Gentle Strengthening for a Weak Finger - PHH 178

That's what solved it for me. Attention not just to my fingers, but to the right things that I was doing or needed to do with my fingers. And it came down really to correcting the mechanics of my fingers and correcting them gently. When you're working with fingers that are double jointed, or maybe just fingers that aren't trained in the way they should go right from the first, that's what you need to do. You need to start with this gentle training of your finger mechanics so that they know how they're supposed to work, so that you can get used to seeing them work correctly, hearing them work correctly. Because you can tell by listening whether your fingers are doing what they're supposed to or not. And if you can't tell yet, you will by the end of this episode.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a miss Mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world and I know what most harpists are never taught. The secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to point out the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement. You're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started.

First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success. Whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the My Harp Mastery community so special. My Harp Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset and a spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them. We're ready for you. Join Us just go to harpmastery.comjoinnow. that's harpmastery.com join now. Welcome to the show. There are plenty of things we can muscle through Fatigue, a headache that last email, the last pot to wash, paying the bills. But we can't muscle through our harp playing, especially when it comes to our fingers. For all that we talk about strong fingers and considering how hard we work them, they and the bones, the tendons and the muscles that support them are relatively fragile. So when we talk about strengthening our fingers, we don't want to do any more heavy lifting. Today on the podcast we are going to talk about how to train your weakest fingers to be stronger by training them the right way. Gently. So what do we mean by saying a finger is weak? How do you know if a finger, or even more than one finger is weak? Weak fingers can manifest themselves in one of four ways. First, you may have knuckles that collapse or lock up when this happens. Your finger may feel like it gets stuck on the string or frozen. It just won't move when you want. Or it may play unevenly or unintentionally play more than one string at a time. Second, it may not have the same tone or volume as the other fingers. It might be softer or louder or unpredictable. It can feel like the volume knob is broken.

Third, it may feel awkward or uncoordinated compared to your other fingers. It may not place accurately. It may not play well in combination with other fingers. Lastly, it may not be independent. Actually, lack of independence is at the heart of some of these other issues too. When your fingers can function independently, they have good dynamic control and can play evenly and equally with the other fingers in whatever combination is called for. Clearly, this doesn't mean that every time you stumble over a fingering it's because of weak fingers. More likely, you just have a new finger pattern to learn. But a finger that causes you to constantly accommodate it is a weak finger. And today you're going to learn exactly what to do about it. To go along with today's episode, I've linked to one of our blog posts in the archive called Strengthen youn Fourth Finger. This is actually has a video with some exercises that I have used for strengthening fourth finger and third finger too. And there's a blog post that goes along with it. And after you've heard what we're talking about today, you might find that helpful as well. So you will find the link to that blog post in the show notes. And if you don't see the show notes, that's okay. Go to harpmastery Blog and you can browse the blog and look for Strengthen youn Fourth Finger and you will find that blog post there. I also want to remind you, if you haven't done it yet, be sure to get our new Harp Mastery app. The app is available in the Apple App Store. It's available for iPhone and iPad only. At this point, our Android app is in process. Process. It's coming ever closer. But if you are an iPhone or iPad user, then the Harp Mastery app will make it much easier for you to access everything Heart Mastery, all your courses, your entire course library is linked right there and you'll see the hub. If you're a Hub member, you can participate right in the hub, right from your phone or your iPad. So it makes it really easy to participate in everything. Plus we have some courses that we're offering directly in the app and you know how easy and inexpensive sometimes those courses are. So you'll be able to check out the things we have in the app and I invite you to do that. You may have heard me talk about my early harp training, which was wonderful. I was so blessed. I had wonderful teachers. I had amazing instruction right from the beginning. But I really presented my teacher with a problem because all of my fingers are double jointed. And I know that this is common to a lot of us, right? We have double jointed fingers and it's not really a bad thing, except when it comes to heart playing because we want our fingers to have the security and the accuracy that doesn't naturally go with double jointedness. Now, if I had to describe what some of my harp studies were like when I was young, perhaps the best evidence I can give for this is that I still have my copy of the conditioning exercises, which I actually started from the very first when I started harp. And in my