Fourth Finger

[cas70]

It appears to me that for most people an independent fourth finger is just never going to happen, for physiological reasons.  The well known Robert Schumann anecdote gives some idea of how frustrating this short-coming can be for a pianist.  Given this, I question why editors will suggest a 3, 4 fingering for any but very short trills.  They must know that most people will never be able to do a longer trill with the fourth finger.  Why don't they suggest something realistic instead?  If 3, 4 is really the only option most people will have to figure some way to cheat a little.  Or am I wrong?

[j_menz]

I find a 3-4 trill easier and easier to sustain than a 4-5 one. The fourth finger is quite independent of the third, it's the fifth it is more heavily tied to.

[cas70]

I certainly agree that a long 4, 5 trill is even more impossible for most people than a long 3, 4 trill, but rarely do editors ever suggest such a fingering, so your point is moot.  What I really want to know is this:  Are there lots of people out there trilling 8, 12, perhaps 16 notes, say, quickly and accurately with the fourth finger involved.  I would wager that the pianist who can do it is very rare, so why do editors suggest it?  I suspect that someone is going to tell me that if only I mastered Hanon, all my fingers would be equally useful, but I'd answer that that is just bunk.  You could work at exercises for most of your life and for most people the fourth finger would never be as capable as the second finger was the first day you touched the piano.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

This is what I do:

If I'm playing a passage where you do a little run and at the end there's a trill at the end, I do 3-4 for the first trill, then I switch to 2-3.  Since I can't switch that fast, I use a smudge of pedal.  Or if you have to do little five note runs up and down really fast while playing legato like in Scriabin's 9th, I use the pedal to get into 1-2 without playing staccato.  I avoid doing weird things like that at ALL COSTS!

AND ABOVE ALL, when in doubt, use the pedal!

Catch my drift?!

[cas70]

I catch your drift:  When called upon to do something heroic with the fourth finger, cheat.  Use pedal and get to some good fingers as quickly as possible.  I think the vast majority of pianists do this.  Why do editors pretend we live in an ideal world where a couple-of-measures-long trill can be fingered 3,4.  I would of course use 3, 4 if I were playing an etude and the whole purpose of the etude is to improve the fourth finger.  But in the usual course of playing, I don't want to use fingers that will fail me pretty regularly unless there's absolutely no way around.

[j_menz]

I catch your drift:  When called upon to do something heroic with the fourth finger, cheat.  Use pedal and get to some good fingers as quickly as possible. 

Love to see your Chopin 10/2. 

[cas70]

Chopin's 10/2 is meant to improve the fourth and fifth fingers, so of course I'd use them.  Cheating in this context makes no sense and besides I don't see how you could cheat.  But what about, say, Mozart's A minor sonata?  Most editors have a lot of tough fingerings with the fourth finger in that.  I'd say pretty much all of those fingerings could be changed to something easier without anyone noticing much.

[j_menz]

What about, say, Mozart's A minor sonata?  Most editors have a lot of tough fingerings with the fourth finger in that. 

If you think that's hard, there are certainly things you can, and should, do to improve the independence and possibly the strength of your fourth finger.

My suggestion is plenty of Bach! No cheating possible there.

[p2u_]

I certainly agree that a long 4, 5 trill is even more impossible for most people than a long 3, 4 trill, but rarely do editors ever suggest such a fingering, so your point is moot.  What I really want to know is this:  Are there lots of people out there trilling 8, 12, perhaps 16 notes, say, quickly and accurately with the fourth finger involved.  I would wager that the pianist who can do it is very rare, so why do editors suggest it?  I suspect that someone is going to tell me that if only I mastered Hanon, all my fingers would be equally useful, but I'd answer that that is just bunk.  You could work at exercises for most of your life and for most people the fourth finger would never be as capable as the second finger was the first day you touched the piano.

Relax; even Hamelin said in an interview that he has trouble with his trills.

