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Re: Throat G to F# Advice Needed

Author: GBK
Date: 2010-06-27 23:22

Bob phillips wrote:

> I believe that GBK stated a few years ago that the
> preferred descending chromatic fingering is to "flip"
> between first finger F# and thumb F natural

The reason that Robert Marcellus was dogmatic about teaching his students to flip between first finger and thumb F# was once stated clearly by David Hattner (a Marcellus student) in a posting when he wrote:

"...In real life, generally you are either going from somewhere or to somewhere from f or f#. Getting off of two side keys while slurring to, say, throat A or A flat is going to cause problems compared to coming from first finger f#..."

A good example would be to try and play through Baermann III without "flipping". It literally cannot be done. Now try playing through Baermann III using only the two side keys for F# and you'll see that there are no passages where it is absolutely necessary.

Sure - you can use the two side key F# for a smooth legato passage, but if you rely on it exclusively for all circumstances, eventually you will run into trouble.

...GBK

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