Using more than two fingers on the Right Hand

Technique - Using more than two fingers on the Right Hand

As you will quickly notice if you browse my second book on Guitar Technique - "Guitar Playing and how it works" - I advocate using more than the traditional index and middle finger on scale passages.

Fundamentals of Piano Practice, 2nd Edition - by Chuan C. Chang, contains some great explanations of how this works.

I quote excerpts from page 147 : 1.4.2 The Theory of Finger Motion for Piano

" The finger motions for playing the piano can be classified at the most basic level as serial or parallel. In serial play, each finger is lowered in succession in order to play. A scale is an example of something that can be played serially. In parallel play, all fingers move together. A chord is an example of parallel play. As we shall see later, a scale can also be played parallel.

Can we really play infinitely fast? Of course not. So then what is the ultimate parallel speed limit, and what mechanism creates this limit? ...

... by listening to her/is chords. The accuracy of chord play (how accurately all the notes of the chord can be played simultaneously) is a good measure of an individual’s ability to control the smallest phase differences. Therefore, in order to be able to play parallel fast, you must be able to play accurate chords. This means that, when applying the chord attack, you must first be able to play accurate chords before proceeding to the next step.

It is clear that there are many more speed walls and the particular speed wall and the methods for scaling each wall will depend on the type of finger or hand motion.

... As a rough approximation, if serial play allows you to play at a maximum speed of M, then you can play at 2M using two fingers, 3M using three fingers, etc. The maximum speed is limited by how rapidly you can recycle these fingers. Thus each number of available fingers will give you a different new speed wall. We therefore arrive at two more useful results:

there can be any number of speed walls, and
you can change your speed wall by changing your fingering;

in general, the more fingers you can use in parallel before you need to recycle them, the faster you can play. "

Speed walls

Sooner or later everybody will hit the 'speed walls' that Chang talks about, and sooner if you are only using two finger patterns such as im im on the right hand.

Chang says that trills ( Piano 23 23 = Guitar im im etc) are the best way to increase ultimate speed.

BUT - bear in mind that piano players are always practicing with 1 2 3 4 5 , so the improvements they see when practicing with only 12 or 23 occur within a daily routine of using all the fingers. So it seems that the more fingers the merrier ! ... even if at the end you only use 2 fingers for some passages.

Technique - Using more than two fingers on the Right Hand

Speed walls

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