Piano Video Lesson: Rule of Thumb: 3 Important Tips for the Piano

By practicing slowly, preparing your thumb in advance, you are able to develop fluency, and the thumb is no longer more powerful, and it can be quick, it's right where you need it. Hi, I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com. Today, what is the rule of thumb? I'm going to give you three important tips.

What is it about the thumb? Well, the thumb is obviously a completely different finger from all the others on your hand, and therefore, there's a different approach that you must have for the thumb in the piano playing. And I'm going to tell you about it. The first thing that I'm going to tell you about is the position of the thumb. Obviously, your fingers on the piano are pretty obvious, right? They go right here on the keys. Well, the thumb... Now, of course, I've talked about how you don't play like this because your fingers are of different lengths. But when you do this, and just bring them forward, they're all the same length, and this is very helpful for piano playing. So, the position of the thumb is not like this.

The whole thumb on the key, the position is actually like this.

Do you see the difference? Not like this, but like this. Now, you may wonder why, and there's some very, very good reasons for this. There's not much control when you're playing the whole thumb on the big part of the finger.

The other reason is the other tip for you. The first tip is to play the thumb like this on the piano, and the second tip has to do with the fact that the thumb is the strongest finger on your hand by far. Now, this presents enormous challenges on the instrument.

Think about this. Where is the melody? The melody is usually on top, and what's the second most important voice? Oftentimes, it's the bass.

So, you want to hear the top and the bottom.

You don't want to hear the top.

You want to hear the top.

You want to hear the top. You want to hear the top.

You want to hear the top. You want to hear the top. You want to hear the top. So, you want to hear the top. A little bit of Beethoven there, the second movement of his Pathetique Sonata. So, how is this achieved? In order to equalize the force that you have between your thumb and your fourth and fifth finger, you play with an arch. The power of the arch is tremendous. So, I can demonstrate this in a myriad of ways. For example, the middle section of Chopin's B -flat minor nocturne. First, I'm going to show you the very beginning with the bad thumb position that I talked about avoiding, where you're playing the thumb like that instead of like this.

And listen to how it gets too heavy.

Now, by going into the right position. You have control. Now, the middle section with octaves is a perfect way to show you the arch. Without the arch, this is the sound you'd get. The thumb being naturally so much stronger than the other fingers. You get the idea.

By arching, you can equalize the force from each side of the hand. Kind of get the other fingers curved and up and out of the way, especially the second finger.

So, instead of getting this sound with that flat thumb once again, you get this sound.

Hear the difference? Instead of this, you get this.

So, so far we had two tips. One, don't play on the whole thumb, but the tip of the thumb, just like all the other fingers.

Secondly, make an arch when you're playing chords and octaves, so you can equalize the force of the weaker fingers with the strong thumb, so you can bring out melody and bass, which are the extremities. The last tip is prepare the thumb crossings in advance.

This is whenever you're ascending in the right hand or descending in the left hand. So, if you're playing a scale, for example, you have the thumb tucked under right after the second finger plays as follows in the right hand going up.

Thumb under.

Again, thumb under and the second finger plays.

Otherwise, this can happen.

Try to go fast during that, you're gonna get.

Instead of.

You get smooth thumb crossings by practicing slowly and having the thumb cross in advance. The same thing is true in arpeggios.

And left hand now.

And when playing fast.

By practicing slowly, preparing your thumb in advance, you are able to develop fluency, and the thumb is no longer more powerful, and it can be quick. It's right where you need it. So, those are the three tips. Playing the tip of the thumb, arch the hand to equalize the force of the thumb, and prepare the thumb early by tucking it under, ascending in the right hand, and descending in the left hand. Those are the three tips for today. Hope you enjoyed this. If you do, consider subscribing. Ring the bell with a thumbs up. Helps the channel along. Pass it on to friends if they like the piano also. Again, I'm Robert Estrin.

LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. Visit the website. There's a big discussion. The videos are all there, and they all have accompanying articles for you. Hope you enjoy that. See you next time.

Bye.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/rule-of-thumb-3-important-tips-for-the-piano/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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