Piano Video Lesson: The Secret of Rounded Fingers

Hello, I'm Robert Estrin. You're watching LivingPianos.com with thousands of videos and articles about pianos and piano playing. Today, I'm going to tell you the secret of rounded fingers. You know, if any of you have studied piano, you've probably had teachers that said you must round your fingers, make them into a ball, and you think, oh, that hurts. And you know what? It does. So why am I telling you rounded fingers? Well, there are different ways of approaching rounded fingers. I'm going to show you the correct way that takes zero effort. And I'm going to explain why it's so important in your piano playing and give you examples of it. The first example I'm going to give is the Mozart famous C major sonata in KB 545. And first thing I want to do is play it for you. And then I'm going to explain where the rounded fingers really come into play and why it's so important for you. First some music.

So I'm going to play it for you.

So that's Mozart.

Well, particularly with ornamentation, we have trills.

Why are rounded fingers necessary to be able to get trills? Think about this. You've got all these different finger joints, right? If you only use this joint, that's a lot of work for that one joint. But you've got two other joints here. If you use all your joints, you divide the load among many more joints.

Much, much easier than moving a whole finger like from just your knuckle. That's the main reason. But how to do this without stressing? The idea of being like holding a ball is like Claus' terrible analogy.

Because you never want to be in a position that takes any effort to maintain. I'm going to repeat that. Don't go into a hand position that takes effort to maintain. You might think, well, how can you possibly be in a position that's rounded like that without any effort? Well, I've shown this before and it's really interesting. Just watch this.

You just go straight down and let your hands completely relax and voila, you're in the rounded position that takes absolutely no effort to maintain.

That's right. Because your hands naturally go in that position. Try it on your piano. Just without any effort at all. Just go down and you'll be in that rounded position. Isn't that remarkable? And so where are the key places where this is really, really handy? Well, there are several actually. And I'm going to show you. For one thing, you have a trill right at the beginning.

If you were to try to do that with flat fingers, it would be cumbersome. Your fingers are too big and heavy.

Much, much easier rounded fingers. Where's the next place? Once again, if you're trying to do that with flat fingers, so much easier with rounded fingers. And where else? How about the trill right at the end? With flat fingers? All but impossible. By the way, three one are your strongest trill fingers. I know a lot of you like to use three two. Those are good too.

But three one are even stronger.

The other essential thing with a trill that has more than just, you always must know exactly how many notes you're playing. Why? Because otherwise you might end on the wrong note. You end on the top note instead of the bottom note or vice versa. You need to know exactly how many notes you're playing and the way to do that.

Those are the number of notes I'm playing in that trill. Now, some of you might be tempted to play twice as many.

But when it goes up to speed trying to do that trill, that's a lot of notes to play. So I do the triplets and I find it works much better.

Find a trill, number of notes that works for you. You don't have to play a lot of notes in a trill. You must have a trill you can execute faithfully and be able to repeat it cleanly. So remember this technique of using rounded fingers for ornamentation particularly. It really helps. Even short ornamentation like in the K -283 G major sonata of Mozart. The last movement has got this little tiny.

To be able to get that little rounded fingers with all the joints at your disposal. Try it in your playing anytime you have any kind of ornamentation or any quick playing at all for that matter.

Your rounded fingers can really come in handy to be able to execute ornamentation.

Thanks again for joining me. Robert Estrin, LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/the-secret-of-rounded-fingers/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---