You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Fingering Basics

Episode Date: October 11, 2019

On this episode, Peter and Adam discuss one of the most crucial elements that can make or break your ability to play piano: fingering.For more on fingering tips, check out the MacFarren Scale and Arpeggio Manual: https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Arpeggio-Manual-Technique-Schirmers/dp/0793572231Make your practicing even happier with the official Open Studio Practice Journal! This is the perfect tool to improve your playing, and includes 52 weeks for a full year of notes. Learn more at https://store.openstudiojazz.com/product/practice-journal/28Like those You'll Hear It shirts Peter shows off on the podcast? Want some YHI swag of your own? Take a visit to our store! Just go to https://teespring.com/stores/open-studioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam. Yeah. Do I sound like Jacob Collier. No. I'm Adam Annis. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Day two of our Jacob Collier tribute festival.

Why would we do this propped up next to like this great genius of harmony and stuff? And here we are trying to. We sound like Jacob, get the hell out of here. Well, how could people possibly be able to listen to his music while they're online? That would be so difficult. Yeah. To compare us. Shout out to YouTube.

Yeah. Keep on streaming. All right. What are we talking about today? Oh, man, I got to look at it up. We forgot to talk about that. Yeah, we just decided, like, let's just do our, oh, we're talking about fingering today. Oh, good finger.

I have a bit of a piano for the piano couple of days here for the last couple days. We get asked about fingering like every day. I get an email from someone about fingering. And y'all, I'm not saying, don't send me emails about fingering. I feel like you're about to say don't send them. But stop sending me fingers. I knew it.

No, I want to keep on a regular pace of just trying to clear things up about fingering. Right. Maybe we could, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I mean, I feel like having good fingering is certainly important. Yeah. But for a jazz pianist,

it is not the most crucial. Like, it's really crucial for you to have a good foundation of fingering that you can improvise on so that you get a good sound. It is not crucial for you to find the best fingering for every scale that you possibly could play. And actually, it's going to hurt you when improvising

because the idea is more important than the fingering. Now, you want to form good habits, and hopefully today we can talk about some things you can do to kind of get a good foundation of fingering on the piano, on the keyboard, before you do bad habits, right? And there are just a few rules that if you follow, you're going to have decent fingering. Yeah, I mean, I think this really falls into the area

of learn what not to do instead of worrying so much about what to do. So if you think about what is the perfect fingering, that's the kind of what would you do. And you can sort of de-emphasize that, even in your practice, because it's sort of a concept that you have to adopt first

because we're doing so much improvising. Like that's the main thing, conceptually, we have to think about this. Okay, well, we say, you know, it's like when people come up to us after the gig, to any jazz musician, wow, that was so cool. How much of that was improvised?

And it's interesting, like you'll hear wildly different estimates of that. Like, I usually say like 80%. Not that I ever, like studied it. It just was a, I like 80. You know, I like the 80, 20 rule, whatever. But I mean, is it 60? Is it 30 or 90?

I really don't actually know. I mean, it's very hard to sell. We're doing partly because where do you draw the line between improvising and playing things that you kind of. I was going to say it's also not that important. It's not that important. And I mean, But the idea for a pianist, and I can't really speak to other instruments, except for the uniqueness of the piano and how fingering, the interplay of fingering with what our technical challenges on the instrument are.

I know there's other instruments that do have, that fingering's a big part of it. But then again, you think about certain instruments where there's very few different options for finger. I'm thinking like trumpet. I mean, yeah, there's a few alternate fingers for some things, but you're kind of locked into what it is. Saxophone. The keys are all right there. I mean, there's a few alternate ones. Again, you're not going to change your... Yeah, yeah.

Even, and then you get into string instruments, you know, fingering does because, like, what position are you going to play it in? But still, like, not as many. I mean, like, this is just a massive thing. That's why we're getting so many questions. That's why people do get hung up on it. But hopefully this concept of thinking about some core principles that we can go through today about what not to do when your fingering can help.

