Harnessing the Power of the Pinky: Left Hand Fiddle Technique
Many fiddlers grumble about using their pinkies while they play. I’ve met lots of students who always prefer to play an open string rather than nervously attempt a potentially out-of-tune pinky. But seriously, why limit your hand to three fingers when you’ve only got four (no thumbs on the fingerboard please) to begin with?
Let’s Discuss
In various fiddle styles, the desired sound is accomplished by holding a drone: some fiddlers use open string tunings to achieve this, while others use their pinkies. And from a single string melodic or classical background, the pinky is used to eliminate unnecessary string crossings, or for string color and phrasing.
Finger Numbering
Before we get too far along here, I want to be sure that we recognize that string players number their fingers differently than pianists and medical personnel. Pointer is first, middle is second, ring is third and pinky is fourth. I’ll refer to each finger by its name instead of number to hopefully keep the confusion to a minimum, but it’s a good thing to realize that lots of string players call their pinky their fourth finger.
This is what everyone who’s doubting themselves needs to hear: Your pinky is not the weakest finger!
The weakest finger is your ring finger. Here’s a way to prove that to you. Place your hand on a surface. Palm down. Tuck your middle finger under your hand and take turns lifting your thumb, pinky, pointer, and then finally your ring finger. Eeek! You can’t lift your ring finger, right? Not comparably to your other fingers. Your pinky was probably able to move pretty well, but your ringer finger was the weakest. If you want to see me demonstrate this, I made a quick little YouTube video.
Anyway, this lack of flexibility in the ring finger is because it shares a muscle group with the middle finger. Here’s an article explaining that rather nicely, and was approved by my physician father as a “decent non-medical resource”.
Practice Patience
Most students groan about their pinky intonation, or lack of control for placement/accurate intonation because it has the least amount of practice. When you begin and you learn placement of the middle and pointer fingers, you work on that for a while and then add your ring finger to the mix. For some reason, the pinky finger often comes years later, after you’ve had lots of practice controlling the placement of the other three fingers. Which means you probably give no grace or kindness towards that little finger. If you listened back to your first three fingers all those years ago, they probably had as much control as your pinky does now. But since you were just beginning, you were a little more patient with your first three fingers!
Harnessing the Power of the Pinky
Okay, so now that we’ve established that it isn’t the weakest finger and is full of potential, how do we harness everything it has to offer??
First, we need to recognize that we can’t get the pinky to lengthen. That doesn’t mean it can’t reach a pitch, however, so enough with that excuse. It also doesn’t require us to contort our left arm and wrist technique. Instead, we will embrace the notion that as we age, we stop growing longer (taller) and instead grow wider. Ha. To reach your pinky target notes, we just need to show your hand how to stretch wider.
It’s worth mentioning that this should absolutely not hurt you. Stretching your hand is more of a mindset. Think about relaxing the muscles and tendons between your knuckles. Imagine that your hand has turned into molasses and starts to spread in both directions. Move your focus to the thin skin between each finger- I call it ‘webbing’- and use your spidey senses to move your pinky side to side, changing the size of your web. Practice this mindset with your hands palm down on your knees or a table. Then lift your arm up and twist your hand to mimic playing position and go through the same thought process and exercises.
I want to show you what’s possible. I have very short fingers. Here’s how much my left hand can stretch.
If I were better at practicing piano, an instrument that requires both hands to reach wider, I would have an even stretch in both my hands. But since I don’t really practice the piano, and just plink along with my students, my right hand can’t stretch nearly as far.
Here’s my right hand for comparison.
And here are both my stretched hands lined up at the thumbs. There’s a big difference between them. See how much farther my left pinky (top hand) can stretch beyond my right pinky?
This is from almost 4 decades of playing the violin, the most recent 20+ years actually knowing what I’m doing and being deliberate about it. So this takes time, but the good news is you can start strengthening, spreading, and using your pinky today!
Here are ways to apply the mindset while you’re playing your instrument.
Play on your fingertips- not the pads. This goes for all four fingers, not just your pinky.
Your knuckles should form beautiful arches. Collapsing them alters the strength of your hand and the ability to stretch the width of your hand wider.
Practice a Tunnel Exercise
1) Play open D, open A
2) E (pointer on D) with a beautiful arch/tunnel over the A string, keeping it there while you play open A
3) Keep the first finger tunnel and add F# (middle finger) with a beautiful arch/tunnel over the A string, with the two tunnels, play open A
4) Keep the first two tunnels and add G (ring finger) with a beautiful arch/tunnel over the A string, with the three tunnels, play open A
5) Feel your webbing, spread wide, and place your pinky down next to your ring finger. Using your spidey sense, slide the tip of your pinky along the string as far as you can manage, without altering your tunnels or your straight wrist. Play the note you can reach with your pinky, and while keeping the tunnels, play the open A.
You might not be able to match pitch yet with your open A. That’s okay! Because you will, as you keep stretching wide and listening. Day by day. You gotta just go for it. Your fear will start to lessen as you hear your hand’s ability to reach farther and farther.
I’d also recommend practicing the tunnel exercise descending (I wrote out the ascending steps), and perhaps with double stops. So instead of single strings, place your bow on both and add tunnels. You could use this idea on all three sets of strings. (G+D, D+A, A+E).
Additional Resources
For more good left-hand techniques using scales, you’ll enjoy these two posts:
Okay, I believe in you. You can use your pinky. Be kind to yourself.
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Thank you!
xoL