little elementary school cursive, script is written at the top of one of them. Thumbelina's having trouble with her thumb. I was clearly not able to keep my thumb straight enough to play well. It was bending back and it wasn't moving well. So that was just my thumb problem. I had plenty of other problems too. Knuckles that were collapsing and fingers that Just they could play okay. But my teacher was quite firm. By the time I got to be know 15 or 16, she was quite firm that if I wanted to move ahead as a harpist, I was going to have to figure out this technique thing and my fingers were going to have to not give in to their double jointedness. They were going to have to learn to be strong when they played. Now, she didn't use the word strong and that was wise on her part because it's not about strength, it's really about coordination. And what it took to solve the problem was a lot of attention. In fact, it took me dedicating a whole summer and working with a teacher that was specifically going to help me straighten out my technique. And because it was so important to me, I probably paid a lot more attention and was more focused on what I was doing than I had been doing before. So that's what solved it for me. Attention not just to my fingers, but to the right things that I was doing or needed to do with my fingers. And it came down really to correcting the mechanics of my fingers. And correcting them gently took quite a bit of patience. Not something that every 16 year old has. I certainly didn't have it. It's just that this was important to me and I managed to make it work. But when you're working with fingers that are double jointed, or maybe just fingers that aren't trained in the way they should go right from the first, that's what you need to do. You need to start with this gentle training of your finger mechanics so that they know how they're supposed to work, so that you can get used to seeing them work correctly, hearing them work correctly. Because you can tell by listening whether your fingers are doing what they're supposed to or not. And if you can't tell yet, you will by the end of this episode. And of course you can tell by the feel as well. How your fingers feel will let you know, once you start paying attention, whether or not they're doing the right things. But I want you to think about what you're really trying to develop in your fingers. You're trying to develop a mixture of coordination and flexibility, control.

And freedom. Both of those things. Maybe you know, and you've heard about the, you know, the oak tree and the willow tree. And the oak tree is tall and strong, and the willow tree can bend and be flexible, right? And we want both of those things for our fingers. We want the strength, but we need the flexibility too. This is why the harder you try to make your fingers strong or to keep them correct, the less likely it is to work. They can only play the way they're supposed to play when they are oak tree strong and willow tree flexible. So there's a strength and a gentleness, a structure and a flexibility, both part of your finger training. And if they haven't been part of your finger training up to now, I'm going to show you how to make them part of your finger training starting at this very moment. We start with the structure, with the form of your fingers, what your fingers should look like when, when they're on the strings and when they're playing. And there are three things we want to consider here. You want to think about the arch of your finger. You hear me talk about this all the time. And this is just essentially every knuckle curved. That from the back knuckle where your finger connects to your hand, all the way through to the tip of your finger. We want those fingers to form a nice arch. When one of those knuckles is straight, we lose control over the finger because that cuts off a part of the finger from motion. It causes that sticking point that makes your finger freeze or get stuck. So we want your entire finger to be curved all the way to the back knuckle. It's a beautiful looking thing when you do that. Right? And then we're going to think about centering your hand when that's on the string as well. And think a little too about the playing surface on your fingers. Make sure that you're not too close to the tip and that you're not way far back in the pad of your finger. You want to be on the pad, but, you know, not so far back that you feel like you're wrapping your finger around the string. What we really don't want is your finger to be pointing down to the ground. This happens with people's second fingers all the time. They point them down to the ground and it actually does wrap around the string. That generally will slow you down it and will not sound the same as the other fingers. So that's not what you want. So look at that playing surface and make sure you're using the pad of your fingers. So create the arch. And I would suggest that you start by holding your hands in front of you without the harp just right in front of you. And they don't even have to be as high as you might have them at the harp, but just look at them. Can you make your hands look the way they're supposed to with those knuckles? Curved. Think about it. Almost as if you were going to have a publicity photo taken. I discovered an old photo of mine taken when I was very young. And if you look at me sitting at the harp, my hand position is beautiful. Now, I can guarantee it didn't look that way when I played, but the photograph is just immaculate. That position is exactly what it's supposed to be. And so this is a great thing. You can start away from the harp and think, okay, this is how my fingers should look. And then turn around, go over to the harp, put your hands just lightly on the strings, doesn't matter what strings, and have your