How critical is the position of the right pinkie finger for playing fast? Is support from the pinkie critical, helpful, or irrelevant?
I don’t use the pinkies while playing. They are just tapping in the air following my ring fingers. Somebody use them to support the whistle; I don’t.
I use my pinky as an anchor and it actually increased my speed when I started using it. It took a while to build up the muscles and get the tendons in my ring finger used to it but it keeps my fingers closer to the whistle. Before I used the pinky as an anchor, I had a habit of lifting my lower hand way too high off the whistle when not sounding those lower notes. Having the pinky anchored helped me keep my other fingers down there where they need to be and also gave me a more confident grip on the whistle. I know plenty of players who don’t use that but it seems to work well for me.
here’s a question related to the pinky issue: does anyone else get a bit of numbness in their pinky? and for all the musical instruments that i’ve played, what’s up with this pinky numbness stuff?
oops. my pinky only gets numb playing the flute, not the whistle. wrong forum but i figure someone can answer that here too.
Pinkie Numb Numb?
You must be eating too much cereal foods.
hmm, might be your ulnar nerve (funny bone) that gets a bit pinched while playing?
Wont matter for whistle playing as there are only six holes to cover. But might end up to be a nasty habbit
if you decide to move on to pipes or a keyed flute.
Cheers!
/MarcusR
Of course, If I’d like to, I can make them stay at one place. I’m just saying that I don’t use them for something reasonable. I’m not moving on to the dark side yet, mind you!
When I first started playing I found that putting my bottom-hand pinkie on the whistle made it harder for me to use my bottom-hand second and third fingers. But as I’ve learned more tunes and started playing them faster I’m finding that the necessity of keeping the bottom-hand third finger (or other fingers) down when playing C natural is an even bigger impediment. So lately I’ve been keeping my pinkie down, and it’s helping. It also helps stabilize the whistle on notes like G where there would not otherwise be any fingers down on the bottom hand.
-Craig
Stabilizing w/pinky definitely helps even for a keyless flute. So it isn;t a bad habit if ya might move in that direction in the future.
I don’t use my pinkie when playing, I never tried it, but I think its because then if my pinkie is on the whistle, then my fingers are curved to much, which isnt good
I feel the same way.
Ah.. .. I use piper’s grip, which explains it somewhat.
I use PG also wormdiet and I don’t know what you mean.
My pinkie points to heaven always. (Well. almost heaven).
That’s part of the reason I didn’t do it originally. But I’ve found that by only putting the very tip of my pinkie off towards the right side of the whistle and by keeping my wrist parallel to the floor this doesn’t happen.
-Craig
For some notes, I put my pinkie on the whistle intuitional, for other not. No idea why, never trained that.
I didn;t mean that stabilizing w/pinky is necessary for PG, just that it is possible IE it doesn’t make one’s fingers curl too much, as discussed in a prior post.
IN my case though, it’s about as “piper’s grip” as it gets. I played GHBs for years and my pinky still flops around as if there were a 7th (8th actually) hole.
have you tried using the pinkie underneath the whistle as support “tabor pipe style”? Sometimes a loose “sling” that surrounds the whistle and the pinkie(figure eight) is helpful as well.
I play with my pinkies.