How do I increase the flexibility of fingers 4 and 5?

[doryanne]

Will the Hanon exercises help?
Thank you!

[anna_crusis]

Just practice using them. Play E-F-G-F with fingers 3-4-5-3 for a minute a day and after a couple of weeks they'll be as good as the others.

[stevebob]

The weaker fingers will never be "as good as the others."  That's human anatomy, and we're not made that way.

Maximizing the dexterity, coordination and control of the fingers is a sensible goal; attempting to equalize them ... not so much.  It can have some unfortunate consequences.

[doryanne]

I am almost afraid to ask.. what kind of consequences?

[stevebob]

The consequences could include impairment or injury that's possibly crippling and possibly permanent.

I don't mean to sound alarmist or overstate the hazard, especially for anyone following a mainstream regimen of exercises, practicing and playing; I'm simply advocating a common sense approach that doesn't try to contravene the constraints of nature.  The fourth finger in particular is not independent of the third finger and cannot be made so.

The bright side is that composers had hands, too, and were subject to the same limitations that everybody else is.  The most "pianistic" ones—Chopin, for example—took into account the functionality of our hands and fingers and wrote for it (or wrote around it).  Principles of sound fingering also consider the relative strengths of the various fingers.

[doryanne]

Thank you, stevebob!

[peterjmathis]

Yeah, don't worry about making them equal. Piano pieces do account for weakness in that area.

[indianajo]

As a result of hours plowing through exercises in the Belwin exercise books, followed by the Schirmer fingering exercise book, followed by Czerny exercises, I have extensive control over fingers 4 and 5.  This was the goal of my mother because before piano, I was always helping finger 3 with finger 2 as a result of cutting the end of finger 3 off at age 3.  As a mechanic, I can thread a nut on a threaded bolt, with fingers 4 and 5 opposing, unassisted by 1,2,3, blind, around a corner, while I am upside down with my arm stretched as far as I can reach.  I don't really believe the preceding statement about 4 and 5 not being independently controlled, as a result.  It is also true, that many pieces sound better with the top notes louder, so that while you could play louder with 1, 2, or 3, it is musically better to play louder with 4 or 5.  For example, listen to the 3rd movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, it has a lot of 4-5 runs and trills. You should develop this skill over a period of years, not weeks, to reduce chance of injury.  Follow the guidance of an experienced and trained teacher if you want to achieve this skill.  The skill with 4 and 5 would also help if you want to be a dentist or surgeon.     

[perfect_pitch]

How to increase the flexibility???

Try Brahms Variations on a theme by Paganini...

In particular Variation 4 - definately helped my 4-5 finger dexterity.