hands look exactly the way your teacher would want them to look in your photo, right, your publicity photo. This is how they should look. There you go. That's the structure that you want for your fingers. And once you've done that, then we can start putting just a little bit of pressure on them and seeing if we can maintain the structure. So here's how that works. With your fingers on the strings, you can do this either one hand at a time or both hands, doesn't matter. But with your fingers on the strings in exactly that beautiful publicity photo, perfect position that you want. Beautiful arch to your fingers, all of that. With your fingers on the strings, I want you to put a slight pressure on each finger. You can do it all at once if you want, or if you just want to work on an individual finger, you can do it one finger at a time, but put just a little bit of pressure on it. Just squeeze a little bit as if you were going to play, but we don't want you to play. So just gently squeeze the strings and see if you can do that without those knuckles collapsing. Now here's a tip. Don't try to make the grip come right from your fingers. Don't initiate it right in your hand. Feel that squeeze originate actually in your upper arm. You can do that. Just visualize it and think about, those are the muscles that are tensing up to help you squeeze the strings. And then you can actually move that squeeze to your back as well and feel it just a little bit from there. It's not going to be a big, big feeling because you're only squeezing the strings just a little bit. But if you can squeeze the strings and not have those knuckles collapse, you know you're going to be ready for the next step. Now, as I said, you can do this hands separately. You can do it hands together. It doesn't matter what strings you put your fingers on, but don't make It a big stretch for yourself, just something convenient because you're not going to play them well, at least not yet. So just feel that squeeze and look at your knuckles and you're going to be doing a good job. Now we have to combine that with actual playing. And what we're thinking about now is we're thinking about the motion of your finger. Not so much the sound it's making right now, but the motion of it. So instead of just squeezing those strings, we actually want the idea of playing. So take your hands away from the harp again, turn sideways away from the harp, whatever it is, and just have your hands in front of you in that picture perfect position and open and close your fingers so they're nicely open as. As if they were on those imaginary strings. And then close them. Be sure that they close completely. And remember, the idea is to close them from the back knuckle. Where that knuckle, you know, where your fingers join your hand. Right, that back knuckle there. We don't want them closing just from the tip or closing halfway. You want the entire finger. And why? Because when you close with your entire finger, you're getting the best possible motion with the least possible effort. This is how you can get a nice, rich, round, loud sound and still be relaxed. Because you're using the big lever, you're using your whole finger. So that's what you want there. It's so funny as I'm recording this for you, I'm sitting here, maybe you can even hear it in the microphone. My hands are open in front of me and I'm closing them. I just can't resist doing this while I'm talking to you because it's helping me describe what I'm trying to describe to you. It just is kind of funny. If anybody looked in through the window, they'd think I was a little bit crazy sitting here just closing my fingers. But that's what you need to do. So do it away from the harp at first. And then when you're sure you know what it looks like and what it feels like to have those fingers close all the way, then go back to the harp, put your fingers on the harp once again in that publicity pose. Then, with almost no pressure, play each finger just one at a time, each finger holding on with the other fingers as long as it's convenient. Right? I mean, if. If you're trying to play your third finger and it's too hard to have your fourth finger on while you do that, then put your fourth finger in your hand and Let your third finger work with just two and one on the string. That's okay, but I don't want you to have any finger on there that's not supported by another one. So have, you know, have at least one support finger there on the string. So with almost no pressure, play that finger. It's going to be a very soft sound. That's what we want. We don't care at this point, I should probably say about how it sounds. We just want your finger to move correctly so that when it's on the string, it has the very best structure. And all those knuckles are curved and you're on the right playing portion of your finger. And then when you close your finger and play the string, that finger moves smoothly and completely into your palm. You don't want any extraneous hand motion or wrist motion or arm motion. It's just your fingers at the same time. Don't hold your hand or your wrist or your arm stiffly. Just breathe into them. Let them relax. Just a beautiful, relaxed posture. Remember that the strength that we want to develop and want to use is in those support muscles, those support muscles of your back and your core and your upper arms. The. Those are the muscles that support your poor, delicate little fingers. So training your fingers requires training those muscles to do their job as well. So this is what you want to do with every finger, and it's a little tedious. Remember what I talked about when I was talking about having patience to do this? This is a little tedious. Do you need to do it every day? Possibly not. But if you do have a weak finger you're trying to train, then work that