Hi all

Does anyone have any advice on training weak fifth fingers?
Thanks in advance!

Bach, and lots of it!

Do a three finger exercise, going up the scale 3rd, 4th, 5th, move up a note, repeat 3rd, 4th, 5th, up to the top, and do it in every key. Quite therapeutic when you get going!

Practise doing trills with 4th and 5th fingers (BOTH hands!) . Start slowly, keep going for about a minute, then try a bit faster.

Word of advice - be careful not to overdo it. Stop if it gets sore. I think it's a Geoffrey Tankard exercise book which has about 3 pages given solely to exercises for the weaker fingers, and they come with a warning!

The 5th finger is not actually weak. In fact despite its size it is rather strong, and has additional muscles that the other fingers lack. The problem is in the brain. You have to build up neural pathways to make it (the 5th finger - and also the 4th finger) move with the same sort of speed and precision as thumb, 2, 3.

A good exercise is chromatic minor 3rds:
Fingered (RH ascending starting on C-Eb) 13-24-15-24-15-13-24-13-24-15-24-15-13 on the way up
Reverse this on the way down.
You can figure out the LH as the mirror image (Start on C#-E descending with the above fingering).

This is also good practice for a difficult bit in Chopin Op28 No 24.

I do finger exercises at any opportunity.

When sat watching TV for example, I place fingers 1, 2 & 3 on the arm rest, knee or whatever, the raise and lower 4 and 5 for say ten repetitions. Repeat 3 sets of 10. The do the other hand. Another one is to hold the hand just above the arm rest and lower 1 & 3, then 2 & 4 then 3 & 5, as if playing in thirds. Then there's holding down finger 3 and 'playing' 1 & 5 followed by 2 & 4, while keeping the middle finger gently in contact with the surface. There's loads of other combinations, and you can do hands together or seperately. It's slow going at first.

I don't think it strengthens the fingers, but gets the brain use to moving them independently.
This I've devised myself, so copy at your own risk!


A

The thing that has made the most noticable improvement in my 4th and 5th fingers for piano is taking up the recorder, and then, more recently, the violin. I'd spent years doing loads of finger excercises, which gave no obvious improvement, but all of a sudden, I found I could do left hand and 4-5 trills and all sorts