Piano Video Lesson: The PROBLEM FINGER in Piano Playing

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin. You're watching LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. Today we're going to talk about the problem finger in piano playing.

Which finger is it? You're probably wondering. I bet a lot of you have already figured it out, and that is your fourth finger. What is it about the fourth finger that makes it so tough? Well, if you take a look at trying to lift up just your fourth finger, try this sometime.

Just lift up your fourth finger and not your other fingers. It's hard to do. The independence of the fourth finger is very difficult in piano playing.

Did you know that Robert Schumann was so frustrated with his fourth finger weakness that he used some sort of contraption in order to try to strengthen it? No one really knows for sure whether it was a system of pulleys with weights or what, but it destroyed his fourth finger and he suffered mental illness in no small part from the frustration of not being able to play the piano the same way. So don't go to any extreme lengths for this, but I am going to give you some tips how to overcome the problems of the fourth finger. Interestingly, these same techniques will strengthen all of your fingers and create independence throughout your piano playing.

Now, of course, your fifth finger is also weak and it's one of the Achilles heel of the piano. The fact that on the piano, you've got on one hand, you've got the strongest fingers in the middle and the weakest fingers on the outside, yet you want to have a voicing where it's the opposite.

If you had the natural weight of these big, fat, strong thumbs in the middle and the weak, puny pinkies on the outside, it would sound like this.

And I'm seriously not trying to make it sound bad on purpose. I'm just using my hands with the natural weight of the fingers. So you have to really exaggerate by leaning the weight of the hands to the extremities, to the outside, lean this way and you can get that kind of balance instead of.

So you can hear the base of the treble, which are generally the most important structures of the harmonic underpinnings of music.

So I'm going to show you also how to develop the release of the fourth finger because you know, if you listen to somebody who plays scales and they're sloppy, a lot of times it'll sound like this.

Of course, that was just a total mess, but I'm demonstrating for a reason because to a great extent, it's the release of notes that make for clean scales because you can have the attacks spot on. And if the releases are different from one another by not being able to pull up the fourth finger, for example, you get that sound.

So you hear that? So how can you practice such a thing? Well, turn your metronome on, you know, and play one note to the beat, whatever speed you have your scales up to, it doesn't even matter.

This slow practice, what's great about it is it gives you an opportunity to study your hands and to strengthen the release of notes so you get clean releases so you can play a scale.

Or whatever length of notes you want, whether it's legato or with, you can have the length of notes and the amount of space between the notes can be uniform throughout your scale. And the way to do that is to practice slowly exaggerating the lifting up of previously played notes.

So notice the left hand.

So it's not just lifting it up, but it's lifting it up higher than just the surface of the key.

And this has two benefits. First of all, you're practicing the release so that you get into your hands and into your head, the release of those notes.

Secondly, you're gaining the strength to do it. Just like the thing I showed at the beginning, trying to lift up that fourth finger is really hard, isn't it? Well, this gives you an opportunity to study that and to practice that. You can do that with all your music.

Getting back to the very first thing I did, I showed you how you can lean the weight to the right and left parts of your, the right part of your, the right side of your right hand, the left side of your left hand in order to bring out melody and harmony. And I've shown this interesting technique that you can play inner voices with a gentle finger staccato so you can have control over those inner notes.

That's one way you can practice it. If the idea of being able to lean the weight to the right side of your right hand and the left side of your left hand just isn't cutting it for you, this is a great practice technique and you can do it with virtually all your music. You can, for example, take a simple hymn and bring out each voice. So I'm just going to play a basic chord progression to show you how this works.

You want to bring out the soprano voice, the alto voice, I could have practiced this, right? Or the tenor voice or the bass.

Of course, this is just a simple chord progression.

Think about doing that with your music when you have complex scores and you want to have the control of each line within the score. Practicing in this manner, if you have the patience to do it, will have you have control, infinitesimal control over every line, every note, right literally at your fingertips.

So that's the fourth finger and a whole lot more. Hope these videos are interesting for you. Again I'm Robert Estrin. This is Living Pianos. Your online piano resource. Thanks to all you subscribers if you want even more content. Subscribe here at LivingPianos.com. We are your online piano resource. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/the-problem-finger-in-piano-playing/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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