Because then you can look back at, like, a video or, yeah, I guess it would have to be a video because audio, it's hard to see what fingers you're playing. But even as you're practicing, but even better, see how you do in real performance, even if that's just putting your phone up and recording yourself playing without thinking about the fingering. Because that's really the only way you're going to know,

it's hard to look at that and be like, did I play all the right fingering? Because you don't have that set up. But you can look at, do I have some bad habits that I'm playing, some of these principles that we can go through today? For sure.

Yeah. And I think, you know, for most of this probably stems from how important fingering is for most classical players. And I think even great classical players would tell you that it's not as important as most people put emphasis on. But I think a lot of people learn classical piano, not even so much by the notes, but by the fingering. Right. You memorize a piece.

I mean, I remember memorizing a Chopin nocturn. Chopin? Chopin? Strictly by the fingering. Like, I remember, like, I can still remember the fingering of the nocturn. You know what I'm saying? Right. And I probably couldn't tell you the notes I was playing.

But once I got going, it just happens, right? Right. So that I think is what's part of this and driving this. But in jazz, it's totally different. But do you think it's kind of the thing of like sort of a mindset as you mature and become more experienced to? Because like you said, you know, it doesn't matter as much. Like, okay, say you're just starting out, you know, running. You know, there's a couple ways to approach.

It could be like, I'm just going to go out and run. But then there's another way to be like, okay, I need to get the perfect shoes. I need to get the perfect shoe. I have to get everything right before I go and run. Like if you look at it running as the improvisation and the equipment being kind of like the fingering. So yeah, if you're just totally reckless, like, I'm going to go out and run and you're in your underwear

and you don't have any shoes on. You just go out and start running. You might cut yourself on glass or whatever. But then there's the other extreme of like, I'm not going to even go out to run until I have everything lined up. I know that the shoes fit right. I know that they've been, have the best reviews. I know everything.

Right. And so I just go out and run. Go out and run. But pay a little bit of attention to having at least the minimal gear, and then you can up your gear later as you get better. I would even think it's not even, the right analogy is not even gear, but maybe like in running, especially your gate and where your foot strikes on the pavement. You know, like, I don't know what's that, what that's called.

Your gate and foot strike. Is it your gate in foot strike? Yeah. I'm good, man. No, but, you know, like, so. I don't know. I don't either. But the follow through on your leg when you're running, especially for the mechanics.

The mechanics of your strides, all these things, what you're doing with your arms, all these things are super crucial for long distance. running, but you can't get there unless you just go out and run. But even those, a lot of those are broken down into more of the what not to do. Right. You know, like don't let your arms flail around. Don't pronate your foot and those kind of things. And like really good running coaches will focus on those because, you know, the more in touch

we can be, and I really believe this is the same on the piano with fingering. The more we're in touch with the core natural, almost like instinctual type of habits, the better. The more we get into like, oh, I have to do something that's awkward because that's the right fingering. No, everything that we do,

whatever rules that we do talk about, we might talk about a few, but along the lines of don't do this, so that's a rule, but that should all be with the end result. The goal is that you're playing the instrument in the most natural way for really human body type,

but you're a particular body type. You always have to think about that a little bit, different length arms, fingers, all that kind of stuff comes into play. But the idea of it being the most natural positioning of your fingers, your hands, your arms, your shoulders, your body, your butt, your feet on the, all that kind of stuff is as natural as possible. And so the fingering, because there is a choice of how to finger a certain phrase, you don't really have a, I mean, yeah, you have a choice

of how you consider whatever, but once you're there, you're there, the fingering can, you know, kind of have an outsized influence on what the end result of the piano technique is. That's a really good point. Oh, thank you. Oh, okay. So now you've got me thinking more about the physiological aspect of this, and I think it makes a lot of sense. Let's talk a little bit about some of that physicality. So I see you brought the bear paws with you. I got my bare paws out right here.

So, you know, our hand is actually, it's kind of broken into two parts. Yeah. And there's two different, I don't know if you. The thumb and everything else. Well, kind of. No, it's these three, right? It's the thumb, the first singer, and the middle finger. It's my understanding.

This one? Oh, wow. Wow. Hello. He just flipped me off like an angry St. Louis driver in 44 traffic. Far and far. So this front, it's my understanding that these are connected to a tendon, like ultimately to hear. Right.

