As piano players we all know that we have a couple of fingers that tend to give us a lot of problems
because they are on the weaker side. These are our fingers 4 and 5. In this very short video,
I want to talk about why they're weak and give you 4 ways to improve your finger strengths
particularly for number 4. So if you wouldn't mind doing a little exercise with me. So just
rest your right hand on some platform, whether that's on your piano or on your arm or something
like that. What I want you to do is to keep all your fingers down. And let's try now to move
your thumb up and down. This is your finger 1, up and down like this whilst keeping 2 3 4 5 down.
Okay let's try number 2 now. So now it's 1 3 4 5 down. And moving number 2, let's try number 3 now.
And now to number 4. Now you should be feeling some difficulty with this one.
This is a very annoying one to do. And finally number 5.
As you could feel number 4 was significantly harder than the rest of the fingers. Without
getting too much into the details in our hand and finger anatomy, number 4 is a really unfortunate
one that lacks a lot of finger independence by default. Because it is really connected to our
3 and our 5. So as you did this exercise, you would have felt that number 4 was extremely
hard to sort of lift up much past around here. I find that with piano beginners they can't
even really go past around this, like 1 or 2 centimeters. But with some practice you can go,
you know, between maybe 3 to 4 to 5 centimeters. Let's move on to some solutions. Now the First
Exercise I have for you today is "THE FINGERS DOWN EXERCISE". This is just like the little
example we just did but now on piano. So if you put your 1 2 3 4 5, let's just say on the
C position. So if you hold all of them down and now you're going to try to just play number 1.
If you're a beginner I recommend you try quatro beats. [Music] If you are
intermediate or advanced perhaps you can try something harder like... [Music] So
let's try them going up and down. This will be really helpful for all your fingers but
in particular number 4. This will build lots and strength and control for that...
... and coming down.
So try this one with your right and left hand. Let me know in the comments how you go for it.
Second Exercise I have for you is to "TRILL WITH OUR FINGERS FOUR". A trill needs to have
2 notes. So you can trill with either 3-4 or 4 and 5. So pick any note on the piano. Today
I'm just going to pick D and E. And if we do 3 and 4, it'll sound something like this...
You should try also 4 and 5.
Sometimes just doing the trills can sound a little bit boring. So I recommend you, if you want to
keep it a little interesting, maybe play some left hand chords for that too. For example... [Music]
If you're a right-handed like me, make sure to never ever forget to practice finger strength
and control for 4 on your left hand too, because this is significantly harder. So if I show you the
trill on 3 and 4 for both hands, I can try to keep them in sync. But I can tell you for sure that the
left hand is having a much harder time than the right. And you should, of course, also do 4 and 5.
[Music] Alright, so you got a little out of time at the end there, particularly in the left hand
because it was a lot weaker. I know you need to build more control for that one. Exercise
3 are things you probably already are doing in your piano routine, but it is to "REPEAT 3 AND
4 WITHIN THE SCALES" you're practicing. We're going to use C major just for easy sake...
So let's say I want to practice getting better control and strength for my right hands 4,
I might do something like this... [Music]
The reason you want to create this variation in your scale practice is because of this. Now in
most of your scales that you play on the piano, the fingering sequence is usually something like
1 2 3 1 2 3 4. Okay or let's say an F major - it's 1 2 3 4 1 2 3. But let's just say for the most of
them, it's 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 and repeat 1 2 3 1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 1 2 3 4. So which one of these numbers
are repeated? As you can see 1 is repeated, 2 is repeated, 3 is repeated but 4 only gets one
shot to practice in each octave. So it's kind of a sad thing where the 1s, 2s and 3s are by
default already the strongest fingers. And they get to practice twice for every octave. And poor
fourth finger is the weakest one but yet it doesn't have the opportunity to, let's say,
train more. So I create these variations for my own practice and for my students to allow
number 4 to have more chance to kind of work and train itself. Let's try one for the left hand now.
Exercise Number 4 would be "HANON". Now all the Hanon exercises are going to be good for
building control, speed, strength, and dexterity. But if we want to work on our fingers 4 and 5,
there are certain exercises in Hanon and there are particularly better for that.
Today I would like to draw your attention to number 2 and 3. Number 2 sounds like this...
Number 3 sounds like this...
Numbers 2 and 3 are not the only ones that isolate 4 a little bit better. The reason I pick numbers 2
and 3, you can also look for other exercises in Hanon that work on 4 more, the way you do that
is just look at the first bar in the right hand and look for the exercises where 4 is repeated
at least twice. For example, in number 2 here it happens once. And second time here. So left hand
will have its turn to practice playing number 4 twice on the way down. But on the way up,
it's going to be for the right hand. So again just look at the right hand. Look for exercises
that have the fingers 4 twice, in the first bar. So you have that extra chance to train it. A tip
I have for beginners and intermediate pianists as well is to try to 'accent' the 4 when it comes.
I want you to do this because when you are required to accent a note, you're working on the
skill to, kind of, lift the finger up as much as you can before striking it down. This is a really
good exercise to build strength and control. So in conclusion, here are some really quick ways to
work on finger number 4: you have the Finger Downs exercise, you have the Trilling on 3-4 or 4-5, you
have practicing just your normal scales however you make a little variation where you repeat the
3 4 a few times before you go to the next octave, and finally practice Hanon. Any Hanon exercise is
going to be good for piano technique. But if you want to work on 4, look for the exercises
where in the first bar of the right hand, finger 4 happens to play two or more times. Let me know in
the comments how you go with these exercises. Let me know as well what your piano questions are, 90%
of our piano tutorials come from your comments and questions. Catch you in the next one. Thank you.