Gyorgy Sandor on thumb under

[darkaegis]

I was reading Sandor's book "On Piano Playing" and his has some not so kind words on using the thumb under technique for scales. He recommends a more hand - wrist - arm approach, I had been doing this to reduce the tension on my thumb for scales and arpegios but my teacher kept insisting on using a straight hand technique with a thumb under so I adapted to this method.

Seems to me the Sandor has it correct as when the thumb is tucked under the hand it has no control downward and must be thrust into the key by the hand. I have much better control with the thumb positioned outside the hand than under it.

Any recommondations on this?

FYI on technical extercises.. Sandor doesn't recommend non-musical excercises... thinks that we can find plenty of exercises in the literature available (Etudes by Chopin and other are acceptable to him though)

It's a spendy book, but worth it. Many recommondations on this forum are re-enforced by this book, a friend of mine knew by name some of Shandor's students and was really surprised at some of the recommondations in the book (not old school Hanon stuff..)

[xvimbi]

Search for "thumb under" and "thumb over", and you'll end up with a couple of days of reading material .