My fingers won't stay down!

[glassonion91168]

Hi everyone. This is my first time posting in the forum. My third finger never seems to want to stay on the valve caps. Whenever I don't use my third valve, my finger tends to float a tiny bit above the valve. It's very frustrating, especially when playing fast passages. I think one of my problems that I can't fix is the small size of my hands. I was looking thru a catalog and saw these fingerweights that guitarists use. Do you think that may help me at all? Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks!

Lisa

[Welk]

I don't think that those thing would help. If it is what I thnik, those are used to make blocked chord ( translation from french) and they don't allow your finger to bend at all. I had this bad habbit ( because it is justa bad habbit, not a problem) a few years ago. I suggest to put the tips of your finger on the valve cap if you don't do it actually. If not, just pay attention to this little finger... or you may play somne stuff that use the 3rd finger often... this way, he'll get use to be there to play!
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Nicolas Marcotte

52' Olds Recording LA
Wick gold 4X

-=0=-Music is what gives us the beat, but it is also what makes beat our heart -=0=-

[_gmdean]

Talk to a Piano teacher, they know excercises to "free up" the fingers. The problem is not pushing the finger down but returning it to neutral, when we learn to grip we get pressure feedback on the grip but not the return, so we learn much better conscious control of the movement towards the palm than away from it. Learning to write tends to give us back the control of the index finger muscles, and to a lesser extent the middle finger but the third and pinky get isolated. There's some other physiology stuff involved but I've forgotten the details.

You can try this excercise; put your hand on a flat surface and learn to lift each finger in turn and then combinations. You will probably find the index is no problem and middle onward have progressivly less control. To start focus on the finger and use the other hand to lift it, this will help you isolate the muscles and gain more conscious control over them. It will take time.

With your horn, do the Clarks excercises slowly concentrating on finger placement, try it with one eye closed, you will probably find it is easier to get the mechanical movement and finger placement right with one or the other eye shut.
As I say a piano teacher will have a few other tricks up their sleave.
Mark

[Bri]

Here's what worked for me:
Put a dime on top of the finger button and play away. Every time the dime falls off pick it up and start again. After a little while you will get so fed up with having to stop every 10 seconds that your finger will just say put. I had to do this with all three fingers and to took me all of an hour to get my fingers from flying all over the place to having them right where they belong. Good Luck!
_________________
-Bri
"Teachers make every other profession possible!"

[EBjazz]

I don't think you have a problem. I lift my fingers way above the valves. "Lift finger high, strike valves hard!" as Claude always said. Watch Wynton or Clifford for proper finger technique. My fingers are 1 to 2 inches above the valves.
Remember that your valves will go down as fast as you strike them; they will only come up as fast as they want to.
Your fingers move much faster than the valves do.

Eb
_________________
Eric Bolvin
http://bolvinmusic.com/product/the-modern-jazz-trumpet-method/
www.bolvinmusic.com

[roynj]

I agree entirely with Eb. Keep your fingers above the valves and strike them down. Most pros I know use this technique. I cannot imagine trying to keep one's fingers precisely on top of the finger buttons, although I suppose with enough practice anything is possible.
Roynj

[plankowner110]

Try Superglue- it will keep your fingers right where you want them. It works great for my percussion students who drop their sticks during rehearsal!

Seriously though , I don't think you have a problem. Good luck to you with your music.

[Nonsense Eliminator]

I can't understand the logic behing deliberately taking your fingers off the valves. Lifting your fingers off the valves means moving them farther, which takes longer and requires more effort and energy. This will slow you down, and seems to me to run a risk of being rather sloppy, since there is a margin of error in the amount of time between the finger starting to move and actually beginning to depress the valve. All else being equal, keeping your fingers as close as possible to the valve buttons ought to be more efficient, and faster. I don't spend a lot of time staring at fingers, but I don't recall seeing too many players move their fingers much more than is absolutely necessary. I wouldn't advocate getting fanatical about this; lifting your fingers 1/4" isn't going to kill you if the alternative is highly uncomfortable. However, I have been known to force students to play with coins on the valve buttons if their finger movement is excessive.

******

One further thought: Where is your right thumb? If it's resting on the mouthpipe side of the first valve casing, or between the first and second valves, you might try moving it a little closer to the third valve. This will change the angle of your hand, bringing your third finger closer to the third valve. There is something of a balance to be struck here, because you obviously don't want your wrist cocked in a strange way or your hand position to be uncomfortable. But you might want to experiment with this and see what happens.

[ This Message was edited by: Nonsense Eliminator on 2004-01-25 15:11 ]