I teach all stringed woodwind and brass instruments to young beginner and through advanced students. In my lessons my stick is my accompanying instrument, and often I use the stick to model music to the children regardless of their instrument. The stick can be great for this. However, the music being learned by student at a very early stage includes different types of articulations, slurs repeated notes etc. think of a tune like "hot cross buns" a lot of repeated notes and they HAVE to be able to play the tune with both separated and connected articulation (staccato and legato if you like). And I need to model that on the stick. And eventually we get into slurs, phrases which winds and brass use a single toungeing for the first note and light tounging for any repeated notes.

So how do we do this on stick? Or the piano for that matter? Well hand movement is THE key. It is essential to playing expressively. I'm curious how others approach this?

Included is a simple piece of music with slurs and repeated notes at the end of slurred phrases.

Try to play it as written. What is the best way to approach this?

I think it's important so I hope we can start a discussion.

Hi Brett,

I hope you don't mind my chiming in

You know what I will say: Hand Movement. Hand movement allows you to play clean taps with a very legato sound, much more so than using a finger typing motion.

But there's much more.

The major 3rd at the beginning should be string-to-string, this sets put the next minor third on the same string, and defines the optimal position to allow use of hammer-ons and pulloffs or clean taps, as desired.

so, assuming you are playing it in the written octave, it will take place on frets 10-13, with scale position fingering as shown:



the only fingering substitution I would use would be for the diads:



if you prefer a 4-finger approach:



and you'll likely want to use the same fingering for the diad in order to be systematic about it:



This is actually a really good demonstration of how 4 fingers and three fingers feel different from each other. I'd encourage everyone to try both approaches to get a feel for each.

Because the repeated notes are half notes, there's plenty of time to use the same fingers (supported by hand movement) to play them (see the Independence Training section of my DVD for tips on how to play repeated notes with the same finger).. If they were 8th notes, a different strategy would be required, but in this case isn't necessary, especially since the left hand is playing rhythmically the same part, and you will want to use the same fingering for that.

As always, with 3 fingers the key is not to stretch the hand out, but to keep it relaxed and shift it along the line of the string.

Interesting points I agree completely on your optimal fingering. However I think that even with the half notes that using different finger for slurred repeated notes is superior. If sang on a syllable allowing the mouth to remain open or played on a flute, the slightest of toungeings would be all that is needed far less of a break in sound than playing with the same finger on a stick. A piano needs to start and stop the note with the delay needed to release and replace the hammer stick players can do this much more quickly, but the piano has pedals. A guitarist would keep her finger down a subtlety pick, again offering a quicker transition than using the same figure on the stick. A minor difference but one I try to make use of.

Well, this is just it. I don't use "the same finger" to play the note. I use the hand and the arm, which is much faster than raising the finger up and down. The same finger is contating the string, but the energy and movement is not at the finger joint, it's in the arm.

See 1:26:00 on my DVD for how this works.

I agree that optimally we would want to use alternate fingers, but it makes no sense to do this if you have to repeat more than one note in the hand, as in the diads in both hands on this piece.

Ah awesome I'll check it out tonight!!!

Great post, Brett!

Greg, i thought you might find this article interesting given your emphasis on proximal joint movement for tapping.

http://www.jbiomech.com/article/S0021-9290(07)00067-X/abstract

There are some nice studies also related to the biomechanics of expert pianists in terms of muscle recruitment. There is an interesting japanese study on virtuoso pianists and the relative contribution of proximal vs distal muscles to touch dynamics/timbral variation.

I have debated with myself about the biomechanics of your proximal muscle movement strategy so thought i would read the evidence. The role of the shoulder movement is mentioned in the article with both positive and negative effects. However i think a fundamental difference between piano and stick/warr technique is that the role of the shoulder and elbow swaps due to the playing position. On my phone atm but can elaborat

Say what? I read "merp merp blahh blahh *Insert huge word______ merp merp merp..."

lol

Ok lol I'll take that as a no.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

heh Just kidding, I have a sense of humour that is, ummm a horrible sense of humour. I blame it on a recent Children of Bodom concert...hehehe

I tried to read the link, but alas it was no longer in existence...