The Connection Between Fourth And Fifth Fingers

Earlier today I was working through one of the 'Natural Finger Shape' ATMs in Craft - specifically, Natural Shape IV: Legato Review. While working with my right hand I made an interesting discovery. While standing on my fourth finger I can play my thumb, second and third fingers without disturbing the fourth (although I do tend to interfere with the organisation when playing quickly). However, when I play with my fifth finger, I almost always collapse the fourth's MCP joint, or if I don't I push my fourth finger sideways towards my third. I did go back to take another look at my left hand after noting the issue with my right, and it appears far less frequently. I've known about the shared tendons between fourth and fifth fingers for a long time, but it's only now that I've noticed this issue. I intend to explore this movement more fully, but I'd appreciate any insight from anyone else.

Nick, I think that's in interesting topic. I, too, am interested in the natural finger position exercises. You might consider how your arm participates with the standing finger. It's possible to do all sorts of pulling and pushing with the upper arm in directions that don't necessarily support your finger standing on key. In those cases, I find it becomes really hard work for the standing finger and then I also get all sorts of compensatory tensions in the other non-working fingers. I like the Phil Cohen swinging exercise for discovering the easiest, most fluid arm support. When I tried the standing exercise from your post, I tried a variation of the Phil Cohen swing. I stood on 4th and made very gentle and wide, round motions of the wrist while maintaining the standing connection. If you give this a shot, you might discover a nice connection between your arm and standing finger that organizes it all by feel, with your arm guiding in the best direction to support your standing finger. If you play around with that, you might find that those other inconsistencies you were asking about just go away. Jai

Earlier today I was working through one of the 'Natural Finger Shape' ATMs in Craft - specifically, Natural Shape IV: Legato Review. While working with my right hand I made an interesting discovery. While standing on my fourth finger I can play my thumb, second and third fingers without disturbing the fourth (although I do tend to interfere with the organisation when playing quickly). However, when I play with my fifth finger, I almost always collapse the fourth's MCP joint, or if I don't I push my fourth finger sideways towards my third. I did go back to take another look at my left hand after noting the issue with my right, and it appears far less frequently. I've known about the shared tendons between fourth and fifth fingers for a long time, but it's only now that I've noticed this issue. I intend to explore this movement more fully, but I'd appreciate any insight from anyone else. I noticed something very much along these lines recently. Because the fifth is so short, you cannot easily use the extension action to sound the key (when coming from 4)- unless the fourth finger is a long way from having been fully lengthened out. I think this makes for a lot of difficulties. It's very hard to find a position where the fourth is efficiently active (rather than locked into position with excess effort) when allowing it to remain bent enough to proceed to an action of extending the 5th finger through a key. From the 2nd you can have extended to full length yet be able to proceed to an extending action of any finger. I think it's a great deal harder to be coming from an actively connected finger (that effectively connects the arm as a long chain, without anything getting bunched up) when going from 4-5. I think this is massive issue regarding perceived "weakness". It's just hard to to create optimal conditions for the 5th to move effectively, via an extending action. I think the trick is to develop the action from other fingers (especially 1 to 5). From there, my fifth has developed more capability of extending, and it's becoming more and more possible to use the same action to follow 4 (rather than simply squash down through a dead finger). Also, regarding weakness of the 4th, I realised recently that my fourth extends away from the hand with way more freedom than my third! I don't think the connection between three and four is actually the reason for fours being weak at all (as is so often assumed)! When extending, my fourth moves with vastly more freedom and independence from a rather still third. The third finger is the one that is actually notably limited in independence. Is this the same for others? I suspect that this is probably universal (or at least more normal),when using the extending action. The finger that is truly hampered by the connection remains perfectly capable! I think the real problems with fourth fingers have virtually nothing to do with it.

thanks for the suggestions. I'll have a play with your exercise and see how things work. that does sound like what I'm experiencing. I haven't looked into it for a while so now sounds like the time to do so again. Also, I see what you mean about the independence of the fingers when extending. My third brings everything else along for the ride, whereas I can extend the fourth quite far before anything else follows.