There are a lot of factors for a trill to work with any finger combination. I'll just mention a few of the most important ones.

1) First of all, it is a coordination of fingers, wrists and arms in which the fingers are the main factor. As long as the coordination is wrong, the trill won't work, even if your individual fingers are objectively more than fast enough to do it.
You might want to read Changs remarks for some preparatory exercises.
https://www.pianofundamentals.com/book/en/1.III.3.1

2) Second, a GOOD beautiful trill is not as fast as you might think. The main factor is evenness. Listen to a pianist like Emil Gilels and then compare that with some of the lesser gods; his trills are slower most of the time but just right; they vibrate. You will hear that people who force their trills in terms of objective speed create the wrong impression: as if they are not able to make that trill. You ask about 8, 12, 16 movements per second. Well, I can make 12 with ALL finger combinations in good control (both with fingers only and with forearm rotation only) but I will never ever be so stupid as to apply that consciously in a work of art. That's not what a trill is for.

3) The fourth finger is not as helpless as one may think. As a matter of fact, the further you advance on your path to perfection, the more you may realize that the fingers you always thought were your strongest are actually the worst; probably because they try to compensate all the time for what we PERCEIVE as the weakest.

4) One of the main factors for real indepence of the fingers is: avoid curling the distal joints (nail joint) so much. The movement with the fingers is from the knuckle joint (where the finger comes out of your hand so to speak).

5) Good pianists use more than 2 fingers for longer trills.

6) Although the musical notation often suggests we hold surrounding notes, this if more than often not necessary. This means that you can start a trill with "weaker" fingers and then take over with "stronger" ones.

That's it for now. Hope some other pianists will jump in.

Paul

[thalbergmad]

My suggestion is plenty of Bach! No cheating possible there.

Play Thalberg as well. Good training for trills.

Thal

[p2u_]

My suggestion is plenty of Bach! No cheating possible there.

Play Thalberg as well. Good training for trills.

Scarlatti also, but I think it would be best to LISTEN ONLY to the execution of GOOD trills in that music by great artists while solving the mechanics away from the piano. In this way, while working with your fingers, you also develop your ears and awareness, the sound image of what constitutes a really good trill. While playing, it is no problem if the student temporarily skips the trills and still plays the wonderful music, instead of doing the "olympics" in a process he/she doesn't really understand. The trills should fit in easily, comfortably without destroying the simplicity of the musical line.

Paul

[nyiregyhazi]

I find a 3-4 trill easier and easier to sustain than a 4-5 one. The fourth finger is quite independent of the third, it's the fifth it is more heavily tied to.

Could you clarify your basis for this? The conventional explanation is based on a physiological join between 3 and 4. As I recall, they share a bone or something?

However, I'm recently questioning the relevance of this- as an explanation for weak fourths. On both hands, not only does my fourth move more easily on its own than the third, but it's the single easiest finger out of ALL fingers to bring to the palm, without others following significantly. I notice that my right hand 4th does feel much more tied to the 5th than the 3rd- although this is not so with my left hand.

So, I'm not ruling out what you suggest, but could give more details of your basis for what you state? It runs strongly against the conventional explanation with regard to physiology issues- but I am wondering if those are actually so relevant after all.

[j_menz]

Could you clarify your basis for this? The conventional explanation is based on a physiological join between 3 and 4. As I recall, they share a bone or something?

However, I'm recently questioning the relevance of this- as an explanation for weak fourths. On both hands, not only does my fourth move more easily on its own than the third, but it's the single easiest finger out of ALL fingers to bring to the palm, without others following significantly. I notice that my right hand 4th does feel much more tied to the 5th than the 3rd- although this is not so with my left hand.

So, I'm not ruling out what you suggest, but could give more details of your basis for what you state? It runs strongly against the conventional explanation with regard to physiology issues- but I am wondering if those are actually so relevant after all.

