Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Using my left little finger to anchor: an observation

So I had an illuminating lesson on Wednesday. I played for my teacher Bach's "March in G Major" (BVW Anh. 124) and Czerny's Left Hand Studies, No. 3. She's in the process of moving her practice out of her house and into a new studio, so the grand piano was gone and we had our lesson in her office on the spinet. Her office is pretty small, and there's no room for her to sit to the side of me. Instead she sat on a tall barstool chair and could look down over my shoulder.

After I played the March, she commented that I needed to "let go" of the keys in my left hand so that I could move around more easily. Then I played the Czerny and she observed that I "anchored" the arpeggios with my little finger rather than trust that my hand would know where to go next. That switched on the light bulb concerning my difficulty with Chopin when I have to do lots of jumps with my left hand. She told me to be "fearless" and if I hit the wrong note, I hit the wrong note, but I needed to let my left hand be free to "MOVE." Crazy, huh? OMG! The difference is amazing and I am actually picking up speed for the first time in my life.

Thank you all for providing me with your insight about playing the piano. I'm sure that my receptiveness to being brave was fertilized and tilled by this forum.

Susan

interesting - i do that for drawing and painting and i know i anchor myself on the keys occasionally. (they do sound tho..heh).

That's great!

It's things like that which make me miss having a piano teacher. They can really pinpoint your problem areas and tell you how to fix them.

Great you discovered that. You will find later that if you do an arpeggio run that that little finger holding its place will tense up the hands and you will not be able to do a run, at least not quickly. So in general the hand never really stays in any kind of stretched position when not in use. After I figured out how to relax the unused fingers, it didn't take long before I could do fast arpeggios up and down.

That's a very good visual for me to use, to not keep my hand stretched. Seems obvious now, but not obvious when I'm playing!

Thanks for posting this, Susan. I take from a different teacher in the summer, and he immediately noticed that I do something similar. He says that one of the reasons my arm gets so tired playing the Chopin piece I'm working on is because I keep my hand stretched out, ready to go to the next note. He says it wastes a lot of energy; don't stretch fingers that aren't going anywhere right away.

He also talked about being fearless, especially in jumps. We spent a whole lesson once having me make a jump I was always missing. It's funny how it looks effortless when you do it a hundred or so times!

I still think it's hard not to stretch out, but I now understand that all that tension is what makes it sound like I'm wrestling a piece into submission rather than letting the music flow. It's not easy!

Thanks again for posting your observation. It reminded me that I'm slipping into old and bad habits.

Nancy