Beepster


That's what I'm saying. The human hand is a very intricate and amazing design. You get those complimentary muscles up to task and you can do a lot more with your pinky. I know you aren't necessarily saying this yourself but when people imply that there is nothing that can be done to improve strength in their pinky because of a physiological technicality it kind of implies that trying is pointless so don't bother when in reality that limitation is a reason to focus on it even more. Know what I mean? And yes... "ungluing" the pinky from the ring finger is very important.

My left pinky is totally unglued from the ring finger, unlike on the right hand. I don't think I've ever done any pinky-specific exercises, it's just from using the pinky in your everyday playing. It happens naturally. It's amazing how much longer my left hand fingers are, too. Mine are about a third of an inch longer. 

Hi, Janet. Those exercises are actually for guitar. I'm not really a keyboard player but now that I have more room I'm going to be setting up my DX-7 so I can teach myself. The only thing I know about piano/key playing is the proper way to play diatonic scales which a friend of mine taught me years ago. Fortunately because I spent so much time agonizing over my guitar theory it should be easy to translate that to the keyboard. Gonna be quite the struggle getting my hands to behave properly though after 20 years of guitar playing. It's VERY difficult for me to play two independent parts with each hand because of how on guitar the right and left hands work in constant unison. In fact I'd be interested in any beginner tuts yourself or anyone else have for me to look at. I know the theory but it's just getting the hands trained.

If you play guitar though I'm about a third of the way through writing down my theory based on the exercises I mentioned. It's geared towards full mastery of all the diatonic modes in all keys over the entire fretboard... including all the basic triads. Really need to get back to writing. Had to stop and focus on learning the DAW stuff for a while though. I'm gonna try to sync the book up to audio versions of everything and eventually videos. Gotta buy a decent camera first for that last bit though.

One thing I will say though is that spending the $50 to go see a physiotherapist who specializes in arm/hand therapy is well worth it for any musician. The stretches and exercises they can provide to develop muscle groups, stretch unruly tendons safely and prevent injury are WELL worth the cost. There are music therapy clinics too but they can be hard to find and cost significantly more. It's all pretty much the same thing though. When I do my stretches before playing the quality and ease of my performance drastically improved and I don't wake up in the middle of the night with my arms on fire... at least not as badly. Also icing and heating after an intense session helps immensely. Sometimes it's easy to forget that although it may not seem like physical exercise it is and parts of the body are being used in ways they weren't designed to by nature.

Anyway... just rambling 'cause I'm a little bored and don't feel like doing yet another's day worth of cleaning and sorting in my new studio... even though I should. ;-)

Well actually an easy exercise that crosses all instruments that can be done to unglue the pinky and the rest of the fingers is doing the "Spock" but with all your fingers one at a time and in various configurations. 

Put your hand flat, palm down with your fingers pointing straight out away from your body with all your fingers together touching each other including your thumb.

Start by separating your thumb from the rest of your fingers without allowing the rest of your fingers to move. Extend it out as far as it will comfortably go then just a touch further to feel a slight stretch. Your fingers will likely try to move away from pointing out directly straight. Do not allow them to do so. Do this slowly at first then build up speed. It should look kind of like those old 80's workouts women doing their leg scissor exercises. 

Now do it with your index finger but keep your thumb glued to the index finger so it moves along with while again keeping the rest of your fingers perfectly straight and immobile... this will be trickier. 

Then do the Spock live long and prosper move but this time keep you thumb, index and middle finger point straight and extend your ring and pinky glued together to the opposite direction.

Then do just the pinky while keeping the rest of your fingers straight and immobile. 

Now take your hand and point it upwards with your palm facing your face and do that entire series of exercises again. Totally different, isn't it?

Now do it with your fingers point up but your palm facing outwards.

You can also try it like the very first set (fingers pointing straight out away from you) but have your palm facing toward the ceiling. 

Once you get comfortable with those you can start mixing it up. 

For example... keep your middle and ring finger point straight and extend your pinky and index/thumb simultaneously. This will be quite tricky. There are a ton of variations of this I could type up and maybe I will a little later but you get the idea. These are just simple things that can be done anywhere to unglue your fingers from each other.

