Interesting video , I agree you can be all thumbs when playing the piano, it can get a bit tricky, iam humbly speaking a self taught pianist from the age of 15yrs iam 53yrs old now, I recently taught myself to play the A major k331 1st movement theme 6 variations and rondo alla turca, I can now play the first movement and 3rd, ( menuetto and trio learning) but I do get a problem with arpeggios, in the 6th variation of k 331 with the allegro, do you have any tips for overcoming this as I tend to sometimes play arpeggio but then I also sometimes end up playing a chord, it still sounds humbly speaking good and the A major is such a beautiful sonata, but if you do have any tips or suggestions this would be most appreciated, greetings from wales uk 😀
Opening of Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto no. 2, in the second right-hand chord you can use the thumb to take both C and D-flat to avoid stretching. We often consider the option of having the thumb play two white keys but rarely across a white key and a black key!
Yeah I completely understand what you mean. When watching videos for technique your brain kind of internalizes them whether you want to or not. I think that overall this is a good video to watch because eventually the extra knowledge about how the thumb works will help in the long run
Great timing for this topic as I recently started playing piano again after a 14 yr break. I started relearning “La Campanella” and remembered how tight I was throughout many of the passages. I haven’t played the piece for over 30 yrs and I recalled my teacher telling me to relax my thumb. I noticed my thumb still gets tense. When I get tense, I miss notes. I’m going to try out some of the exercises presented here to strengthen my mind to muscle connection to the thumb.
I'm not so sure about Seymour's exercise because he has a fixed wrist. It has some value, but I think more important is not the work the thumb does, but how the thumb transfers the arm's energy different than the other fingers. Rather than focusing on the strength of the thumb, I think it would be more helpful to make the thumb a softer cushion like the other fingers.
I think Seymour's exercise helps creating awarenes of the individual movement done by the thumb, and helps control it. A lot of my students make the mistake of letting the arm and wrist do all the work when they press the thumb, letting their wrist fall too much. This excercise helps balancing things out. It's a bit like Dohnányi's excercises: they are not the complete solution, but can really help if you use them in the right context.
Boris Berman: Bring thumb in line with other fingers, else there will be an accent. Make letter "O" for the right bend of middle thumb joint. I'll need to remember those!
Great question! In short, the specific purpose of that exercise is to practice the way that the whole arm moves when bringing the thumb to the keyboard, since the surface of the thumb is often significantly further back than the other four fingertips.
@@tonebasePianoThank you so much! That makes a lot of sense. I guess that I have unconsciously trained my other fingers to play a bit more further up the keys most of the time, not moving my hand/arm as much. Time to shake up some things and incorporate this in my practice routine, this is exactly why I love what you do at Tonebase! There's always so much to learn! One more question: does tonebase also offer courses given by jazz, pop of salsa pianists? I would love to hear their insights as well because they often approach the piano in such a different way.
@@hiddesmedinga3420 that's great, I'm so glad this video will inspire you to try some new things in your practicing! We do have some wonderful lessons on Tonebase Premium from the jazz pianist Jeremy Siskind. One sample of that is here on RU-vid: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lEKOGCkpaWk.html Enjoy!
