Pinkie or no pinkie?
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Pinkie or no pinkie?
How critical is the position of the right pinkie finger for playing fast? Is support from the pinkie critical, helpful, or irrelevant?
- straycat82
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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.
- mutepointe
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- mutepointe
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- MarcusR
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Wont matter for whistle playing as there are only six holes to cover. But might end up to be a nasty habbitOstekjeks wrote:I don't use the pinkies while playing. They are just tapping in the air following my ring fingers.
if you decide to move on to pipes or a keyed flute.
Cheers!
/MarcusR
There is no such thing as tailwind -- it's either against you or you're simply having great legs!
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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!MarcusR wrote:Wont matter for whistle playing as there are only six holes to cover. But might end up to be a nasty habbitOstekjeks wrote:I don't use the pinkies while playing. They are just tapping in the air following my ring fingers.
if you decide to move on to pipes or a keyed flute.
Cheers!
/MarcusR
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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
-Craig