Right. And then these two, the pinky and the ring finger, actually are in a different strain back to here on our back. So the front is kind of connected to our chest. You never knew that. That's what some pianist told me in New York a long, long time ago. That could be total BS. So if there's a physician in the house. Is there a drunken pianist in front of Bradley's on University?

Kind of. But there is, however. And you've been running with that ever since. No, there is, just in piano technique in general, this discussion that between the third and the fourth finger is where the real cutoff is, right? You can feel that. You can feel that's the most difficult. If we're practicing our trills, which, by the way, is a great technical exercise to do. Ooh, that's always fun.

The three-four trill. The three-four trill is by far the most, it makes you cringe. It feels like you're climbing the rope in gym class. It just feels awkward. More so even than the four-five, right? So that's known as the rope burn of fingering exercises. this is a rumor. But that's just one thing to consider

when we're improvising a phrase, you know, you don't see a lot of going from one all the way up to five in one. Things not to do, right? Right. No, I'm even talking about just going, da, da, da, da, da, dot.

Like, one, two, three, four, or five. You know what I mean? Like, that's not as strong as crossing over at some point. But then we're going to get it. So that's a good no-no. But also a good no-no is we don't want to take,

this to the extreme and like just only use three fingers yeah totally and I see a lot of I mean actually I see a lot of good players do it so I shouldn't say don't because you can pull this off but you're going to be at a disadvantage that's more like players that I've seen I think they didn't get some good fingering ingrained in them early and kind of pulled things together I think you're always going to be a little bit limited depending on what you play though yeah if you stay in the right keys and the right and you've got the right spirit and knowledge of music otherwise you can pull it off amazingly well for sure but it's the same same thing of like, you know, somebody going out and, and, um, no, you don't play like that. I kind

to do, actually. Well, I mean, we all do it at times. Yeah. No, but I, I'm not as bad as some people as far as, like, just the three fingers, but you can make it work if you're a good musician. Right. But I think what I see good players, including you do, is between the third and the fourth, or even the third and the five on a phrase, it's more of a pivot, right, than, then going three, four, three, four, three, four, like, like, you'll go, you can go between the four and the one as like a, you know what I mean? Exactly. As opposed to the three and the four.

There's something about that relationship that's just terrible. So that's something not to do. Well, I mean, I'm just thinking like, look, we could do 10 episodes on this. For sure. Maybe we'll make a course, finger on course. Well, we're about to do a jazz piano technique course coming soon. Jazz piano coming soon. Okay.

So, but I'm just thinking there are definitely times when I, like, where I'll use the four, even when I could use the three or even two, which, seemingly, you know, easier or more natural, stronger fingers to use because I want to get that sound. Because I think no matter how much you do in terms of independence work, equalization work,

your fingers are what they are. Mainly, I always think about, from a conceptual standpoint, it's like the thumb and everything else. Right. You know what I mean? Because it's like it's just so short and you have to, it's such a different angle that you're using it with. But even like the four, like I like using the four at times, like ballads and different things because it's got

sort of a, I don't know, just for me, the feel of it can really be advantageous. But I think it's all about like developing a complete piano technique is about, you know, learning how these things are different and how they feel. And like how your particular body and everybody is different. And there's advantages and disadvantages, but we can always use those for the musical output that we want to use it for as opposed to just kind of falling into, well, I'm stuck with whatever.

Yeah. And I got, I'm forced into that. I think the key is. is to really just consider this when you're practicing. You know, if you don't ever think about this, then you're going to have shing. Let's be honest here. You have to at least, like, experiment.

S-bomb dropped. Oh, sorry, sorry, but it's true. I also like the four because you can kind of slap it. Yeah. Just the angle of, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because, like, the three really should be, but I'm hitting that four on all those speed lessons.

There's a little pronation of your wrist you can kind of get into. So let's talk about the five. I had someone right in... Let's not be afraid of the five. I had someone right and say that they were taught in classical piano, never used the five unless you're ending the phrase. Are you afraid of the five, Ryan? I just saw you checking your five up.

You're not afraid of it? He ain't afraid of the friend. Oh, he's dead. And he just said he's definitely afraid. Of the five? Yeah. Oh, you got to work on that five, man. Yeah, yeah.

