Hand Position and Keeping Fingers Down

[Brent Hutto]

I don't need any convincing that to play with decent speed, accuracy and tone one must practice economy of motion with the left hand. So my goal is to, when in a certain "position", keep every finger either on a string at its assigned fret or hovering over that fret. I don't have the reach and flexibility yet to always do it but that's what I'm working toward.

Here's a specific problem I have in the mean time. Playing in D-minor at 1st position with the "harmonic" raised 7th. The meter is 6/8 which I'm taking slowly at first but eventually it needs to move at a moderate dance or "Hora" tempo. So the big reach tends to be from 1st to 4th frets with index and middle finger.

The lick that comes over and over (including back to back) in this song are eighth notes in a descending D-C#-Bb D-C#-Bb pattern, played on the A course usually followed (mercifully) by the open-string A for three beats. So my fingering is 5-4-1-5-4-1-0 on that string. I can not do it without "rocking" my hand forward to do the 5-4 and then putting the index back in its place at its 1st fret.

Is this a really tricky reach for everyone or is it just me? My hand ends up wiggling around on the edge of the nut as I play this. That's usually a sign that of something I'd rather avoid but at the moment I've just got to work on doing it repeatably and accurately to get through this one lick a couple dozen times in this song.

Will that one eventually come to me or it always the sort of fingering that you have to "cheat" a little away from keeping your hand position still?

[AlanN]

If the note pitches are D to C# to B on the A string, the frets should be 5 (ring finger), 4 (middle finger), 2 (index finger). That move is pretty regular and easy, with no shifting of hand position needed to get it.

[Brent Hutto]

Alan,

Thanks. I just went back and edited my question. I typed "B" when I meant to say "Bb" at the 1st fret. This is one of those "eastern" sounding melodies with the 1-1/2 step gap in the scale. The tune is called Hasapikos Horos.

[AlanN]

Ah.

Same answer, though

[Brent Hutto]

I suppose when I get home tonight I'll have two avenues of practice to choose between.

I can work on playing that lick a hundred or so times slowly until it gets more accurate in placing the fingers right behind the frets even though I'm letting it "rock" a bit.

Or I can work on playing it one note, one stretch at a time until I can keep all three fingers on their frets throughout.

Hmmm. It becomes almost a philosophical rather than technical question since it turns out to be a perfectly cromulent passage to play with correct form.

[thejamdolinplayer]

Check out Mike Marshalls videos.. They were a big help to me he shows a lot of exercises on this very topic... Keep pickin!

[Jim Garber]

You have to be able to move your hand slightly out of position in order to reach notes. You cannot expect to maintain an unmovable hand. You can also experiment with other positions. One other thing I try to practice is playing without looking at the fretboard, even with moving into positions.

[Brent Hutto]

So Jim, given that sometimes a little movement is unavoidable do you think this little lick is one of those times?

It seems like it "ought" to be quite reachable but somehow it's not...at least not for me right now with only 14 days having passed since the first time I touched a mandolin.

Do you more experienced guys find that moderately rapid 5-4-1-5-4-1-0 on the A course can be accomplished without moving the hand?

[Jim Garber]

You will get there. Patience! Take it slow.

[Fred Keller]

Consider anchoring at the first fret. Place index finger on the Bb and reach up for the D and C# with ring and middle fingers without moving index finger off of the Bb. I'm not saying it's easy but anchoring the index and reaching up does allow you to play it without moving the hand.

[mandodan1960]

As far as keeping the fingers close to the frets while playing other notes (no flying fingers) I have found Carlo Aonzo's "parking lot" exercise helps to stretch the tendons so your fingers don't have as much tendency to follow each other. It works !! This was presented to me at Kaufman Kamp and is basically this. Place your fingers on the E string on 2,4,5,7 then only moving one finger at a time from this 2,4,5,7 "parking lot" fret the A string above each position playing a clean note. This is just the one that I use/remember. Carlo goes into more detailed exercises in his workshops.

[JeffD]

I am not sure about a prescription of not moving your hand position. I move it all the time. For big reasons and small.

I haven't tried your case, but the first thing I try to do is to see if the far away note can be played on a different string. Perhaps down a string and up on the 8th fret or something. Often that puts the whole phrase up the neck, but you avoid shifting your hand in the middle of the phrase. You shift perhaps just before and just after.

[JeffD]

One other thing I try to practice is playing without looking at the fretboard, even with moving into positions.

That takes some intestinal fortitude. I can take off but where will I land?

[Jim Garber]

I agree with JeffD: I am not so sure that the immovable hand is written in stone (too many metaphors??). Use your common sense. if you need to move, do so to play the note. otherwise you may end up straining the muscles in your hand. As I already said, take it slow and work on the tune.

[Tom Wright]

If you rotate your left hand to move the palm away from the neck you have more reach backwards with the first finger. I find the most useful hand angle to not be like a classical guitar but more like violin. Hold up your left hand, palm facing you, and try to spread the fingers when all are curled. Then rotate thumb towards you, pinky away, and curl only the first finger while extending the third. You can get much more reach this way. So you actually can be (relatively) motionless and reach a step and a half or even two steps between first and second finger. Nicer on wrist tendons, too, since you are less turned from the natural hand angle.

[Pete Hicks]

Try grabbing the D with the little finger, C# -3rd, Bb-1st. That way there is no stretching.

[Brent Hutto]

Interesting last few comments. I spent a little while at lunch time working on it and came to three conclusions. Honest to goodness I did not read any of Replies #11-#16 until just now when I got back to work!