finger this way and every day for a while until it gets used to it and there's more coming up. So I have more things for you to do with it. But I don't think this is a drill you need to do every day. It's a beautiful thing to do once a week to just really refresh your technique and calm everything down and make sure that your fingers are doing what they're supposed to and that the structure is good and the motion is good. Now, doing all these nice, slow, careful drills is wonderful. But as you've done them, you perhaps have noticed that there's one thing that might not be working quite the way you want. Might not be that publicity pose, picture perfect thing. And that's that after you've played the string, your knuckles, your fingers on the string, your knuckles are curved, everything's wonderful. You close your finger, it closes into your palm, and that's Terrific. And. But then you have to replace it on the string, and that should look and be just as calm and correct as the playing was. So it's the replacing. That's a place where we can really watch what we're doing, and we can make some really big strides here in terms of strength. We want our placing to be efficient, calm. The thing about that is that when you replace your finger on a string correctly, then it's on the string in the way that it wants to play. So think about this. When you're placing, you want to actually replace your finger a single time without having to readjust, without having to accommodate, without having to wiggle your hand to get it on the string in the right way. And it should be nice and secure on the string, firmly on the string, but not, you know, not pushing, not denting the string, right. Not denting your finger either, just right on the string where you want it to be, the way you want it to be. And so we need to add this to our single finger drills. So you're going to have your finger all beautiful on the string, and then it's going to close and close into your hand. Now we need to look at how it's replacing. Actually look at it. How does it look? Is your hand steady? Is your arm steady? Did it get back on the string? On the right Place on your finger on the right place on the string. Does it look the way it's supposed to look? Then play it again. Does it sound the way it's supposed to sound? Do this several times, right? Play the string, replace your finger. Play the string, replace your finger. Look at how it looks. Listen to how it sounds when you're. When everything's working right, your fingers are curved, all that stuff. Does it sound right? Does it sound good? And how does it feel? Close your eyes for just a second and really feel it. How does it feel when it's playing with all those knuckles curved and closing into your hand and replacing strongly on the string? You can do these drills at a pianissimo dynamic. I know that may not be the volume and the tone you eventually want to play at, but it's a great one for making sure that your knuckles stay curved and that your fingers do what you want them to do without trying to be extra tense or extra loud or extra tight to make the volume that you want. The thing is that all of those pieces, those components, the knuckles, the closing, the placing, those things have to be in place. At a pianissimo dynamic, when everything is gentle, there's no extra pressure, there's no extra tension. They have to be in place at that dynamic before they will work at a louder dynamic. Now, you can also check your placing with very simple, basic scales or arpeggios or chords. Remember, you're wanting to keep your wrist and arm steady because you're training those support muscles, too. You're training those muscles to support your hand and fingers. And yes, you can start to add some volume. So this is sort of our fourth step, and I call it just playing, because this is closer to what we actually do. So you're still going to do those single finger drills to start with, and just take a finger, whatever finger you feel like training, and play it gently and correctly at that pianissimo volume. And then gradually make it louder and make it gradual as if you were turning up a volume knob somewhere. We want to put the pressure on gradually. Just be sure that before you play each note, your finger looks correct on the string, that it closes into your hand when you play, and that the tension releases and that you replace it back on the string exactly as you want it to play. Again. Think about how this adds efficiency to your playing. If your fingers replace so that they're totally ready to go, they're on the string exactly ready to play. You don't have to shift your hand around or readjust where your finger is on the string. It's going to be possible to play faster and to play more accurately because there's less motion that makes sense. Right? So you can work single fingers. You can work with those simple scales and arpeggios and chords. Start pianissimo and watch everything, Then add volume. And then, of course, you can do a diminuendo after that. Right? How loud can you get without distorting your finger position, without getting the tone to sort of a harsh level? Just keeping that tone nice and relaxed without being tense about it, making sure you're relaxing in between. So all that volume check you can do on the single notes, scales, arpeggios, chords, and remember to pay attention all three ways. Pay attention to how it looks. Then close your eyes and listen to it. Can you hear it? You will, over time, be able to tell just by listening whether your finger is closing or not. I guarantee you will. It's quite audible, so you might not think it at this point, but you will. You will learn to hear it. So listen, listen. And then, of course, with your eyes closed, pay attention to how it feels. When everything's working, right? How does it feel?