But it does take... I mean, it takes longer no matter what. Like, even when you're like, okay, I'm not going to be afraid of it. It takes time and, like, effort on it. You can speed it up. though by doing you I mean really just scale practice and um you know I think learning solos that was always a good time for me to work on like I had a lot of good classical fingering because I had just an amazing teacher like when I was coming up especially in like middle school high school

jane allen rip just I mean like are really acute sense of how to teach fingering the importance of it but totally within the classical world so it was really up to me to kind of you know um you can't just take that into jazz. And a lot of times people like, oh, well, you got all the classical things. So it's like, yeah, of course, that's a great foundation. But applying it is different. I mean, the phrasing, the way we have to get the instruments to sound. It's actually a whole different piano sound, really.

And you hear, when I hear a classical player play legato, I'm like, well, that's a sound you rarely hear in jazz. Right, right, right, right. It really is truly its own thing. And look, the sound, I mean, and that's the crux of it, the sound we're getting, the phrasing, the musicality that we can pull out of this beautiful AMA audio. Oh, God. You know, but I mean, any keyboard instrument or our people, you know, but I mean, any keyboard instrument, or piano, whatever. I got to stop hating on keyboards.

I don't want to drop a certain name, but I think we talked about this last week, but because we are now part of the official backup band to Michael McDonald's because we worked with him and, you know, I keep forgetting about that kid. I keep forgetting. I know, well, you know what, minute by minute is keeps coming back to me.

No, but the idea like he sat at that keyboard, and now it was not a key station. It was a very good, very good keyboard, but still it wasn't on a piano and there was a Steinway 9 foot that I was playing behind him and that you were playing. Yeah. That, you know, he could have gone,

over to and he was basically, but I mean he brought, he pulled music out of that. So we got to stop hating all these, all these, I mean, they're all keyboards, right? And the fingering principles apply. The fingering principles apply to everything, even melodicas and somewhat accordions. All right. So let's get out here. Melotica or Melotica? Melotica. Maybe Melodica. I don't care. Let's, before we get out here, let's actually give some good fingering advice because I feel like we've been talking about. Dude, we've been doing that the whole time. Have we talking about. All right. So let's talk more about the physiology of our hands. If you notice, we have. At minute 12 of the episode you want to talk about the physiology?

We got, this is how we're going to go out. So you might notice on your hand, if you hold your hand out in front of you, are we here. Yeah. Hello. Hello. We have three fingers. Did you notice that? He didn't want to touch.

We have three fingers that are a hugger, right? We have three fingers that are roughly the same size. They're longer, right in the middle. And then we have the two on the outside that are notably shorter, especially the thumb. We all have that, except Adam has a bear paw. I do have a bear paw. I can't pick anything up without spilling it. Okay.

So luckily, the geniuses who invented the keyboard, you might notice that there's two different sort of levels of the keyboard here there's depth in it right and they even color coded it for us yeah the black keys are short and the white keys are long henceforth your outer fingers

your thumb and your pinky you should really try to avoid black keys on those and that's not saying that you always will I play black keys on my thumb and my pinky every single time I play I'm sure I do depending on what county you're in in state right you gotta be careful about that. But in general,

it's not going to be, you're going to have to reach, you're going to have to get a little bit, especially for your thumb. You're going to have to get out of position. You know, if you do anything in G flat, if you try to do like an E flat minor pentatonic scale. Right. You see how much that pushes you out of position, kind of push you forward into the keyboard a little bit. But you can also, that's important

moving the wrist up. Right. A important part of fingering is like getting into that position. I actually find that one easier than something that's more like that you're having to go in and out. Right, exactly. That's the, that's why I mentioned the E flat minor pentatonic scale is because you can really get a sense of where comfortable feels with your thumb on a black key is actually way forward.

Yeah. Then if you try to do like a C minor pentatonic and put a B flat on your thumb. Right. Try that right now if you don't mind. I don't even know how you do this. B flat. B flat. Put the, do a C minor pentatonic and try to put the B flat on your thumb.

