Pain in the pinkies

[faa2010]

Yesterday I was practicing the next pieces:

- Bach's 2 part Inventions (8, 7, 4, 1)
- Chopin's Prelude op 28 no 15 (Raindrops)
- Debussy's Clair de Lune (I am start learning it, I am only playing the first two pages)

After the practice, my pinkies and my middle fingers started to pain.

Today the pain is less, apart that all my fingers are not right like the rain (They are curve).

Why could this happen?

Note: my hands are not very big. The distance I can reach is at least to the ninth key.

[larapool]

Could it be that you stretched them more than usual while playing the Raindrop?  You say you can stretch to the 9th, and that piece demands a lot from your pinkies.

[roseamelia]

Could it be that you stretched them more than usual while playing the Raindrop?  You say you can stretch to the 9th, and that piece demands a lot from your pinkies.

is it? have you stretched them like that before?

[tombowler]

I never get a pain in my fingers even after I've been practising for over an hour! But I get a real intense tension type pain in the back of my neck after I've played just one piece that requires a lot of concentration. Dont know why that is, I have my lesson tomorrow afternoon so I'm going to see what my teach thinks.

[keyboardclass]

But I get a real intense tension type pain in the back of my neck after I've played just one piece that requires a lot of concentration.

Is that playing from a sheet?

[pianoplayjl]

Yesterday I was practicing the next pieces:

- Bach's 2 part Inventions (8, 7, 4, 1)
- Chopin's Prelude op 28 no 15 (Raindrops)
- Debussy's Clair de Lune (I am start learning it, I am only playing the first two pages)

After the practice, my pinkies and my middle fingers started to pain.

Today the pain is less, apart that all my fingers are not right like the rain (They are curve).

Why could this happen?

Note: my hands are not very big. The distance I can reach is at least to the ninth key.

I noticed that also happens to me when I practice the raindrop prelude. If your hands can only stretch a ninth then I suggest for the last page where the chords come in for the right hand, that you chop off the top note of each ninth chord. I don't know why that is happening to  you, possibly it is just overpractice. For what I know, both the Chopin  and the the Debussy have some awkward hand configurations that you must get used to. You sould be able to play them easily, despite your mini hand size.

JL

[werq34ac]

I probably have a slightly larger hand, so I will make my example with 10ths and large chords that have to be arpeggiated. I was reading through Chopin's Op. 10/11 when I noticed my hands getting incredibly tense (this was about 2-3 years back so I might be better equipped to handle them now). Most likely you are heavily exerting yourself reaching those 9th intervals. While just playing it once might not be a problem, when you have to repeatedly play them, then the tension builds up.

I've actually never solved this problem before since I haven't looked at the 10/11 etude for a while. I don't know how my hands will handle them now. But I would consider arpeggiating chords that you can't reach. I would not recommend omitting notes since that changes the color of the chord. Or you could try blocking which is play the bottom 2 notes then the top 2. This should ease up some of the tension. If you still have problems with this, then i suppose you have no choice but to either not play this piece or omit notes.

Just wondering, how are your octaves? Really hand size should only be a significant problem if your hands have trouble playing octaves since there are many pieces that require you to play endless amounts of octaves.