Hand Ergonomics - Pianists Hand Ergonomics And Touch Control

The fingerings used by keyboard players are determined by a range of ergonomic (anatomic/motor), cognitive, and music-interpretive constraints. We have attempted to encapsulate the most important ergonomic constraints in a model. The model, which is presently limited to isolated melodic fragments, begins by generating all possible fingerings, limited only by maximum practical spans between finger pairs. Many of the fingerings generated in this way seldom occur in piano performance. In the next stage of the model, the difficulty of each fingering is estimated according to a system of rules.

Each rule represents a specific ergonomic source of difficulty. The model was subjected to a preliminary test by comparing its output with fingerings written by pianists on the scores of a selection of short Czerny studies. Most finger rings recommended by pianists were among those fingerings predicted by the model to be least difficult; but the model also predicted numerous fingerings that were not recommended by pianists. A variety of suggestions for improving the predictive power of the model are explored.

For many musical instruments, of course, the principal interface between the musician and the instrument is the hand and fingers. Piano performance represents a particularly interesting case in the physical domain of performance because very large numbers of alternative fingerings may exist for virtually any passage of music. This contrasts with many other instruments (e.g., most wind instruments) where there is generally something close to a one-to-one correspondence between a key and a finger normally used to activate that key. In the case of the piano, a sounded note is defined by a particular key to be struck, but any of the 10 available fingers may be considered as potential candidates to execute the note: there is no such thing as the “standard" fingering for a note (although even isolated notes are more likely to be played by certain fingers (2 or 3) than by others). The optimal fingering of a note depends thus almost entirely on the context,

both physical as in keyboards and musical in which it appears.

Fingering strategies have always been of intense interest to keyboard players, because fingering can significantly affect the technical and expressive qualities of a performance. There is rarely one “best" fingering in any situation, some fingerings assisting precision and speed, others phrasing and dynamic articulation, and yet others memorization; master pianists tend to emphasize the role of musical interpretation in their choice of fingerings.

According to pianists' own accounts, it is not usual to decide on a fingering on purely technical or ergonomic grounds and then, when the notes are under the fingers, to work on musical interpretation; instead, a final fingering is typically decided on only after considerable interpretive groundwork has already been completed. After enough research can the pianists decide which fingers will work best for them. A significant component in piano instruction and pedagogy is concerned with assisting the learner to choose fingerings that will best achieve an intended performance. There is still, however, virtually nothing in the way of direct empirical evidence to confirm or disprove what pianists says.

• Janny Raines
• 08/04/2009, 10:59 AM
• 0 Comments