Benjamin Steinhardt on why your fourth finger isn’t really weak
The Taubman teacher on the five basic moves at the piano, the magic bump in every key and why repetition is not the answer.
Benjamin Steinhardt is a pianist and piano teacher known for his work with the Taubman Approach. He is the program director of The Well-Balanced Pianist, which runs teacher training and summer programs for pianists.
Here are fourteen of his best tips, from his Piano Star Masterclass on choreography at the piano on Piano League.
1. Your fourth finger isn’t really weak
People always complain that their fourth finger is weak. The reason they say that is because there is a tendon connecting these three fingers. In terms of grip strength, they’ve done studies on these things: second finger and fourth finger are pretty much equal. So it isn’t as weak. What it feels like is you can’t lift it independently. The amazing thing is if you rotate, you can lift quite high with your fourth finger.
Benjamin Steinhardt
2. Fix the movement, not the number of repetitions
My experience is that when we get the choreography, the way we move in a passage, just right, we can bypass most of that repetition.
Benjamin Steinhardt
3. Hard passages get easy when you know how to move
It’s about working smarter, not harder. Things that often seem impossible, things like double thirds, repeated octaves, if you know exactly how to move, they suddenly feel easy.
Benjamin Steinhardt
4. Find out which move is missing
It’s usually one or two things that’s going wrong in a passage if you’re having trouble. I wouldn’t say all five are necessarily going at all times, but there’s usually two or three going at all times, and you just have to sort of figure out what’s missing. If you’re finding that you’re getting swivelly at the wrist, you probably need some more in and out. If you find you’re not getting enough speed or you feel you’re very fingery, you probably need some rotation. If you find that your playing is very flat and it has no sense of line to it, you probably need some circles.
Benjamin Steinhardt
5. The sound is made before the key bed
On an acoustic instrument, and this doesn’t work on digitals unless they’re a hybrid, there’s a little bump near the bottom of the key. This little bump is magic. This little bump is where the sound is produced. So when you play through that bump, the hammer hits the string and the sound has been produced. By the time we get to the bottom of the key, to the key bed, we can’t do anything. The sound has already been made.
Benjamin Steinhardt
6. Rest at the bottom of the key, don’t dig
What we want to ensure is that we play through that little bump and we rest at the bottom of the key. We don’t want to dig into it, because that’s way too much work, and we don’t want to get so nervous about it that we’re sort of hovering up in the air.
Benjamin Steinhardt
7. Let the key bounce you back up
This bump can act as a trampoline. It actually rebounds the key for us. To play an octave or something, we can let gravity take care of the down and the rebound of that bump take care of the up for us.
Benjamin Steinhardt
8. Fingers can’t do it alone
We always want to have the feeling that our finger is supported by the arm and the torso and everything. If you’re just playing fingers, the fingers are too weak to really do anything on their own. They really need the support of everybody else, and usually technical problems are because everybody else is not playing their role, and then we have to compensate in some way.
Benjamin Steinhardt
9. Turn the forearm at every change of direction
The best thing to do is find in your repertoire any time you have a change of direction, and know that you’re going to want to get this little turn of your forearm. If you try to do it just with your fingers alone, it’s going to be very tiring, very sluggish.
Benjamin Steinhardt
10. Move your arm before the thumb hits a black key
When you have a situation where your thumb is playing, you’re in the white key area or something, and then your thumb suddenly has to play on a black key, what do they do? They do something reachy and twisty and swivelly, and they get all bent out of shape. If you plan a couple notes beforehand that you’re going to move this way, you’re going to take your car in the garage, you can get your arm in place so all the finger has to do is drop.
Benjamin Steinhardt
11. Play fast scales nearer the edge of the keys
The further you get in the key, it’s heavier, and so it’s harder to play. There are times of course where we have to play in here and we find our way, but if you’re playing for instance a C scale, it is much more advantageous, particularly for speed, to play not quite at the edge, because that feels like you’re falling off, but a little under the mid line.
Benjamin Steinhardt
12. Change the spot for repeated chords
Anytime we have a repeated chord or even a repeated note, if we just go a little bit in towards the piano, just a little bit, like we’re changing fingerprints or something, it immediately changes the sound of the chord, because we’re just playing it in a slightly different place.
Benjamin Steinhardt
13. Good hand posture starts with the feet
Good hand posture starts with the feet. So if you have a younger student whose feet don’t quite reach the floor, they can use a step stool or a foot pedal, but we want to be very connected to the floor.
Benjamin Steinhardt
14. Keep a coach, even after school
I’ve been taking piano lessons for several decades at this point in my life, and I haven’t stopped. And that’s because Michael Phelps needs a coach. I think a lot of people think you take lessons up to a certain time and then you go to school and you’ll never have to take one again, but I find it’s really helpful to have an expert eye watching what I’m doing.
Benjamin Steinhardt
Quotes are lightly edited for length and clarity. They come from Benjamin Steinhardt’s 2020 Piano Star Masterclass on choreography at the piano. You can watch the full masterclass on the Piano League YouTube channel.
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