Crossing the Thumb "Under"

   In an expression of frustration, my father used to remark that he wished he had a nickel for every time he had to repeat himself. I suppose today, what with inflation and all, it would be more like sixty dollars. I don't mind repeating myself, though, even without getting paid.

    In a public forum a pianist writes: "I've had

trouble crossing my thumb under my third and fourth finger in my left hand when playing scales, causing my hand to stumble and lose its place, for forever." A well-meaning responder offers the following help: "It's the P word [practice?] again. Constant work at the scales starting slow until you're under control and  then increasing the speed will aid muscle memory to the [point] where you will do it without thinking. Like a drill in sports." 

   

Okay. Here's the thing. We don't drill at the piano the way we would in sports, should we be inclined to do sports. The muscles we train at the piano are refined and we work for physical coordination, not for bulk and strength. True, we do repetition training in order to "work in" our technical solutions so that they become automatic. We rely on this in speed.

    And yes we "practice" along the lines outlined in an earlier essay. But in order to move the thumb after we've run out of other fingers, we do not cross it under.  In a descending, left-hand scale (or right-hand), the thumb plays its note and immediately is allowed to hang (yes, hang) behind the second finger. It is allowed (not forced) to move in similar fashion behind each successive finger as that finger plays. This puts the forearm at an angle to the keyboard. (The arm may be at any angle with the keyboard as long as it is straight with itself.) When the thumb is required to play its note, it will already have arrived over it. It then plays by means of a rotation of the forearm, which is our quickest and most natural movement. (By natural I mean that it is a movement the forearm was designed to do.) If instead the thumb is pulled under the hand, the only way it can play is to fall on its note, which produces the result described by the original poster above.

    For a demonstration of this movement, select the tab above labeled "iDemos" and choose "forearm rotation." The discussion of thumb crossings begins at about 4:30. The example is in the right hand; the left is, of course, the same in reverse.   

    Please remember, efficient practicing is deliberate, with the brain engaged. First, decide on the correct movement and only then begin to work it in. Practice on purpose; reject mindless rote.

My New Domain

 

Gentle readers: There was a disturbance in the ether world resulting in the disappearance of my domain. The new domain is:               www.pianotechniquedemystified.com.

How Should We Play the Piano?

        

Someone on a public forum asked "how should we play the
piano?" An avid practicer responded with a helpful list in which he wrote the word practice one hundred times. At one-hundred-one he suggested repeating the above. A responder asked, insightfully, "but what if I'm doing it wrong?" The response was: "If you're doing it wrong, you're not trying hard enough...just put in a better effort."

    This reminded me of something my late friend Bob once told me in a fit of pique. It seems I had pushed a button when I criticized his driving—not signaling until after he started a lane change.  I pointed out that the object of signaling was to let others know in advance what he intended to do. "I've been driving for sixty years," was his indignant reply, and that was not the end of it. I bit my tongue, but I thought to myself that he'd been doing it wrong for sixty years.

     Well, of course we should play the piano correctly. But the word practice is itself loaded. In a way, it's like the word opera, which encompasses many disciplines. At the very least, though, practice implies repetition. But I would venture to ask, "repeat what?" One obvious answer might be "the notes" in order to beat them into our memory. Or the phrasing. Maybe the quality of sound and the relationship of dynamic contrasts. But no, for me practice, the repetition, begins after the intellect has decided what the objectives are and what are the appropriate mechanisms required in order to achieve the desired result. (Maybe we should call that  pre-practice?) How do I move from one note to the next? What is the most effective fingering? What is the technical shaping or grouping? (Shaping and grouping as techniques are discussed elsewhere in these pages.) Of course, I refer here primarily to passages that require specialized attention. Still, all practicing is something we do on purpose. It is not a mindless rote activity.

    I should add that for me, a correct approach is one in which the playing apparatus (fingers, hand, forearm) are used in a coordinate manner and according to their design.

Sight-Reading at the Piano: Is There Any Such Thing?

      

     My student wants to play chamber music, but doesn't trust his sight-reading skills. They are in fact, he says, non-existent. He is not a born sight reader, but his ear is good. I've found over the years that most pianists are proficient in one, but not both of these skills. Of course, there are a few who have both skills. We are allowed to dislike these people very much.
      When someone is a good sight-reader, it means they are able to bring the score to life at first look, 

making it sound like the piece. Some pianists, I've noticed, think that sight-reading means being able to read music. If one can read music, of course, one is using the eyes to do so. But poking out notes a few at a time is not what I call sight reading. A good sight reader learns to automatically associate the passage on the page with its location on the keyboard without passing through the intellect. This is the crux of sight reading.
     Now for an about face. There is really no such thing as sight reading, that is if one has at least some experience with notation. By that I mean the

process of reading music fluently can be reduced to simply recognizing a finite (probably?) number of patterns, repeated over and over again in various permutations. I know, this is not really very helpful. There are, however, exercise volumes addressing this very concept, deadly dull, mind-numbing whole pages of patterns to play repeatedly. Never mind. You don't need them.
     But do learn to recognize patterns. Our common-practice music is made up largely of 

scales and arpeggios. Look for these. Our music is also largely made up of tertian harmony, so learn to feel shapes of chords and their inversions. This will help with Alberti figures, too. 
     If you want to systematically work to improve your sight-reading skill, here is a plan:

