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Thumb-Tucking

I recently stumbled upon Lindsey Gallagher's YouTube channel, and it is a hoot. She is a pianist, Suzuki piano teacher, comedian, and self-proclaimed "Jonny May fangirl." Not only did she make laugh about 500 times in the hour that I binged-watched her channel, and not only did she cause me to realize that I, too, am something of a Jonny May fangirl, but she's developed some helpful videos on Suzuki piano technique, starting with The Suzuki Method: Ergonomics of Piano Technique. The technique that intrigued me the most was "thumb-tucking," which she also discusses in this video.

Now, I took piano from a Suzuki-certified teacher when I lived in Asheville, and while I remember her always telling me I needed "soft thumbs," I don't remember learning about thumb-tucking. (It's possible she beat the idea of thumb-tucking into me multiple times, and I simply wasn't ready/willing to listen or apply. Whatever happened or didn't happen, I don't ever remember learning this technique.)

Archie the Hitchhiker Thumb

I've mentioned on this blog before that I have "hitchhiker thumb" when playing the piano. Apparently my concern about this goes back years; here's a mildly entertaining blog post on it from 2018 called "Archie the Thumb." (In that post, I claim I'm only arching the thumb of one hand, but my recent videos show that it's now a problem in both hands.) (Also in that post, I apparently named my thumb Archie.)

Not only does the arched thumb (in both hands, no less) look silly, but it unnecessarily strains my hand. I've tried to correct this, and I can do it if I'm playing at a snail's pace and thinking about it really hard, but as soon as I speed up or let my mind wander, the thumb is back in Cobra pose.

How Thumb-Tucking Works

As Lindsey explains, you basically tuck your thumbs under your hands unless you're actually using the thumb to play a note. As soon as it plays ... it goes back under. Sounds simple, right? So I basically need to pretend my thumbs are both introverts, and that they only come out to socialize when they absolutely have to.

I worked on this last night while practicing the LH section of the Mad Chase section of the Chopin:

(And yes, I literally thought of my thumbs as introverts and those little dark spaces under my hands as cozy homes with cats and pianos in them, so that the thumbs would not want to leave unless they felt obligated.)

I discovered, to my great surprise, that that first reach (from E to D-flat) is a lot easier if my thumb is tucked under, and the strain on my hand is much less. Just that one thing made me glad I'd found this technique.

And So I Practiced ...

I worked on those eight measures for about a half-hour, which annoyed my introverted thumbs to no end because they kept having to leave the house and talk to people. I revisited the measures for a few minutes this morning before work, and it was just a little less difficult to keep the thumb from arching than it had been. I don't expect the thumb issue to fix itself in a day (Lindsey said it took three years for her, so I'm in for a long haul). Still, last night's practice helped.

Anyway, I'm so thankful to have found this technique. Lindsey includes an exercise of tapping (brushing*) the notes while holding the thumb in, so I'm going to work on that some at my desk at work.

*Speaking of "brushing" the notes, that Suzuki technique sounds very similar to the "feathering" that I wrote about earlier this week. I'm sure my Suzuki-trained teacher taught me about that as well, and I conveniently forgot it.

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