Finger closing and relaxation

[Molly]

Hi again,

I’ve been having an ongoing issue with “hook finger” especially my pinkies sticking out and not closing following the rest of my hand. It is especially in my left hand when I have to reach a longer distance for bass notes (I have tiny hands). When I have to move upward then reach all the way back down for a lower note, my hands have a hard time relaxing as my brain is trying to “prepare” for where to go next. It is almost as if my brain is saying “If I close completely, I won’t be able to reach that lower note coming next!”

I suppose I have an overall relaxation issue in general, but the pinkies not closing seems to be the most problematic right now. My wonderful teacher has given me tips (stopping intermittently to check my relaxation, “marshmallow hands”, etc etc) but I’m wondering if there are any other tips that can help. When my focus is on relaxation it seems to improve, but as I learn more difficult music the tension seems to come back again. I am just worried that this problem is here to stay and I’m going to have to fight against it for my whole life, and that it will hinder my playing abilities.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Relax! Go slower. Practice more and practice better. Break everything down into the smallest possible step. Take great care when placing. Your pinky should always be relaxed. All your fingers should be relaxed. If you are tense, then you don’t know what you are doing well enough. Drill every bar or beat ten times or more every day until it feels natural. Make sure you understand finger and hand position, and finger movement.

[Molly]

Thank you Saul!! I have been diligently practicing my reviews, going slower, and stopping in places I’m struggling (using a bead counter to do reps in those spots) and it is helping so so much to correct the technique issues. I think you are right- if I’m tense, I’m usually not fully secure in what I’m doing and need to go slower!

[Tacye]

Your pinky should follow the 4th finger. I find it can be helpful to experience loosely looping a hairband or elastic band over 4th and 5th finger as an automated reminder. Lose enough they aren’t glued right together, but you will notice if 4th closes and leaves 5th sticking right out- not cutting circulation!

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

The issue is not having the pinkie sticking out, but if it is holding tension and not closing. It affects all the other fingers and can become a serious problem. How one practices, and how one approaches practice, how one approaches learning is key. Remove the effort, and remove the anxiety. You will get where you are going when you get there. So try practicing so you can enjoy it.

[dancingpiper]

How about for those with the opposite problem of the pinkies partly curling into the palm when not in use? As someone who uses ASL and plays burls on the Highland pipes (independent pinkie action required), my pinkies have minds of their own. My instructor keeps telling me to have them shadow my ring fingers but so far they refuse to listen… Is this a real problem or just unconventional?

[Molly]

Dancingpiper, this is a great question and I’m curious to hear some responses. I haven’t been playing all that long, but I do know that holding tension in the hands is a HUGE issue that can affect playing. Learning to open and close the pinkies with your playing is a big part of releasing tension. However, hand/finger movements, though it must support your playing, does not always look “exactly” one way. Some teachers will drill certain things into you in order to learn excellent technique (as they should), but I have seen that all harpists’ hands move in all kinds of different ways. My two cents is, as long as your technique is solid overall, and you are not holding your pinkies in because of tension, I don’t see that being a *huge* deal.

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

The pinkies are part of playing and the more conscious you are of that, the more control over them you should have. They help the 4th finger close and open, and control the relaxation of that part of the hand. If you close your fourth finger without closing your fifth, it immediately creates stress and tension.

[jaydg]

It helped me when another player pointed out that the goal is not to get your fingers into your palm, but to allow your finger to pluck and ‘follow through’, so as to get a good pluck.

Like a golfer swings past hitting the ball, they don’t stop dead at the ball, or they’d have a weak hit.

So we only close as much as our ‘finger swing’ needs on any particular note.

[carl-swanson]

I just read through all of the posts in this thread. All the suggestions are good, but my approach as a teacher would be to work on the underlying technical issues so that Molly would not be trying to work them out as she learns repertoire. Good technique on the harp is a matter of learning different patterns and working on them until the muscle memory for that pattern is formed. That way, any time the player encounters that pattern, they will automatically play it correctly without having to work on it technically. Developing muscle memory for one pattern or another is a matter of repeating the pattern (correctly) many times. The best way to do this is with etudes. A good series of etudes, such as one of the Bochsa series, is made up of many different patterns-one pattern per etude-which is then worked on in many different ways over the course of the etude. By the time the student has learned that etude, they have learned and developed the muscle memory for that pattern. If the student learns a whole series of etudes within one set, they will have developed a solid technique for that level of difficulty. I’m not saying that the student should play only etudes, but rather that etudes should be a part of each lesson, and the choice of pieces the student is playing should be chosen according to what the student is learning in the etude.