     1. Do it. Every day. Set aside ten minutes of practice time. Really. Every day. I know it is not satisfying to have to do something that seems 

incomplete. Keep scores handy that are much easier than you are capable of actually playing. A hymnal is a good place to start, as hymns are mostly homophonic. Or Anna Magdalena Song Book. Or easier sonatinas or other Classical era teaching pieces.
     2. Scan. Before beginning, look through the piece. Look for any surprises, i.e., change of key or meter, technical challenges. I do this myself  when someone hands me something I don't know.
     3. Tempo. Decide on a tempo that 

accommodates the quickest note values.
     4. Continue. Begin to play keeping track of the pulses and don't vary. If something goes wrong, don't stop. Go on to the next beat or the next measure. If this happens often, the tempo may be too fast.
     5. Focus. Keep eyes on the page and don't look down. There are many great blind pianists, so we know it is not necessary to look at our hands. Did I say keep eyes on the page? This is important.
     6. Anticipate. As you are already keeping eyes on the page anyway, you might as well look ahead. It doesn't help to continue to stare at what you've just played. This is particularly wise at ends of lines.
     7. Find a partner to read with. This is a good 

way to force yourself to continue. A partner who reads well and is willing to play simpler music with you is ideal. There are also collections of teacher/student four-hand pieces. (I've published some of these myself for just this purpose. Look for them below.)
     For this study, it is okay to "sight read" the selection two or three times. And as always, try to see everything—dynamics, articulation—and enjoy the music.

     Here's a collection of teacher/student duets for practice. Have a look:

                 Guided Sight-Reading Practice

Using the Thumb at the Piano: Awkward Lump or Full Partner

 There was a time, long ago, when the thumb was considered a useless appendage at the keyboard.

Officially, the thumb was not allowed on the keys at all. Personally, I think there must have been the occasional scamp who saw its practicality and surreptitiously snuck it up onto the keyboard. Papa Bach may have been one of these, as the use of the thumb became more or less normal during his lifetime.

Once the ignored and much-maligned limb gained full access to its rightful place, there ensued decades of debate as to how it might be used. Stretching and pulling became the default instruction. Exercises were devised to train the innocent, unsuspecting thumb to press itself under the hand and wait there until it was time to play, at which time all it could do was fall on the note, not play it like its finger colleagues. This resulted in a bumpy-sounding scale and not a little discomfort. When the time came to play scales hands together, the bumps and discomfort might often be compounded.

    Here's my modest proposal: Let's figure out how to play the thumb like a finger, without falling on it, and in so doing establish the ground-work for smooth crossings and excellent coordination between the hands. If a passage sounds and feels uncoordinated, it is most likely because one hand is trying to do what the other one is doing rotationally. (See below for demos on rotation and crossings.)

    1. The thumb plays rotationally, not by being pulled under the hand.

    2. When crossing, the job of the thumb is to play its note and move the hand into the new position.

    3. The thumb connects to the key at the fleshy side of the nail, not by falling on the first joint.

    4. If the scale sounds uncoordinated, check the movement of the thumb at its crossing and compare it to what the other hand is doing.

    Once the concept of crossing the thumb rotationally in a scale hands alone is mastered, create nutshell exercises at each crossing. It is not particularly helpful to play the entire scale up and back until the coordination at the crossings has been worked in.

    

    For much, much more on this and other topics, have a look here:

                Piano Technique Demystified

Birds of a Feather: Technical Grouping of Notes for Pianists

      The technical grouping of notes can be different from the musical or notational grouping of notes. An understanding of this idea is crucial to the successful playing of quick, virtuoso passages. In Chopin’s “Winter Wind” Etude, for example, the four sextuplets fall technically into  groups of four:

This is, of course, only a practice technique, as in speed the pulse reverts to main pulses on every group of six. In this case, it helps here to think of eighth-note triplets.

     An even starker example of the importance of grouping begins in measure nine:

 In order to move from the fourth finger to the thumb, begin the passage with the hand at a slight angle to the right, placing the thumb nearer to its note. Use the thumb as a hinge to propel the hand into the new position. The thumb usually has two jobs—playing the note and flipping the hand into its new position. Always use the last note of one group in order to arrive at the first note of the next group. Grouping notes together for technical reasons can make the difference between a very difficult execution and a very easy one.

The ability to play fast depends on an understanding of how to group notes. The longer the passage, the more important it is to find sub -groupings. The hand can’t “conceive” of an indefinite number of notes or a long string of notes without establishing milestones along the way. If the composer writes “17” over a group of notes that are to be completed within a certain time frame, it is important to decide on how to sub-divide that group, i.e., three groups of 4 and one of five, or some other grouping that makes sense in the context. This does not mean that accents will be heard; the group of “17” can still sound like a single unit, a flourish, if that is the desired effect. How those sub-divisions relate to the other hand is also a primary consideration.

     Group from the more dense, the heavier combination of notes. For example, in passages where chords are interspersed with single notes, it is much easier to feel a starting point at the chord, regardless of which part of the musical beat it comes on. In Chopin’s G Minor Ballade an arpeggiated figure primarily in single notes contains a chord of a fourth placed on a weak part of the beat that occurs every three notes. By feeling a start on the chord (or a feeling of “down”—notice the red arrows), the passage immediately wants to move with ease. In my view, Chopin meant for these chords to add rhythmic interest to the passage, an agitated syncopation. Hint: use the thumb in the descending passage in order to "rotate" the hand into the new position.

     For more on grouping in order to avoid stretching, achieving leaps, in dotted rhythms, facilitating change of direction, practice hints and other topics for students and teachers, have a look at Piano Technique Demystified: Insights into Problem Solving.

                                                                                                     Piano Technique Demystified