You can also try doing these exercises with both hands at once which is relatively easy but then try doing two completely different exercises on each hand at the same time. Doing that helps make your mind and hands be able to work independent from each other. You can literally spend hours doing different configurations.

Hope that helps some folks. Cheers.

Interesting, and thank you!  I can't imagine me taking 20 minutes to do stretching, unless I did it while watching TV, which I rarely do. But I'm sure I could try it sometimes, while walking, etc.  I like the idea of a good physiotherapist.  Mine has helped my arm and shoulder a lot, but it seems that whenever I start seriously practicing again it just flares up again.  My chiropractor even told me to just find another hobby.  I growled at him.    Well, not really, but I felt like it.  Anyway, thank you.  I know the days are long gone when I can just do about anything I want without warming up beforehand and dealing with the muscles afterwards.  Just need to learn to make it part of my schedule.


(I have been using my new hand-held ultrasound machine on my sore thumb and I think it's helping.  That, and some tight knit gloves I wear at night for hand pain.)  

Oh, and as far as getting used to the piano and your hands doing different things at once.  I think that just comes from practice, like most things...just start slowly and it will come.  I think you should have tons of talent in those fingers of yours, so I can't imagine it will be a problem...just teach them to move a different way.  :)  

Oh no... sorry. The basic stretching I do only takes a couple minutes. The 20 minutes worth or exercises is actually referring to going through all the modes and chords on every position of the guitar neck in every key. It's actually quite ridiculous. I do an entire key every couple minutes. When I first started it would take 20 minutes just to do one key and I sped it up progressively until I could time myself to 20 minutes without too many time fluctuations or mistakes. Actually when I really push myself and allow for some sloppiness I've timed myself at 12 minutes to do the whole thing but that's quite ridiculous and not for everyone. I used my laptops crappy webcam to record myself doing it at one point and it couldn't keep up with my fingers like at ALL. Pretty funny. Those nights I would inevitably end up in significant pain later on though. Haven't really been doing that routine for a while now because the focus has been on recording but I need to get back into it. It's probably gonna be quite rough again at this point.

The routine starts with about 15-20 minutes of general exercises to get warmed up. Then I'll take a quick break and then I'll do the following for all twelve keys beginning with C and following the circle of fifths.

Play the major scale of root note in first position to the second octave forwards and backwards.

Play each mode of the root key starting on Ionian at whatever position the the root note falls on beginning on the low E string (eg: C = 8th fret). Once I reach the mode that begins on or above the 12th fret I switch down to open or 1st position and continue the pattern until I reach the original position of the Ionian mode.

Then I play each triad of the key arpeggiated to the second octave starting at the position of the I chord of the key on the low E string (again C Major = 8th fret).

Then I play the chords of the key arpeggiated to the second octave in first postion.

Then I move on to the next key.

Eventually I'll be adding every single mode in first position as well but that's gonna be a lot of work because of the nature of first position... especially for the sharp/flat keys.

It is extremely dorky.

;-)

I little bit of icing with a gel pak can work wonders. They actually have ones specially designed to wrap around the wrists, forearms and wherever else you need and then you can toss the gel pak into the microwave to get the heat action after. Better to use two sets though. One for cold and then one for heat so you don't have to wait for the heat.

Cold draws the old blood away which is causing the pain then the heat draws fresh blood to the area.

Best to ya. :-)

Dorky works.  :)   If I did that, I'd probably be done for the day, but seriously warmed up!  :)  

I'm beginning to have a tiny bit of hope that maybe I'll be able to seriously practice again some day.  In the meantime, it's not like I'm bored or anything.  :)  And good grief...if I haven't been able to get amazing by now, I'm sure there's not much chance of it happening from here on out.  And on most days I'm cool with that.

I'm looking for a body pak.  

But you're having fun right? That's really all that matters.

And nice hot baths are actually the ultimate for getting at all the annoying little muscles. I'm too messed up to take baths though so hot showers are my go to.