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Larry M. Greenfield

Make Your Piano Sing

- Thumb technique

I've been playing the piano since the age of 7, but I didn't pursue a music career. Instead I became a teacher (mostly Kindergarten) and school psychologist, but continued to play and love the piano.

In 1967 Vladimir Horowitz came out of retirement (again) and played at Carnegie Hall. I saw him on TV; the cameras frequently focused on his hands. What struck me forcibly was that he played with flat fingers. So here was the man widely regarded as the greatest player playing with flat fingers when it seemed generally accepted that one played with round fingers.

Even the Russians said that you couldn't teach the Horowitz technique. I was determined to find a way to do just that. The next day I started knoodling on the piano with flat fingers. It took me a year to find the technique for the 4 fingers, but everything I tried to adapt for the thumb failed for 14 years.

One day I was watching Columbo on TV and the script writer gave me a Eureka idea. The episode was subtitled "The Most Crucial Game" by John T. Dugan (whom I mention in my dedication for his inadvertent but esssential contribution). Robert Culp had played the GM of a pro football team. The owner died, leaving the team to his neer-do-well son.

The son also has a rocky marriage. The family lawyer taps his home phone and the business phones. During a Sunday game, Culp disguises himself as an ice cream vendor, goes to the son's house, calls him on a payphone while holding a radio broadcasting the game, knowing that would be recorded and furnish him with an alibi, and kills him.

Columbo accrues much circumstantial evidence vs. Culp, but has to break that alibi. He listens to the tape over and over again trying to hear a sound that didn't belong. Columbo gets the solution from a scene at a travel agent in which, while listening to another football game, the cuckoo clock rings.

The last scene is in Culp's office. That's the one that gave me my idea. He plays the tape and says, "Then it hit me. I had it backwards. There was a sound that should have been there---and wasn't." Culp asks what and then a very fancy wall clock sounds its chimes---which sound, of course, was not on the tape. Hence his alibi was broken.

When I heard Peter Falk deliver Dugan's above line, it hit me. I realized that I'd had my thumb exercise backwards as well. I'd solved the problem of the other 4 fingers within the first year I'd set out to form a technique with flat fingers. But the thumb had kept eluding me. I'd invent countless variations and experiment with them. But they all ended in failure. I just kept going, actually for 14 years, figuring that either I'd die or solve the problem, whichever came first.

When the Columbo/eureka day came I got it. During those 14 years I'd assumed that some movement of the thumb had to be involved. I was wrong. After the Columbo incident, I realized that backwards meant I had to leave the thumb immobile and contruct an exercise movement for the index finger. Which I did immediately, before the show was over as a matter of fact.

I lept up to the piano and Bingo - I had my thumb idea. The downside was that I then realized that the whole thing was so good that I'd be (sorry for the corny phrase) artistically criminal if I let the idea die with me. Which meant that I'd have to write a book, not something I was looking forward to doing, unlike the throng who pant to write the next great American novel. But I felt that I really had no other choice.

First I had to do voluminous library research all the way back to Bach to ascertain that no one had come up with my ideas previously. They hadn't. So, long story short, I wrote the book. That only took me the next 18 years. So when the Russians say you can't teach Horowitz's technique, I can finally say: I disagree.

There are two parts to my technique: one for the 4 fingers and one for the thumb.

How to Make Your Piano Sing Like a Violin: Perfecting Your Touch at the Piano - Larry M. Greenfield spent years exploring this subject. If you try his excercises, you will be astounded by the improvement in the beauty of your playing. Please contact Larry @ 3873 Orloff Ave., Bronx, NY, 10463 for more information.

The basic reason for the isolation of the thumb is that the thumb operates differently, in fact in opposition to the other fingers. Think about the myriad of things you've done today: washing, dressing, eating, etc. 1001 things you take for granted - all possible due to the oppositional action of the thumb.

Lions are stronger than we are, horses are faster, but they can't begin to do a fraction of the things with their arms that we can because they have no thumbs.

The physiology of the hand is very complicated, with a host of little muscles working in conjunction with the large ones. In the case of the thumb these are called thenars. The external thenar is located in the fatty part of the palm below the thumb. The internal thenar is located in the fatty part of the outer hand between the thumb and the forefinger.

Those complementary muscles normally work 50-50. No problem. The thumb moves toward the other fingers at will for almost everything you do with your hands. Even with other musical instruments this is true. The violin rests on the thumb and the other 4 fingers do the fingering. The notes on the back of the clarinet are played by the thumb moving in its normal oppositional mode.

Playing the piano, however, is different, not only from a myriad of life activities, but also from playing other musical instruments. Playing the piano, in fact, is one of the few things in life which requires the thumbs not to act in opposition to other fingers, but to act in concert (no pun intended) with them. To access the dexterity and sensitivity in the thumbs, to bring the thumb muscles into delicate balance, you must do something to offset the restrictions imposed by the piano: an exercise specifically for the thumbs.

The exercise I have created for the thumb redresses that imbalance, restoring the internal thenar into balance with the external one. The result is that you can produce a much more controlled, and much more beautiful tone with your thumb. The same is true for the exercise for the 4 fingers. Not only the tone is at stake here. I'm convinced that muscle imbalance is the basic cause of the frequency of streess and injuries on the piano. These issues are discussed in the book further.

Bach and Paderewski, among other keyboard giants, stressed the fact that the thumbs were the most important finger in playing the keyboard. This book teaches you how to improve the way your thumbs are used, and provides a complete picture of exercises for all the other fingers as well -- including solving Shumann's famous dilemma about the constriction of the fourth finger, to give your piano a 'singing' sound. You have only to try it to feel the dramatic difference this technique will make in your touch.

About Larry M. Greenfield

Larry Greenfield has had several careers. For many years he taught Kindergarten and other levels up to Community College. As a teacher, he was mentioned about in Nat Hentoff's book, Our Children Are Dying. As a Clinical School Psychologist, Larry again worked with various age groups, from Kindergarten to High School.

Now in retirement, Greenfield is involved with theater groups and has a part-time career recording voice-overs. He has also written about a new approach to creating power in one's voice. Finally, Larry has always made time to play the piano, and for thought and experimentation. Years of exploration have have culminated in this book. If you try Greenfield's excercises, you will be astounded by the improvement in the beauty of your playing.

© Larry M. Greenfield. Used by permission.

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