Unlearning bad habits

[kaveh]

After years away from the piano, I've come back, enlisting the help of an excellent teacher (one who many of the forum members will be familiar with...)

I'm making good progress but two deeply ingrained habits are repeatedly surfacing,

1) Bending my fingers upwards at the nail joint (or, more accurately, extending at the DIPJ)

2) Waving my left 5th finger madly in the air, at any speed above about 60bpm

Trying to 'unlearn' these habits is becoming intensely frustrating, time-consuming and I feel I'm getting nowhere.

Can anyone suggest tips/tricks/techniques for erasing bad habits in general, and these two in particular???

Many thanks,
Kaveh

[steve jones]

I would imagine that this is were is good teacher is necessary. To 'unlearn' these habits would require you to 'learn' new ones. I dont know about you, but I learn from repetition. If you can get your teach to observe you performing the correct technique, then Im sure you can get the rest by simply repeating it, especially in you pieces.

Sorry, bit of a vague answer. Im hardly the authority on these matters, but I think you'll find this would be a good way to start correcting you technical flaws.

[allthumbs]

Greetings

I'm making good progress but two deeply ingrained habits are repeatedly surfacing,

1) Bending my fingers upwards at the nail joint (or, more accurately, extending at the DIPJ)

I'm assuming you are referring to allowing your knuckle to collapse when you depress the key. I would say that would be an undesirable habit. Perhaps you could play through your pieces slowly and concentrate on not allowing this to happen. Does this occur on all your fingers or just one or two?

2) Waving my left 5th finger madly in the air, at any speed above about 60bpm

As for this, I'm not sure what the problem is here, unless you are unable to bring the offending digit into use when you need to and hence are unable to play the left hand parts evenly. I say if it's not causing you to miss notes, wave on!

  Or are you waving that certain digit madly in the air above your head, leaving all the work for the other hand to do alone Sorry... it's your 5th finger you were talking about

Hope that helped

Cheers

allthumbs

[xvimbi]

Just got beat somewhat by allthumb ...

anyway.

If I understand you correctly, your first problem is collapsing of the last finger joint. That is indeed something one should avoid. The first step to retraining is developing a heightened awareness for the problem. A habit is something that happens subconsciously, thus, no effort is involved in making it happen. Habits will therefore go largely unnoticed. So, try to pay attention to this issue. There are two ways. One, if you get into a situation where the habit might be invoked, pause for a second and think about how you would like the movements to be carried out and act accordingly. This is, before the habit gets invoked by your subconscious, switch to a conscious mode. Second, if you catch yourself acting on the bad habit, immediately correct it. Stop there and repeat the action using the proper motions.

Over time, you'll be able to catch yourself more reliably when you do bad things, and eventually BEFORE you do bad things. At that point, you will also probably have acquired the good (hopefully) habit. A teacher can be of help if you ask him to immediately point out when you did smething wrong.

This strategy works for all habits, whether it is retraining sitting posture, how to use a computer mouse, buy flowers for your spouse, etc.

The second issue you mention, IMHO, is really a non-issue. I would say, leave the little finger alone. As long as it is not hindering your playing and as long as it doesn't introduce tension, let it do whatever it wants to. It might look funny, but that is a minor aspect. If you watch famous pianists, their little fingers are often flying around or are extremely curled (that is actually really bad).

[allthumbs]

Greetings

Just got beat somewhat by allthumb ...

anyway.

If I understand you correctly, your first problem is collapsing of the last finger joint. That is indeed something one should avoid. The first step to retraining is developing a heightened awareness for the problem. A habit is something that happens subconsciously, thus, no effort is involved in making it happen. Habits will therefore go largely unnoticed. So, try to pay attention to this issue. There are two ways. One, if you get into a situation where the habit might be invoked, pause for a second and think about how you would like the movements to be carried out and act accordingly. This is, before the habit gets invoked by your subconscious, switch to a conscious mode. Second, if you catch yourself acting on the bad habit, immediately correct it. Stop there and repeat the action using the proper motions.

Over time, you'll be able to catch yourself more reliably when you do bad things, and eventually BEFORE you do bad things. At that point, you will also probably have acquired the good (hopefully) habit. A teacher can be of help if you ask him to immediately point out when you did smething wrong.

A much better explanion in this point xvimbi

Cheers

[kaveh]

Thanks for the input guys.

You're right.  I found that just bringing this stuff to my conscious awareness - trying to notice every time - is already making a small but noticeable difference.

Now just a matter of undoing all the harm the thousands of mindless repetitions of Hanon caused (back when I didn't know any better!) 

[bearzinthehood]

I had a similar problem with lifting my left shoulder, kind of like a shrugging motion.  It was totally subconcious, I was never really even aware of it.  Took a LOT of concious effort to kill it, still there sometimes if I'm not careful.

[steve jones]

Without wishing to instigate a huge ten page debate...

Is it possible that these little flaws in technique might be the very things that make a players 'sound' unique.

Bear in mind I say sound, not performance. Also, bear in mind that Im not saying I agree with this statement. Just curious to know what you guys think.

[da jake]

Interesting thought. Only Segundo Yogore has the "perfect" technique, but I'd rather listen to Hamelin any day.