse. How much potential for improvement is in the fifth finger? Mine seems hopeless, but maybe this is not so.

You are on the right track. You have to stand the 5th up straight a lot until it gets used to it, develops "strength" (which really means, 'develop the ability'). Also availing your 5th of the support offered by the other three fingers standing well is a great strategy. Much later you may be able to learn to curl it, but never at the expense of a healthy lumbrical/interosseous action... let me know how you get on! AFF

i would like to clarify - is it bad for the joints of the fifth finger (distal in my case) to collapse when playing? I noticed that in some of your videos, it seems like your distal joint is also collapsed, and I was wondering if finger no. 5 is 'allowed' such indiscretions? (as a youngest sibling I know the littlest ones tend to be able to get away with things!) p.s. thanks for the stupendous method!

Yes, the distal phalange is indeed allowed such indiscretions! It's a matter of priorities. Mostly our lumbrical-interossei (LI) are woefully slack, our ability to curl the distal too well-developed. If, to activate the LI, I sacrifice the distal for awhile, so be it. I still come out ahead. Later when the LI is fully potent, you'll figure out how to bring the distal into the picture. I often work with young kids this way as they especially may not have the fine motor discrimination necessary to get that distal involved. First get the big muscles going! AFF PS You're welcome!

There's some great advice in this thread! I'd never considered allowing (or even forcing the distal joint to collapse so as to allow the proximal joint to stand up (for about 14 years I'd been unknowingly forcing the opposite!). Combining working with this collapse (which is not too good for precision, since the collapse takes time) with an approach to make the fifth finger act as one unit (hyper-extension) I feel as if I'm finally able to make progress. My right fifth knuckle is raising much more easily and has assumed a higher at rest position (ther's actually some muscle tonus now!). The left is making slower progress as it usually does, but it's progress none the less. On a related note, I was watching Kemal's Erlking DVD recently and noticed that he allowed such collapse in his fifth distal joint.

Horowitz of course also does this at times, and you should check out Misha Dacic on YouTube as well - he is often hyperextending all his distals - just not always. It's well worth learning. AFF

I'm quite amazed at just how quickly the ability to raise the fifth knuckle is integrating itself into my playing. I've found myself quite able to do it 'in action'. Of course, it would be useless if I couldn't do that, but I was expecting it to take a little longer. I was playing around with Hanon 1 making sure that every knuckle raised when its finger played - slowly at first, but I found that it does have a 'priming' effect. I was able to do the RH at about 100 bpm straight after one slow play through, which I haven't achieved previously. Tomorrow I think I'll experiment with trills and see how different they are. This is all very exciting!

I've made some rather interesting discoveries recently, regarding the idea of "middling" the action- so it hits the key as full in the face as possible. I've realised that my fourth and fifth fingers were truly pathetic in this respect and that their default movements weren't even close to being directed well. In the past, I think the "keybedding" issue was possibly the problem- as this style of action would be perhaps the riskiest one of all, unless you can keep the arm extremely light and avoid pressing. However, with a light arm, I think it's very healthy- as long as it's paced very carefully and not overdone. When pressing away and keeping the arm light, you can hit the keybed full in the face without strain or impact. I've found that the simplest way to practise this is to do slow staccato actions, with a desire to knock the knuckle up and away. If you start by missing this deliberately with notably forward actions and notably backwards ones (that both slip across the key), you can start getting an idea where the midpoint is. When doing this staccato, you get a clear feeling of whether you are hitting that mid-point, from how the hand responds to reactions. When it's just right, the finger is still aiming mildly forwards, but there's no slipping and no bracing is needed to prevent any. I've found that standing above the piano or kneeling on the stool is the easiest way to start feeling this direct path, before sitting down again. The closer the finger is to vertical, the easier it is to get a sense of aiming full into the key without slipping. Anyway, this is making a huge difference to my fourth and fifth fingers in particular. The consistency with which I can play fast runs is being drastically improved. There's also far less time-lag between starting to move and the key sounding. I have a strong feeling that it's getting used to this line of movement that later enables the arm to apply pressure, with the illusion of the fingers not doing anything much. Somehow, they seem to respond much more reflexively, now that I'm getting used to this path of movement. I tried various exercises based around this with a student who has a very readily collapsing 2nd finger yesterday and I was pleasantly surprised to see a major improvement. There were still a few collapses coming in, but she managed to find a path where the finger naturally stayed rounded. If the finger extends out in just the right path, it doesn't seem to cause the joint to double back- but neither is there a need to feel any sense of inward gripping to resist that. I think the fifth can develop a similar line of movement- where collapse becomes rather unlikely.

Ah, nice. I'll have to have a play around with that idea, Andrew. I'll let you know how I get on with it.

Andrew, I finally got round to playing with this idea - I got an improvement straight away. I was struggling with some fairly quick alternations between fingers 4 and 5, with the thumb playing notes an octave below. While I can't get to the 'almost vertical' position you mention in your post, I can retain a trace of that organisation - enough to allow my fingers to work better. I imagine continued work on this will yield many further improvements - I've only been experimenting with it for a couple of days so far.