First I found that lifting the neck slightly above 45 degrees and facing my palm down toward the body of the instrument and less across the neck lightened up the stretching. That took just a couple minutes.

Then I had the brilliant realization that doing the D and C# with pinkie and ring made the whole thing child's play. That didn't occur to me for about 10-15 minutes.

And in the end, apropos as it turns out of Jim's point, was that I ought to just do whatever works easiest in the short term and then use this lick longer term as a separate practicing exercise to get those stretches better.

Then I get back to work and that's basically the stuff you guys were posting while I was "woodshedding". Remarkable.

[Jim Garber]

it also sounds to me that you would benefit from a few lessons with a good teacher who can point you in the right direction. I know that is not always possible but I would consider it. There are even a few folks who teach via Skype these days.

BTW what kind of music are you playing... specifically what is this piece in Dm that you are working on?

[Brent Hutto]

Jim,

I have that book from Allan Alexander called Balkan Music for Mandolin which I believe has been mentioned on the Cafe a few times. It is absolutely perfect for my needs. The tunes range from bog simple (as in I can play them tolerable well after three or four times through) to slightly more challenging. But almost entirely single-line melodies. There is a companion book of guitar accompaniment and the combination of the two part sounds really sweet on most of them. I even scheduled a special session tomorrow with my guitar teacher so he can play along with me on some of the simpler tunes I already have under my fingers (not so much this 6/8 dance tune though).

Guitar is "my" instrument and the mandolin thing has been kind of a change of pace. It's surprising how easily the basics fell into place for me but I do have a sneaking feeling that there may be a thing or two that I'll stumble onto eventually that might be very simply pointed out in a lesson. But at this point I can't bear the thought of finding a mandolin teacher given that I'm still on my every-other-week lesson plus daily practice routine with the guitar. My long-term goals on guitar are rather daunting and progress is very slow which is why as a little treat I enjoy playing simpler, easier tunes on the mandolin.

Then again, a couple Skype sessions just for some expert feedback might be just the ticket...

[Rob Gerety]

I find the most useful hand angle to not be like a classical guitar but more like violin. Hold up your left hand, palm facing you, and try to spread the fingers when all are curled. Then rotate thumb towards you, pinky away, and curl only the first finger while extending the third. You can get much more reach this way. So you actually can be (relatively) motionless and reach a step and a half or even two steps between first and second finger. Nicer on wrist tendons, too, since you are less turned from the natural hand angle.

YES! Took me a while to get this having come from guitar. But my playing improved a lot when I finally started angling my hand as you would when playing a fiddle. Mike Marshall goes into this.

[Clement Barrera-Ng]

YES! Took me a while to get this having come from guitar.

Same here, and I think as Brent had already mentioned in another thread, that mandolin is not a little guitar, and a few things will take some getting used to. I find that running through some of the scales posted on Mandozine helps me understand and figure out what fingerings are considered standard on a mandolin. On a guitar, as well as on octave mando or bouzouki, there are some runs that I would simply not attempt, either because it's not required (eg. going from 1st fret to the 7th on the next lower course), or not possible on a longer scale. But the scale exercises helped me get used to the mandolin fingering a lot.

[Phil Goodson]

Yep.
Tom, Rob, and barragatan have the right answer. Your fingers should be almost parallel to the strings on those reaches.
And using the pinky for the 5th fret notes, although allowable in special circumstances, is NOT a good habit to form.

[Brent Hutto]

I used to play the viola (or tried to for several years) and never had any problem with reaches. Last night I put my mandolin under my chin kind of like Mike Marshall does in that YouTube clip and with a viola-players hand position the 5-4-1-5-4-1 was trivial. Just a tiny bit of tendency for the first finger to drift up if I let it floast but keeping it down on the string the whole time makes that not a problem.

So what I worked on last night and this morning was keeping that same relaxed feeling in my hand when in mandolin position. The lack of tension is really the key. Not that it magically makes my fingers land perfectly, that's still a stretch that will take some practice.

But what I found was that a relaxed hand can stay in the same place relative to the neck (i.e. the bottom knuckle on the first finger stays in contact near the treble side of the nut without sliding up and down) and the "give" in the system can come from just slightly rotating the palm--no, scratch that--allowing the palm to rotate slightly toward the side or neck or return to normal position.

Just like viola, just like guitar, just like any instrument I've got to remember the key is to allow my hand to drift a bit one way or another to accommodate tricky bits that challenge the limits of reach or strength. My struggling with this the previous two days all came from trying to force things. There's a YouTube clip of the late Butch Baldasari, basically highlights of a Homespun lesson DVD, and the closeups there of his left hand show how free it is to kind of rotate through about a 60-degree arc between "fingers almost parallel to the strings" and "palm almost parallel to the neck". No tension. That's a good image.

[Brent Hutto]

One thing I learned today while visiting a guitar show that also had a few mandolins scattered about. That little 5-4-1 pattern is a good bit easier when the mandolin has a thicker (fretboard to back of neck dimension) neck shape. Not having my thumb pinched in so close to my fingers relaxes the hand considerably.

[Brent Hutto]

Just a followup to Jim's comment from a few weeks ago. I'm in the process of hooking up for some Skype-mediated mandolin lessons with a good teacher. Looking forward to getting some feedback on the basics of my mechanics and approach to playing. I'm a little over a month into my mandolin journey and making sure my fundamentals are sound is better done sooner than later, I feel...