Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2021-05-21 23:17
SunnyDaze wrote:
> The problem is that the fingers don't quite arrive on the hole
> at the same time, so there is briefly another note being played
> in between.
>
> I often get this happening, for example when going from F#5 to
> Eb5.
> ... I find
> that it is hard to time my fingers to come down so that the
> holes are covered at exactly the same moment,
>
> I wondered whether I ought to have the moving metal parts
> adjusted so they don't have to travel so far to cover the hole,
> or whether I just need to train my fingers so that one starts
> earlier than the other in order to arrive at the same time.
>
> My teacher says I've just to organise my fingers better, but
> they are not easy to organise.
It may have seemed complicated to explain, but we all know what you're describing.
The problem with teachers is they sometimes give pretty useless general advice without describing what they think you actually need to do. We all do that, too, at least occasionally if we're not being careful or focused on the problem.
You can make up exercises involving the problem intervals - you've mentioned two - and practice them slowly enough to feel what your fingers are doing. Sometimes you can feel what's going wrong and fix it directly.
Some of the most common problems I notice in my students when these stubborn extra notes happen are:
- their fingers are, overall, too tense
- one or the other finger starts from a neutral position that's much farther from its destination than the other(s). Some of my students hold their LH fingers straighter (despite my attempts to get them not to) than their RH fingers. So A5-F#5 doesn't coordinate because the F# finger travels farther than the G finger. Or, because the LH ring finger is generally weaker than the RH 2nd (B/F#) one, the RH finger arrives sooner.
- you don't have real control over your finger motion - sometimes the result of keeping the fingers too close, so the really limited range of motion interferes with control. This is usually my problem if I run into a repeating problem with this. For example, my RH ring finger, if I'm not paying attention, tends to sit almost on top of the hole, making F#5 to Eb5 an occasional headache. The solution for me, nonintuitively, goes away when I keep my fingers consciously slightly farther from the holes than some of them tend to be left on their own.
Of course, all of this is individual to the player and so needs to analyzed carefully for each case.
I think there are two main issues. (1) Your fingers have to have a feeling of deliberate engagement. (2) Your fingers need to be relaxed enough (still engaged, not flaccid, but not rigid) to react independently to the rhythmic context, not to each other. I have always felt that, for me, trying to coordinate individual fingers to each other is a lost cause. The problems for me are solved only when my fingers are all - individually - playing with rhythmic precision, if that makes sense.
Karl
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