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Re: My Left Pinkie*

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2021-04-23 21:25

Paul Aviles wrote:

> I'll offer what I did to help the "left C issue." Since a
> right handed person can live with a majority of the "Cs" on the
> right I forced myself to do Cs on the left whenever possible
> such as.....the C major scale (or G, or F, or Bb).

FWIW, I've had students who, when they started in 4th grade, couldn't reach the RH F/C. They used the LH key exclusively, to the point where later, once their hands had grown after a year or so, they had a lot of trouble learning to use the RH key. One student never really did make the change. These were kids who happened to have been right-handed, so this isn't an issue of hand dominance. It's just which way you first learned to play F and C.

I would think the LH F/C touchpiece is probably one of the most moveable on the instrument. It should not be an uncomfortable stretch to reach it, because stretching will tend to pull either the LH ring finger (C/G) or the LH index finger
- or both - off their tone holes. You still have to learn not to press the LH G# key (above it) instead, but the C key should be in a spot that feels reasonably natural. See what your repair person thinks, especially since playing the passage on the Bundy is easier for you.

I'm not personally a fan of sliding up from RH C to Eb - it's hard to do smoothly and too easy for your pinkie to get stuck in between. It's much easier to slide *down* from Eb to RH C in a pinch, but that's not the direction m. 12 or m.17-18 in Rose 32/#2 go.

You don't need to stick to that one Rose study to practice the same note sequence. Any study based on diminished or diminished 7th arpeggios will give even more practice than those two bars. There's a short study of diminished 7ths in Klose (in the Daily Studies), and I'm sure there's at least one in Baermann III as well as many (most) standard method books with scale/arpeggio sections. The Kroepsch studies include diminished triads and 7ths. Once you're confident of what's in each chord (there are only 3 diminished 7th triads if you ignore the spelling changes, which don't affect the fingerings), you can easily make up your own exercises.

Karl

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