Left Hand 5th finger

[huckleberryhound]

Hi All!

Over the past few months I have noticed that my 5th finger (primarily in my left hand) collapses as soon as any real pressure is put on it. The middle joint locks into place, making the finger almost completely straight so that the tip of my finger has to curl at a 90 degree angle. I assume that I developed this habit by stretching to play octaves and 9ths but now it just happens all of the time. I have to concentrate very hard to curve it while playing the simplest exercises and it has almost no strength at all.

I am a 21 year old pianist and have been playing since I was 4 years old. During this time I have had about 12 years of lessons and have completed my grade 8 classical. I am not on a professional level but I consider myself fairly competent.
I don't know how long I have been doing this for and I am almost reluctant to practice so that I don't damage my technique further. I even tried sticky taping my finger into a curved shape while playing but it didn't seem to help.

I'm not taking lessons at the moment so I haven't got somebody to whip my technique back into shape. I was hoping that somebody else has come across this problem and has any exercises that could help me fix it..?

Any tips would be appreciated!

[ajspiano]

This will be difficult to explain very well but I will give it a try..

Try to position your finger (initially perhaps on a desk) as such to avoid collapse of the joint in ether direction by balancing it rather than by activating muscles to maintain/fix its shape.

Once you can do this while applying minimal pressure and without being too shaky you can experiment with allowing a bit of the weight of your arm to transfer into the finger and work to maintain the balance there too..  You won't necessarily want to add and maintain loads of weight at the piano, but this will test how well balanced you are.. more weight leads to the weak point in the mechanism collapsing.

There after you can work at the piano where you play a note, while focusing on this concept of balance in the joints and transition to a different finger (very legato) and try to avoid any kind of collapse sensation during the transition from one finger to another..  This works as an "overholding" exercise..  3 steps, play note, play next note, release first note.. very slow, always focus on feeling in control and balanced.

[ajspiano]

In addition, there is a left hand inversion of both the 1st and 2nd etudes from chopins op10. These would be of benefit, only a small section at a fairly mild pace would be sufficient.

see attached.

these are exact symmetrical arrangements, so the LH does the exactly what the RH would physically do in the original..  I'm not sure I like how they sound, but really it just illustrates a physical point of development..  you could create your own similar figures that are more to your liking aurally.

[huckleberryhound]

Thank you!

I'm going to start on this this afternoon, hopefully I can be patient enough to get some results.
Chopin's Op.10 contains some of my favorite pieces. Both to play and to listen to. This arrangement looks very interesting.

[ajspiano]

Thank you!

..hopefully I can be patient enough to get some results.

No worries.

Consider that the objective is not only to directly fix the problem but also to develop an increased self awareness on a minute level..  you are going to obsess on the "why" the joint collapses by testing it, and adjusting the weaknesses in your technique.. and this is a process that doesnt not have to apply only to this situation.

..all the while maintaining sight of the ultimate goal, a musical application. So once you have an idea of why it was failing and how to resolve it, go and play real repertoire where you've  experienced the problem, and slowly make some adjustments to how you execute those passages, and ensure that you do this with the proper attention to the music, not just purely that your joint doesn't collapse.

[outin]

As an advanced player you probably will be able to fix it just on the piano, but for me it didn't work.

I am double-jointed and my 5th have always been weak (especially the right hand) and collapse very easily. I tried all kinds of exercises on the piano given by my teacher/found in the internet but got no help. The RH 5th was so weak that doing the exercises on the piano just caused tension in the wrong places and also my 5th finger has a very sharp and small tip and it just kept either slipping or collapsing. Tried on table top, still no help because I could not apply small enough pressure first no matter how much I tried. But then I started exercising on a softer surface and saw progress in just a few days, because I didn't have to worry about slipping and didn't have to be so careful about the amount of pressure. Now I do small pressure exercises on my matress while in bed every now and then to keep the 5ths in shape... so this is just something that helped me.

[piano6888]

Try working on the five finger pentachord exercise with your left hand only and do not extend the octave, but keep your hand as a P5 (perfect 5th interval), so your pink would be on the C (one octave from middle C) then 4th finger on D, 3rd on E, 2nd on F, and 1st on G respectively.  Also, keep your hand and fingers curved during the entire exercise to maintain the finger shape

When doing the exercise, do not use a lot of force or stiffen the arms, wrist, and fingers but keep them loose and limber.  While playing, start out soft (piano) then slowly build it to moderate soft (mezzo piano) and also keep a slow tempo, about moderato would be fine.  After doing the exercise for hundreds of times over the course of several weeks, you should see a small improvement in finger strength

You could also try just playing the 5th and 4th fingers alone, such as C D C D C D while not exerting a lot of force, hope this helps