finger placement on keys

[mark1]

I went to a local recital today and the pianist played chopins funeral march sonata and preludes by debussy. I noticed that his fingers were all the way into the black key area... as far up as they could go before touching the wood. Is this common amoung pianist or is it a matter of preference? I personaly play just a little into the black keys.

[dj]

well as long as your fingers are not reaching for the keys you should be fine....but playing as far into the keys as possible certainly helps with this. just try not to run into the wood as this would seriously slow u down

[bernhard]

It is partly personal. It also depends on the piece. And finally there are technical reasons to do so. Here are some:

1.      Because ultimately a piano key is a lever, the more you press the key towards the edge, the less effort and the greater effect you will have. This is not necessarily a good thing. If you are really at the edge the tiniest displacement of the key will have a huge effect. It becomes really difficult to judge how much to press the key and how fast since the effects can be so magnified. As you play more into the keys, you will need to exert more pressure, but the key movement to generate an effect will be correspondingly large, so you get much more control. Because Debussy in general requires quite a lot of nuances of touch, it is probably easier (for the pianist you watched at any rate) to achieve such control by playing near the wood. Especially in pp passages where you must depress the key slowly, playing near the wood where the resistance of the key is larger can be very effective.

2.      Ideally your 3rd and 4th finger should be in line with your forearm bones. This avoids putting pressure on the carpal tunnel (on the outside of the wrist) where a large number of nerves go through. If you play to near the edge of the keys, the thumb and the little finger will be hanging in the air since they are shorter than the other fingers. You will then have two choices on how to bring the thumb and/or the little finger to the keys. You can angle your hand form side to side  - and in doing so misalign the 3/4 finger and the forearm bones and press the carpal tunnel – or you can bring the whole hand in  - preserving the alignment and protecting the carpal tunnel. In my experience people who play near the edge almost always turn the hand sideways rather than bring the hand in. Once established this is one of the most difficult habits to break. If you become obsessed with the piano and start practising several hours a day using this movement you end up with carpal tunnel syndrome, which in its worst cases may require surgery. So to avoid this horrible future, just play well into the keys. Perhaps not so much as the pianist you watched, but enough so that the thumbs and little fingers are not dangling in the air, but on top of the white notes. Fingers 234 will then be well into the black key area (which I suspect is your own  - very good – position).

3.      Finally, you see a lot of concern about having hands too small to play the piano. But actually I believe that the worse problem in this respect is having fingers that are too thick to fit in between the black notes. One of my students has this problem, and I am told that Rudolf Serkin had the same problem: he kept getting his finger stuck. How did he manage to play the piano the way he did with this handicap is something I would love to know!

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[erik-]

When you have small hands, and you have to play octaves on white keys, can you play on the edge of the keys with the hand in a lower position than usually ?

[bernhard]

If your hands are small, you may have no choice in the matter. My hands are not that big (I reach a tenth with difficulty by doing exactly what you suggested: playing right at the edge).

Two famous pianists (amongst many others) who had small hands were Joseph Hoffman and Alicia de La Rocha. They could barely reach an octave. Joseph Hoffman solved his problem by commissioning a piano from Steinway with smaller keys. Alicia de La Rocha was given stretching exercises for her fingers by her teacher. Both of them played the whole repertory (including Rachmaninoff – God knows how Alicia managed! But manage she did!). So like them, you will probably have to find what is best for you. Alternatively you could restrict your repertory to pieces that do not have challenging intervals (for you).

Have a look at this thread where a full discussion on small hands can be found:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=perf;action=display;num=1043539957

Best wishes,
Bernhard