I believe they share a tendon rather than a bone, though my understanding was that it was the 4th and 5th. I failed anatomy at university, so my memory may be unreliable. 

My basis is entirely experiential. Both my hands would appear to correspond to your left in that way. And I agree that the fourth is the easiest tp palm. In my case the fifth is the hardest as it very much drages the fourth with it.

As a general principle, whenever I find that theory does not align with (real) experience, it is the experience that triumphs.

[nyiregyhazi]

I believe they share a tendon rather than a bone, though my understanding was that it was the 4th and 5th. I failed anatomy at university, so my memory may be unreliable.  

Sounds kind of familiar. Is there something to do with how the bones converge in a slightly different way to others, though? I'm not remotely sure on the fine details myself.

As a general principle, whenever I find that theory does not align with (real) experience, it is the experience that triumphs.

Yeah, absolutely. There's no shortage of cases where experience has become possible due to examination of theoretical issues (Thomas Mark's book on anatomical issues is surprisingly useful, practically, compared to a large amount of seemingly irrelevant anatomical information that gets put out with little evident purpose). However, we shouldn't just believe everything we're told. When I hear people saying you shouldn't even try to develop a more independent fourth finger (because it's supposedly impossible) it greatly troubles me. Somehow people often seem to be blind to the fact that simply because things are interconnected, it doesn't mean that independence cannot be vastly improved upon in a healthy way. I'm becoming increasingly less convinced that the 4th fingers' typical limitations necessarily have much at all to do with the connection to the 3rd (which limits the movement of the 3rd overwhelmingly more than movement of the 4th). I think it's really just an excuse rather than that big a limiter (or, at least, making the excuse is what perpetuates the biggest limitation, rather than the actual anatomical connection).

[j_menz]

However, we shouldn't just believe everything we're told. When I hear people saying you shouldn't even try to develop a more independent fourth finger (because it's supposedly impossible) it greatly troubles me. Somehow people often seem to be blind to the fact that simply because things are interconnected, it doesn't mean that independence cannot be vastly improved upon in a healthy way.

Fortunately for me, by the time I had read that it couldn't be done, I had already done it. 

[p2u_]

Could you clarify your basis for this? The conventional explanation is based on a physiological join between 3 and 4. As I recall, they share a bone or something?

They share a tendon in the arm, but that hampers only if your coordination is predominantly based on the muscles that are in the arm and if you tend to curl the fingertip too much. However, if you move the finger as one unit from the (hand)knuckle joint (the slight "grasping" motion), concentrating on the intrinsic muscles in the hand and combine this with the extension movement you propagate in your articles, then the problem of "finger dependence" disappears as if by magic. Also, the left hand, usually perceived as the weak one, tends to work better, closer to what nature intended.
P.S.: Preparing to accept my sentence: death by stoning...

Paul

[kalirren]

This image explains EVERYTHING.



The thumb has its own musculature.  The 2nd and 5th fingers each have their own muscle (labeled "extensor indicis proprius" and "extensor quintus proprius" respectively) in addition to the one which all the fingers but the thumb share.  The 3rd and 4th fingers share the "extensor digitorum communis" muscle.

So the 3rd and 4th are by nature the least independent.  4 and 5 should be very independent.

My 4-5 trill is much better than my 3-4 trill.  If your 3-4 trill is better than your 4-5 trill, then my wager is that you are relying more on pronation and supination of the forearm than finger independence to execute it.

I'm becoming increasingly less convinced that the 4th fingers' typical limitations necessarily have much at all to do with the connection to the 3rd (which limits the movement of the 3rd overwhelmingly more than movement of the 4th).

I think you're on to something here.  In Developmental Biology we learned that the 4th finger is actually the straightest extension of the ulna.  It is the first finger to form, and the natural center of the hand.  So not only is it most linked to the 3rd finger, it is also the finger which benefits least from forearm pronation/supination.