Oh, that's not legal, man. What are you talking about? I'm saying. I physically can't do it. It's hard, right? A B flat on the thumb. See, you're saying? that's horrible

that's an example of what not to do yeah and I'm trying to think of like a time when you'd be forced into that if you did you've got to be like what I would do and even then you could do that but if I did that

no problem you shove in about three inches there exactly and I'm not shoving at the last minute I'm shoving like I'm going in that you know what I mean I'm preparing for it and listen we all have to do this occasionally

especially if we're improvising and we're hearing something that is, and like we see it coming. You know what I mean? You could see it coming. You're like, oh, snap. And most of this is going to get to wait for the chorus for this. I'm going to give you guys a little bit of a teaser on this, you two.

And that is you, like if you do that, a little pro tip instead of going, like normally we want to be a little bit bent. I mean, there's different concepts on that with the thumb. But if you're doing this kind of thing and you're forced into that, go back on that. Banana thumb. Banana thumb. I like it.

Reverse banana. Chequita. Chiquita. Chiquita. But then you're mad. It's bad if you mess that part of it. It's not great. But that way you got less chance of, you know,

slip and cacking, as the horn players call it. One other thing that I'll say, and this goes along with, and this is something I learned from you after you introduced me to the McFerrin scale and arpeggia manual, which, Ryan, put a link to the McFeran scale and arpeggio manual here in the description.

This is like the Bible, as they say in the Ozarks, for fingering on the piano. One thing that's on there... Although in the Ozarks, I'm pretty sure whenever they use the word Bible, they're talking about the Holy Bible, King James Version, not the McFarren,

but got you. Yeah. Right. Okay. Definitely. But one thing that I noticed when you do, let's say you do scales and octaves, which is an important exercise to do.

If you're not practicing your scales in octaves, double. You're not getting some really good workout from bigger muscles on your arms. It's something to practice. So if you do a chromatic scale in octaves, you really get, you see in the McFerrin scale in Arpeggio manual

that D flat, if you start and C, the D flat, the very, one up is not thumb and pinky. No. It's thumb and fourth finger. Right. So that you can get a more arpeggiated.

Yeah. A legato sound. Now, can every, I think everybody can reach that, even if you're of the reach challenge. Most adults can reach that, yeah. Not everybody, but. Yeah. But you know what?

If you can't, just shed that. Yeah. If you have to do pinky, you have to do pinky. But if you can reach that fourth, but this has been a real game changer for me. Game change. Oh, that was a hit. because it just has made my octave playing so much more smooth.

Yeah. You know, and that fingering thing can... And it's a great example of how fingering can make a huge difference in your sound. It can. It really can't. I mean, we can't over-emphasize that enough, and we can't do a total justice in this episode. But pianists, you know, shed your fingering,

realize that it's just a part... I mean, it's like a trumpet player that works on Ambershire. How much time do we have to spend on an ambassure as pianists? Zero. Zero. Okay, but we need to spend that time on something else. Right. That is fingering.

That's true. This is known as the ambassure of piano playing. This is good. I think this is maybe the third or fourth episode we've done on fingering, but I think it's good to reiterate because I still get emails. Yeah, I know. No, absolutely always good stuff. So do we have any housekeeping?

Oh, show them the practice journal, because if you would start working on some fingering or work through our coming tech, you know what? Maybe we'll do, we need to get back to our specials for the You'll Hear at listeners and especially for the You'll Hear at Premium listeners. And we encourage you go to you'll hearit.com. check out our premium offering and we've got some fun stuff happening over there but we're going to do some giveaways yeah we've already done some giveaways we should do some giveaways we should do some

practice journal you know people have been loving the practice journal absolutely i want to get one i keep trying to grab one but everyone if you've bought if you've bought a practice journal it's coming show us yeah no uh and you've already started a practice in it and you're you're filling out the pages send us a pick we want to see how you're practicing with the practice that's right oh i like that's kind of a challenge it's a little bit of a like show us your because we're not asking for an on like you've done one day. It's set up as like a weekly practice calendar, so you should have it kind of filled out within a week,

like one of those pages. A little accountability, a nice welcome from Adam. I would say this is a welcoming welcome. Did you know you had this? Yeah. Yeah, I wrote it for you. I mean, all my good stuff is. But it's good.

You would do some string arrangements later? Yeah, let's do it. And until tomorrow... You'll hear it.