TEACHING PIANO AT THE EARLY GRADES: The All Important Thumb

     I had just begun my tenure as a university professor when after a concert I was ambushed by several local piano teachers. They had heard I "didn't believe in scales." They were outraged at the sacrilege. 

    "Well," I responded as I stepped back, pressing my hands against the cinderblock for support. "'Believe' is such a loaded word." My mind is racing to place their complaint in context. How had I gained this reputation as an infidel—and so early in my career? "My students tend to be advanced," I offered. "They come to me (presumably) already equipped with scales, so I don't teach scales and certainly don't want to hear them."

This seemed to quell the hysteria somewhat. But I was on a roll, now, and not about to release them back into the wild without more information. I pointed out that scales are necessary as an aspect of keyboard harmony and topography—and most importantly, how the thumb works in coordination with the other fingers. But once fluent with hands together at a moderate tempo in all major and melodic minor keys, relentless practicing of scales hoping for some miraculous technical advancement is a waste of time. Yes, waste of time. The scales we practice in "root"position rarely occur in concert music, if ever. We are better off extracting scales from repertoire we want to play and practicing those. My inquisitors are right, though, to question my pedagogy. For their elementary students, scales are imperative.

    So what is a scale? If we're going to teach scales, we should know what they are. An octave-worth of notes that move stepwise in the same direction? Yes. Two groups of notes that fall easily under the hand? Yes. (Getting warmer.) Two groups of notes played by fingers and are connected by the thumb. Connected by the thumb! What we need to teach when the time comes is how to efficiently manage the so-called thumb crossing from one group of notes to another. If I had to describe a single most important aspect of piano technique, it would be how to use the thumb, a technique that is often misunderstood and one that can be taught in the early grades. 

    The thumb is itinerant. It does not reside on the white keys alongside the fingers as we are sometimes told as children: "Every finger lives in its own house, including the thumb." Not true. Try it. This gesture crunches the hand into a ball, pulling muscles against each other. The thumb has two jobs: Playing its note and clicking the hand into the new position.

    Here is a demonstration. The thumb crossing appears at about 4:40. Forearm Rotation and Thumb crossing.

    Once the crossing is mastered in each hand separately ascending and descending, the hands need to learn to play together. The issue here, of course, is about coordination, which is another story. Here's a hint: The crossing occurs first in the right hand, then in the left. Make a nutshell example beginning on the  third note in each hand and ending on the sixth note. What does this look like? How does it feel? I know this sounds complicated, but it is really quite simple once the hands learn to work together.

    Stay tuned.