This also makes it very useful for some things. Whenever I want to play pianissimo repeated notes, it's 4-4-4-4-4 all the way...

[j_menz]

This image explains EVERYTHING.

The thumb has its own musculature.  The 2nd and 5th fingers each have their own muscle (labeled "extensor indicis proprius" and "extensor quintus proprius" respectively) in addition to the one which all the fingers but the thumb share.  The 3rd and 4th fingers share the "extensor digitorum communis" muscle.

So the 3rd and 4th are by nature the least independent.  4 and 5 should be very independent.

My 4-5 trill is much better than my 3-4 trill.  If your 3-4 trill is better than your 4-5 trill, then my wager is that you are relying more on pronation and supination of the forearm than finger independence to execute it.

Firstly, those things to which you refer are tendons, not muscles.

Also, no pronation or supination involved in my 3-4 trill, yet still it is stronger. It may be, of course, that it is just more practised. I also prefer a 2-3 trill to a 1-2 or 1-3, so maybe I'm just weird. 

[nyiregyhazi]

The thumb has its own musculature.  The 2nd and 5th fingers each have their own muscle (labeled "extensor indicis proprius" and "extensor quintus proprius" respectively) in addition to the one which all the fingers but the thumb share.  The 3rd and 4th fingers share the "extensor digitorum communis" muscle.

But this is the lone one that can never contribute directly towards moving the key. The other two joints can contribute to sound either by bending or unbending. However, this is the single action that can NEVER contribute a jot to acceleration of the key (unless you flip you palm to face upwards)! It's movement in the opposite direction that requires independence. Personally, my fourth is the most independent of all, in the useful direction. I'm becoming more and baffled by why this is so frequently quoted as an explanation for limitations to the 4th.

The point about the fourth being the "centre" is very interesting. I think I can feel what you mean. I heard something about John Ogdon using all 4s for the pulsating repeated notes at the start of Scarbo.

[jmanpno]

Quite frankly the fourth finger is only limited with respect to his extension.  Its flexion ability is as a great as the other fingers.  Simply lift the fourth finger in a way that over comes this tendon issue and you are set!

[hfmadopter]

Relax; even Hamelin said in an interview that he has trouble with his trills.

There are a lot of factors for a trill to work with any finger combination. I'll just mention a few of the most important ones.


3) The fourth finger is not as helpless as one may think. As a matter of fact, the further you advance on your path to perfection, the more you may realize that the fingers you always thought were your strongest are actually the worst; probably because they try to compensate all the time for what we PERCEIVE as the weakest.


That's it for now. Hope some other pianists will jump in.

Paul

 Nice calm informative post Paul !

 Number three stood out to me personally because I have recently discovered that indeed my fourth is not causing the uneveness in my 3-4 trills. If it's a weakness issue, then  it's the third ! I tested this by trying 2-4 instead and it's even and able to be very rapid if need be. In fact if I could ever use it for anything 2-5 is also pretty even.

It so happens that I'm working on new hand positions for 3-4 trills. Something was definately wrong as I was doing them  and I suspect my hand was too low.. With too low a hand position you have to physically lift the fingers vs creating a sort of scratching motion. That causes a slow uneven trill and also an ache over the top knuckles for me anyway. On the flip side, if curled too much I get an ache in the palm on 3-4 trills. It's interesting that I hit on this post today even though I guess it's a topic that died out or the thread did..