Those two, the Sound and the feel are things that you will be able to pay attention to as you're practicing and playing. You'll know when something doesn't sound right, you'll know what's going on, and you'll be able to make that adjustment to your finger or hand position or whatever it is that's going wrong. But the sound and the feel will tell you that you need to pay attention. And that's a practice efficiency. So speaking of practice, how do you practice these things? Well, the training that we just went through is really the basic training that you want. That's the focused work that's going to help you develop the right habits. You don't need special exercises beyond that. Just paying attention in the way that we were talking about all through this podcast. That's the kind of work that's going to make that correction for you and it's going to give you all that knowledge that you need. What my finger should look like, what my finger should sound like, and how it should feel when I'm playing correctly. Of course, we can't leave it there. So you want to be able to remind your fingers of what they need to do. And a great way to do some reminder work is when you're doing some extra repetitions or your wood shedding, as we call it. Wood shedding, a tricky passage. So you've got those two or three measures that you need to do over and over again to really secure them. This is a great time to add in some of that focused work and say, okay, I'm going to play it really slowly and I'm going to watch the mechanics of my fingers. It's a great way to just get that extra repetition in and remind your fingers of what they're supposed to be doing or how they're supposed to be doing it. And then of course, you can do refresher work all the time. Use it. I love it as part of a daily warmup because this is the kind of thing that does warm you up, right? It's warming up all those muscles quite slowly and it's warming them up correctly. So you're really setting yourself up for a terrific day of practice. So if you want to do some of this focused work as part of your initial warmup, that's great. Remember, you don't have to do a lot of it. A warm up can be short. Should be short, so you don't have to do a lot of it. Just a little bit Every day like this will go a long way toward reminding your fingers what they need to do and refreshing them in the correct habits. But overall, the thought I want to leave you with is this. Remember that we're trying to make our fingers strong like that oak tree. They're going to stand up tall and strong. They're going to work with a lot of strength. But that strength comes from a certain amount of flexibility. We need to have them relaxed. We need to have that form correct, that beautiful arch, that lovely curve where all the knuckles are curved and working so that they can be flexible like the willow tree and they can be relaxed and calm and do our bidding. So, strong like the oak. Yes. Flexible like the willow. Yes. But do we need those gym exercises to strengthen our hand? Do we need those little hand strengthener things? I don't think so. Harp strings are strong enough. They're going to strengthen your hands. You just have to know how to train them. And if you didn't know before today, now you do. You know exactly what to do. Next week on the podcast, we're going to be talking about the music of J.S. bach, particularly Bach for beginner harpists. There's so much you can learn from Bach's music, and I don't want any of us to not be able to take advantage of that. So we're going to be talking about some Bach music that you can and probably should play. Remember, we have the blog post from the archives that I have linked to here in the show notes on strengthening your fourth finger. You might find the video that's associated with that blog post helpful, so take a look at that. And of course, if you're an iPhone user, get the app because it's gonna be fun, it's gonna be easy for you. So please go ahead and do that. And then in the meantime, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.