The 19th century was the age of great teaching etudes on all instruments. On the harp, they tend to be very right hand oriented, with very few focused on left hand technique. That is why I published my Bochsa Revisited edition, where I wrote a companion etude for each one of the original Bochsa Etudes. The companion etude throws all of the technical material of the original etude into the left hand, so that both hands develop equally. Learning technique primarily through etudes and scales frees the player to focus on everything else when learning a piece of music: musical phrasing, dynamics and tempo changes, velocity, etc. We should not be laboring over technique when we are learning repertoire!

[balfour-knight]

Very well-put, Carl! Your editions of the Bochsa Etudes are the best I have ever seen, and even a seasoned professional such as myself can greatly benefit from practicing these.

Best wishes, all,
Balfour

[Molly]

Carl, what you are saying makes so much sense. I do feel like I am learning technique at the same time I am learning new music. But this may just be part of the Suzuki learning method. I started playing by learning small little tunes that taught me different techniques and have gotten consistently more challenging. I am still playing relatively short pieces, but they are actual repertoire by classical composers like Haydn and Bach. It is encouraging because I do have something to show for my efforts, instead of just practicing exercises. But, at times, I do feel like the repertoire goes a bit too fast for where I am at. There’s upsides and downsides to learning this way.

But I do think that it would be helpful for me to have more practice exercises that help me with my technique. Admittedly, I do not know what an etude is or what its function is. Is it similar to arpeggios, scales, that type of thing?

[carl-swanson]

Molly- There are two ways of focusing on and building technique. One is with exercises, and the other is with etudes. Exercises are simply patterns that you play over and over again. LaRiviere is a good example of that. It may be a 4 finger pattern, and you just repeat it and repeat it, paying attention to using your fingers correctly. Scales are another type of exercise. I use exercises, particularly scales for teaching technique. But I find their use is limited. They are so static and removed from actual music that often the student really can’t connect what he or she has learned in the exercise to a piece of music.

The other way of building technique is through etudes. The word etude means study, and teaching etudes are like short pieces of music where a technical pattern is the musical motif. So one etude might focus on playing 3 note chords for example, and the entire etude will be three note chords in all their various positions and inversions, sometimes in different places on the instrument, sometimes with jumps, so the player learns to easily feel and find the shape of a three note chord. By the time you have learned that etude, three note chords, wherever you find them, will be a piece of cake. Etudes are usually written in sets or series, with each etude focusing on a different pattern. One might be octaves, another simple arpeggios, etc. To me, the etudes written by Bochsa, and there are about 5 sets of them, offer the most variation in patterns, which is what you want.

Years ago, I gave a lecture at an American Harp Society national conference on using etudes to build technique. Many people came up to me in the days that followed to talk about what I had said. The most interesting one to me was a young woman who told me that her teacher had her play etudes as part of each lesson. But when this young woman graduated from college as a harp major and started teaching, she “got lazy”(her description) and taught without bothering to use etudes. After a while, she felt guilty at not using etudes and decided that each new student she started would use etudes to learn technique. There came a point where half her students were playing etudes regularly, and half were not. “The students that were learning using etudes” she said “learned their pieces faster and more solidly than the students that were not using etudes.” That to me is the best endorsement of using etudes to build technique.

[Molly]

Wow, thank you for your thorough explanation of etudes and how they help to learn patterns and techniques. That is very cool you spoke on the subject at AHS conference, hopefully I will have the chance to learn from your wealth of knowledge at future events! Etudes sound sort of similar to the pieces I am learning, as they each have different patterns and fingerings that build on one another and revisit in more advanced pieces. Maybe not quite as deliberate of study, but I do get a similar vibe to what you’re talking about. In each piece I’m doing many repetitions of phrases until it becomes muscle memory. But I’m not sure that it’s very intentional, i.e. I don’t always know or identify specific patterns I’m learning. I don’t really know how to name what I am doing; I only know that I can learn it 😂 For instance, the last song I learned was all about rolled chords and inversions of them. My brain was in a knot for a few weeks with that one, ha ha! The next song I learned was the same chords, but playing them in arpeggios with key changes. Together, these two songs make a duet and it’s actually very cool!

I will have to look more into etudes and add them into my daily practices. This will definitely help me to get up to speed with my technical issues so I’m not fighting against it as I learn repertoire. I’m curious to hear my teacher’s perspective on this subject too!

[Author]

Posts