The Thumb

How many of you are aware that the thumb is virtually a hand in itself? It totally opposes to the rest of the hand, and its musculature is almost as big as all of the other fingers' put together? Have you felt how, when you can really feel your thumb's fundamental functional difference from the rest of the hand, it offers a new freedom and capability to all your fingers?

Frankly, I don't..... my playing has improved a lot, but there are still many areas in which I'm confused. (I am now very good at detecting the structural weakness of my hands, but that doesn't mean I know where to go!!) My no. 1 problem is the role of the thumb. I observe (and feel, and hear.....) an obvious weakness in my hand structure whenever my thumb and the 2nd finger plays one after the other. Suppose my thumb has to play the next note after the 2nd finger. If I keep my wrist relatively high and swing my thumb into the keyboard, my contact with the keyboard may not be enough. On the other hand, it's very sluggish to lower my wrist every time the thumb play. This inactivates my thumb and I could feel the collapse of the hand structure. So what is the "functional" way to desent the thumb, say in a fast passage? I am happy with my improvement. But I realize that without solving this problem, I would not be able to go further to the later chapters of the book (after a few years of on and off practice, I'm still only up to the first half of the book. Hesitate to go on before I mastered the basic techniques...)

Frankly, I don't..... my playing has improved a lot, but there are still many areas in which I'm confused. (I am now very good at detecting the structural weakness of my hands, but that doesn't mean I know where to go!!) My no. 1 problem is the role of the thumb. I observe (and feel, and hear.....) an obvious weakness in my hand structure whenever my thumb and the 2nd finger plays one after the other. Suppose my thumb has to play the next note after the 2nd finger. If I keep my wrist relatively high and swing my thumb into the keyboard, my contact with the keyboard may not be enough. On the other hand, it's very sluggish to lower my wrist every time the thumb play. This inactivates my thumb and I could feel the collapse of the hand structure. So what is the "functional" way to desent the thumb, say in a fast passage? I am happy with my improvement. But I realize that without solving this problem, I would not be able to go further to the later chapters of the book (after a few years of on and off practice, I'm still only up to the first half of the book. Hesitate to go on before I mastered the basic techniques...) Dear Alvin, great perceptions about that crucial thumb-forefinger relationship. DONT lower your wrist to play the thumb, as you rightly saw, this screws up your hand structure. Learn to stand on your second and swing the thumb in: increase its ACTIVITY in order to creat that real contact. Functionality is in activity! By the way, I show this very clearly in the video... best wishes, Alan Fraser

Hello again!I wanted to ask Proffesor Fraser something.Recently i have been trying to educate my kinesthetic system again by paying close attention to all movements i do.Yet yesterday i came to a terror discovery:I think i must have a tendon linkage in the thumb and index finger in the right hand. I was reading a very good article at one that is speaking about common problems pianists have. Down in that page he has a quote about pianists that have linkage between flexor pollicis longus (to the thumb) and flexor digitorum profundus to the index finger.It has a video too.I tried to do what he does in the video for fun,and to my horror i have the same problem,actually my index tends to curl when i contract the thumb like he does in the video. Generally through all these years i have been playing piano pieces of various kinds of difficulty some very very difficult.And frankly i never paid attention to this problem.But trying to fine tune my movements and to make them 100% precise and under consious control i noticed about that problem.Is it something really serious that will mean that i should stop playing piano? I dont have the same problem with my left hand,and in the right hand my thumb is very functional although when i do exercises as the ones he has in the video in the page,the index finger tends to move together with the thumb while i do not want it to move-(yet the move of the index finger is not so big but big enough to be noticeable)-. In every day use my hands are in very good shape and i can do whatever i want,and that discovery is something that makes feel depressed a bit now. Have you ever encountered a pianist that had something similar?Is it something that i should go and seek medical advice ?If i stopped playing piano would that cure this condition? Thank you so much Proffesor for your advice and this wonderful forum. Looking forward to your reply. Regards

