Question:
as a kid I used to 'play' the electronical organ my parents had at home. I didnt want to take lessons (I was a stubborn kid) and my parents believed schoolwork was more important, but I was able to play some simple tunes.
I'm now 34, and 3 months ago I decided to buy myself a new keyboard. I was very suprised by the quality you can get now. Even my simple keyboard is touch sensitive and has a nice sound especially with a headset. I'm much more serious now about learning to play and read music. I was anxious about playing with both hands, as I remembered this to be very hard as a kid, but maybe because of all the typing I have done it is quite natural.
Now about my problem. I have found a piece, with fingering, which include one bar : 2&4 - 3&5 - 2&4. I'm just not able to raise my ring finger enough to avoid hitting a key while playing the middle and little finger. To make things worse, these are 1/8 notes so everything should be done fast. Oddly enough, I do not have the same problem on the left hand. Are there any exercises I can do to make the fingers more independent??
Answer:
Yes. There are finger independence studies. Unfortunately, I can only recommend the source that I learned from and it was written for children. I learned from "Technic Tales" by Louise Robyn (there are two volumes, originally published in the early Twentieth Century). It is a famous work and is excellent, though the material is presented for kids.
Basically what it teaches is simple exercises of a one-note melody in each hand. You must learn to play each individual finger of a hand while the other fingers are exaggeratedly retracted as high away from the keys as you can and with the playing finger properly arched (a teacher comes in handy here). As I recall (this was in the early Seventies) it was annoying and uncomfortable at first and my instructor was very strict on the concept. But it was truly worth its weight in gold.
