By Melanie Spanswick

My last ‘5 Tips’ article focused on keeping the hand relaxed as we play an octave. Hopefully, if you’ve been implementing the suggested exercise, your hand now feels comfortable and relaxed enough to play an octave stretch with ease, that is, that you are able to keep your hand open and loose as your fingers hold an octave in place on the keyboard. Once you can play an octave in a relaxed manner using 1 – 5 fingering, it’s advisable to try 1 – 4. Using this fingering is most useful when joining chords and octaves and it should feel much more comfortable if you’ve loosened and ‘released’ your hand via the previous exercise.

You now might now be ready to join octaves in order to play them smoothly. Is it necessary to join octaves – isn’t it more convenient to use the sustaining pedal? Yes, the pedal is necessary here, but sometimes we want or need to phrase a melody at the top of an octave using the fingers alone. Try this exercise:

 

1 To play a consecutive run of octaves, let’s begin by using the RH (right hand). We are going to play C – C on the keyboard, white notes only: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. Let’s separate the two ‘parts’ or lines of the octave and start by focusing our attention on the top line only. The following fingerings can be used to play the top line: start with a 4^th finger on C, then the 5^th finger on D, 4th on E, 5th on F, 4th on G, 5th on A, 4th on B, and finally, a 5^th finger on the top C.

 

2 This next exercise is the most crucial. Play the 4^th finger on C, and after playing the 5^th finger on D, ‘move’ your fourth finger ‘over’ your fifth. That is, keep the fifth finger depressed on the key, D, and ‘manoeuvre’ the fourth over the top, so that as the fourth finger plays the E, the fifth lets go of the D and swiftly moves into position ready to play the F, leading to a smooth run of notes (C, D, E, F). The act of ‘moving’ fingers over each other in this manner is a really beneficial technique: practice the movement on a table, if you find it easier at first.

 

3 It takes time for the fourth finger to be truly comfortable moving over the fifth finger and, as with so many exercises, the hand must be pliable enough to allow this to happen easily. Some adjusting will be necessary and it’s a good idea to begin this exercise extremely slowly. If you find it uncomfortable in any way, stop at once: in this case, you probably need to relax the hand a little more.

 

4 Once you can play the top notes of the octave from C to C smoothly producing an effective legato when moving from note to note using the suggested fingering above, and without incurring any tension in your hand or wrist, it’s time to practice the lower octave part, that is, adding the thumb. Practice playing the thumb on every note on its own at first. Move it gently from C to C, lightly brushing each note as you play. It’s not crucial to ‘join’ the them, as legato is formed by the joining of the top notes.

 

5 Now play both parts of the octave together. Keep the hand loose and relaxed and play slowly, allowing the fourth finger to move over the fifth, leaving the thumb, or lower line, of the previous octave very quickly, so that the fingers playing the top line take control, and the thumb just ‘follows on’ lightly.

 

Once this is secure, practice this technique with the LH as well, and have fun playing legato octaves in a flexible, tensionless manner.

Melanie Spanswick

© Sarah Barnes