Round fingers

[lallasvensson]

Hi there
as i mentioned in another post, i teach the way i was taught. This implies: round fingers (imagine your hand holds a ball stuff...).
The thing is: i am not 100% convinced that this is a 100% right approach.
Personally one of the pbs i had to fight in my own playing was an over articulation, and a poor legato.
When my students have good hands and fingers (around 11), i start working actively on legato and ask for flat fingers, among other tricks. isnt it too late ? i am really unsure about in which order to take things...
experience sharing, please.

[bernhard]

This may disappoint you, but I definitely do not teach the way I was taught. I had a number of teachers and from each I learnt many valuable things, but also many things that were not only completely devoid of any value as positively harmful.

As always what I am about to say does not in any way implies that it is the correct thing to do. Regard it as one amongst many options you may wish to try. I believe in the scientific approach: If there are two ways of doing something I choose two pieces of similar difficulty/style/technique and learn/practise one of them one way, the other the alternative way. At the end it is pretty obvious which is the superior method. However people are different so different approaches may suit different people.

1.      Drop your arm and hand by your side and completely relax it from the shoulder to the fingertips. Now carefully lift your arm leaving the hand completely relaxed. It should have the finger slightly rounded with fingers 3-4-5 slightly behind finger 2 and slightly behind each other. (It is difficult to write about these things – much better to demonstrate). This is what I regard as the most natural hand/finger position. I call it “neutral position” and it is the position to which the fingers should start from and return to as often as possible. Therefore I do not believe at all in fingers curled. I believe in fingers naturally arched as in the positions just described.

2.      As you play, of course your hand will assume many different positions, some highly contorted depending on the technical demands of the piece. This poses no problem as long as you consistently return to neutral position.

3.      Personally, I tend to use flatter fingers when playing black keys, more rounded when playing white keys. However my fingers are never curled.

4.      Perhaps my greatest emphasis apart from “neutral position” is on joint alignment. I will give you a fuller description later on.

5.      Finally, I stress the importance of making arches. Arches are the strongest architectural structures known to man. So it makes sense that we try to create this shape in our hands/fingers when playing.

Now for the questions of fingers:

At the moment of pressing the keys the fingers should not be relaxed. Relaxed fingers are like wet noodles. Or think of a billiards (snooker) cue. If you are going to hit the balls, it needs to be rigid. A “relaxed” billiards cue would be like a rope. It would be impossible to hit a ball with a rope!

At the same time the fingers must not be “rigid” either, in the sense of being in a state of isometric tension. So how to explain the state of the fingers? This is what I do with my students, and I suggest that you try this.

Rather than explaining and directing them with words I take them to the nearest wall and ask them to watch and do as ai do: Get your feet about 60 cm from the wall. Now put your fingertips on the wall at about shoulder level. You are going to do press ups on the wall, on your fingertips (not on the floor because we are not interested in developing strength). In order for your fingers to support your weight in the best possible way, you will have to make sure of several things:

1.      They must be “firm”. If you relax your fingers, they will collapse under your weight. However, they do not need to be “tense”. If you do it right, your fingertips should hold your weight comfortably and for as long as you need (on the wall, of course, on the floor is a different matter).

2.      All the joints (including the wrist) must be aligned. What does this mean? Very simple. Consider your index finger. It has three bones and three joints (the nail joint, the middle joint and the knuckle joint). These bones are like three little straight segments. If they are properly aligned, the three bones will make a single straight line (actually it will be curved, but we will get to that in a minute). That is, if you make a projection of each bone, this projection should be in line with the next bone. Do you understand that? I use the image of a water hose, made up of little segments. If you run water through it, if the segments and are aligned, the water will go smoothly from one segment into the other. But if they are misaligned, the water will shoot out of the segment it is in into the air, instead of into the next segment.

3.      Now if you let your arm drop in a relaxed way by your side, and let your hand relax completely, and then observe the fingers, you will see that they are neither straight nor curled, but slightly bent. This slight curvature is the ideal position of the fingers (the “neutral position”, remember?). And what you want is – while keeping them into that position – to firm them up as they were firm when you did the press ups on the wall.

4.      If you now go back to the wall and try again, the finger/hand/wrist alignment we are talking about is more like an arch, than a straight line. It makes sense, since in terms of structural engineering the arch is the strongest structure.

5.      The fingertips should touch the wall right on the tips (not on the pads of the fingers), and the nails should be right out of the way (that is, the nails do not touch the wall at all, just the fingertips – if they do either you have the wrong position or you need to trim your nails!). The angle of the fingertips to the wall should be around 45o. More than that you will be curling your fingers (and probably be on your nails) and misaligning the joints one way. Less than that, you will be on the pads of the fingers and misaligning the joints the other way. This is by far the most common mistake my students make, even with me at their side demonstrating! They “break” the nail joint, so that they support the weight not with the tip of the finger, but with the whole of the finger pad.

6.      Next mistake they make is to break the alignment at the knuckle joint. The fingers are fine, but the hand collapses. You must bring it up again if it does that, so that you have a nice arch (or should I say a “dome”)all under your hand. This will give the maximum structural strength with the minimum of muscular exertion/tension. If the knuckle joint is not aligned, the hand collapses and this is turn misaligns the wrist, which has to change position to compensate for it.
7.      If everything up to the knuckle joint is aligned fine, then you must make sure that the wrist is in a straight line with the back of the hand. If you put a ruler on the top of your forearm, the ruler should touch all of your forearm-wrist-back of the hand. If you misalign the wrist up, the back of the hand will fall away from the ruler. If you misalign the wrist down, the ruler will touch the knuckles and the forearm, but not the wrist. There will be a “V” where the wrist is.

8.      Finally, fingers 3 and 4 should be aligned with the bones of your forearm at all times. That is, you should not “twist” your hand from side to side. This is so important, that I will expand on it. If you put your fingers 2-3-4-5 right at the edge of the keyboard (on the white notes) so that your thumb cannot reach the white notes, there are two ways of bringing the thumb in. One is to twist your hand. Notice as you do that how the wrist on the opposite side gets compressed, and how the alignment of fingers 3-4 with the forearm bones gets destroyed. Have you ever heard of carpal tunnel syndrome? That is what usually happens with people who consistently do this movement. The (correct)alternative is to bring the whole hand in so that your other fingers will be well into the black key area. In this way there is no stress on the wrist, especially on the carpal tunnel which is a very delicate region (that’s where most of the really painful wrist locks of aikido and ju-jitsu are applied). Observe how twisting the hand from side to side is a very localised movement, taking place at the wrist and forearm, while the bringing the whole hand in movement is a much easier movement involving the upper arm, and literally pushing the hand with the elbow.

Now if you got all that so far, you may have realised that this is really very simple, but takes a lot of time to write and to understand from the writing.

It all adds up to: keep the hand/fingers/wrist all aligned in a firm (but not tense) arch position. And remember that this firmness of the fingers is necessary only at the point of contact with the keys. At all other times the fingers should be relaxed.

The important point to stress is that all this relates to a general approach, it is not and it cannot be specific to the minutiae of playing. As one plays, the whole playing apparatus (shoulder-girdle – arm- forearm – wrist – hands – fingers) will assume all sorts of positions, so infinitely varied that I find it impossible (and useless) to write about this. If it was possible, everyone would buy a book and there would be no need for piano teachers.

And as always, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.