[indianajo]

Roger on the flat hands being bad.  The piano teacher insisted from the beginning I hold my hands up and droop my arms from the elbows, which is also the posture my Mother (who taught me for the first 2 years) had learned from the typing class and her piano teacher.  She learned this back when typists were expected to produce 5 carbon copies with a manual typewriter (1942).  
I spent 30 minutes a day under Mother doing the Schmitt fingering exercises in the G. Schirmer book, which IMHO are designed to develop independence of the fingers.  These were so boring I was allowed to read novels as I practiced, but developing muscles and neural control is not about the higher cortex, is about the hindbrain and muscles.  I was assigned the piano because I had cut the pad of my third right finger off with a folding chair on my third birthday. Before piano exercises age 8 I never used the third finger without "helping" it with the fourth finger, usually pushing on the back.  The Schmitt exercises worked, I can use 3 and 4 quite independently.  In fact they are so independent I can use those two fingers to thread on a small machine nut, blind, behind a bulkhead, upside down, which is something no other mechanic on my shift could do.  
I haven't maintained the muscles into my 62 year, having worked full time for 36 years, but am building them back up again.  As far as the suggestions for fingering of editors, I have never found them very useful.  My hands are quite differently shaped than those of Russians and other northern Europeans, following instead after my short limbed native American ancestors. I have a "Morton's" foot with 2nd and 3rd toes longer than the first, and my hand the 3rd finger is quite the longest.   The editors seem to have a real aversion to using thumbs on black notes, which is something I do preferentially.  So, IMHO, do what sounds best, but do some boring exercises to build up your 4-5 finger muscles.  Schmitt really does it, Czerny not so much.  Hanson I think was invented after I quit taking piano lessons (1965), I did some of those Belwin exercise books with the stick figures on playground equipment on the cover under the professional piano teacher, but those didn't build muscles nearly as much as Schmitt exercises did under my Mother.  

[hfmadopter]

Roger on the flat hands being bad.    
 
I haven't maintained the muscles into my 62 year, having worked full time for 40 years, but am building them back up again.    

Yes over 40 years working for me too ( still at it I might add), away from piano for a long time, now back at it for 10 months. So things aren't perfect on me either ! I learned this stuff 30 years ago, it's coming back slowly but I'm getting there. Chopin trills seemed to go more smoothly back then but my emotion is better these days.

I watched an interesting video on trills, I'll post it in an edit ( if I can find it again), you might be interested in this. It addresses what my teacher taught me almost perfectly. I needed that reminder incidentally !

Edit: 

[slobone]

If you think that's hard, there are certainly things you can, and should, do to improve the independence and possibly the strength of your fourth finger.

My suggestion is plenty of Bach! No cheating possible there.

Yes indeed. I'm currently working on the Goldberg #9, and there's a spot where I have to trill with 4-5 while playing a different part with 1 and 2. I'm finding it a challenge to play evenly.

Interestingly, Dohnanyi has some very similar exercises, although he doesn't have one for 4-5 trill. But he has you trill with 3-4 while moving 1-2 more slowly. It would be easy to adapt that exercise to 1-2 and 4-5.

[nyiregyhazi]

Yes indeed. I'm currently working on the Goldberg #9, and there's a spot where I have to trill with 4-5 while playing a different part with 1 and 2. I'm finding it a challenge to play evenly.

Interestingly, Dohnanyi has some very similar exercises, although he doesn't have one for 4-5 trill. But he has you trill with 3-4 while moving 1-2 more slowly. It would be easy to adapt that exercise to 1-2 and 4-5.

I have an interesting exercise which may help. From time to time, stop on 5 . Bring the thumb back in a very wide open arc and then forward to touch it gently to the underside of the keyboard, below 5. The whole arm aligns itself behind 5. This is also useful for 4, often. Then bring the thumb back and notice if the quality of balance still feels more aligned to the 5th. It's also useful to practise the trill itself while continually touching the thumb gently below the keys (but not bracing the arm against it-literally just touching) It exposes even the slightest knuckle droops that waste energy and squash down.

It's particularly useful for myself, as I have a bad habit of bunching my wrist forward and collapsing my weaker knuckles (which is much lesser but still present in even my most recent youtube videos). However, I've found this effective with everyone I've tried it on. Even the smallest droop is enough to spoil things, and this exposes those traces at once. Also, even if you can't bring the arm right behind 5 in the end, you feel much closer to that securely aligned position without having to literally go all the way into it.