Dear Nicholas, Sorry to hear about this. It is interesting that they make the distinction between this problem and focal dystonia, where a finger or fingers move when you don't want them to. My solution to this would be - SKELETALITY. WHatever the problem is, the more you find a way to let the bones take over the work, the better off you'll be. We ALL have the problem of shared tendons in the fourth finger. As I explain in my second book (as yet unpublished), if you are using 50 grams of effort to move the finger, but the finger can only use 40 grams because of its structural limitation, you have a problem. If you find a way to make the same sound with only TEN grams, using the bones more than the muscles, the problem disappears altogether. I have seen this happen in dramatic fashion on more than one occasion. So: back to the drawing board! I hope this gives you some direction... best wishes and good luck, Alan Fraser

"using the bones more than the muscles, the problem disappears altogether. I have seen this happen in dramatic fashion on more than one occasion. " Good point. This means using larger support muscles of the hinderland instead of the small ones where the problems. Using bones is a good way to say it, more likely to make the pianist do it right. To say things in an insightful way is very important because many a good advice that are misunderstood ended up harming instead of helping.

Good point, Mike. I have been criticized for calling my method a "new" approach, because, as it was rightly pointed out, there's actually nothing new in it - great pianists have already done everything I am trying to explain. But I noticed, if a few great ones can do it, why not the rest of us mere mortals? I also noticed how many of us hear a piece of information, think to ourselves, "Oh, THIS must mean THAT," and end up doing something entirely different, sometimes much to our detriment. So: what's new about my approach is the language I use to describe phenomena that have always existed. Cultivating exactitude of language, and finding words that are less vulnerable to misunderstanding, takes up a lot of my time. Feldenkrais Method has given me a lot of that language, but also my work with my piano teachers, most notable Phil Cohen of Montreal and then Kemal Gekich here in Novi Sad. Thus this idea of "bones" does have the effect of freeing the smaller muscles from overwork and sending the work back to the larger muscles that hardly notice the effort. But I also intend it to actually bring a more skeletal consciousness to one's playing - a more profound and accurate sense of one's physical Self...

Yes. Rather than just calling it a matter of coordination/relaxation etc, which are indeed true but too general to be useful; the new language of the "skeletal" approach here does offer more help. And more important, of course, are the exercises which gives me the first hand experience (for the first, really) of what constitutes a good piano technique.

Just a little before i discover i have that tendon linkage,i was experimenting with the interosseous muscles of the hand in order to activate the fingers with no help from the muscles of the forearm. However now i am a little confused regarding the thumb. I managed to make my fingers (actually the index,middle,ring,and pinky) to move by activating the interosseous muscles -(although the pinky is activated more by the muscle that is near the finger)- without activating the forearm muscles.It took me sometime to manage this,and i thought i should intergrate this in my piano playing. Right now i feel a kind of boost every time i contract those small muscles first and then i bring the forearm muscles in play. Is this approach going to help me stop using the forearm muscles much and to use my skeleton more? My second question is the thumb.I can succesfully activate my 4 fingers with the interosseous muscles to move without contraction of the forearm muscles,however how can i do this when it comes to my thumb?Thumb is connected to the wrist directly,and it has a very large muscle. Also i intergrated finger tapping every time i study a piece.When i finger tap the fingers of the hand that is passive i tap either little above from the start of the second phalange or if i am doing it like Gould i sit lower my wrist is lower and i tap at distal phalange while i "hug" the keys with the fingers.When it comes to the thumb how should this finger tapping method be intergrated? Thank you so much for your answers! Best regards

All this is addressed in the film and the second book. When you activate the lumbricals and interosseous, the action GENERATES the arch structure. Thus it is more skeletal. It is not TOTALLY skeletal because there is some muscular effort, but we are transferring as much of the work to the structure as we can. Notice as well that the effort of the lumbricals and interosseous is mirrored by a clear effort somewhere in the upper arm - some part of the triceps. Don't try to consciously inhibit the forearm muscles so much as to simply feel how right activation frees them from their need to do wrong work. As for thumb tapping, both your variants should help - the more the merrier. The thumb is no more connected to or dependent on the forearm muscles than the other fingers even though it is closer. You mentioned that big huge muscle - well of course, that's the one that's doing the work, not the forearm muscles... good luck! Alan Fraser