Klarinet Archive - Posting 000170.txt from 2002/04

From: "Patricia Alison Smith" <pattiesmith@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] OT More Piano suggestions for clarinetists; was memorization
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 00:17:21 -0500

Glen wrote:

I'm sure I had incredibly bad habits and made bad fingering decisions.

Patricia:

This last is quite telling. Because fingering is CRUCIAL to playing piano -
absolutely CRUCIAL. The fingers have to flow in a straight line, one after
the other. One also has to be able to move the thumbs underneath both 3 and
4 on both hands (I don't know about 5 - never seen it indicated and never
had a teacher who ever asked me to do it) in order to keep the lines going,
especially in contrapuntal music. Of course, there are going to be places
where different people are going to make different choices of fingering.
However, once you make that choice, you must be consistent and practice a
passage the same way every time you practice it. Otherwise, you waste a lot
of time.

Patricia A. Smith
pattiesmith@-----.net

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