Developing a feel for the keyboard is sometimes taken for granted, and consequently we don’t work on this as much as we could or should. But it’s important to develop an intuitive relationship between our hands and the keyboard — building our mechanical memory, so to speak. By doing so, your fingers will seem to “naturally” move where your ears tell them, moving faster than if you have to think about the scale or chord alteration you’d like to play, and then executing it.

 

With each interval played by various fingers, a different shape must occur in the hand. Let’s start by considering the interval of a sixth (major and minor). What do these feel like under the fingers? For some of us, the natural span between our thumb and pinky is a sixth. For others, sixths are a comfortable interval. Check yourself out by dropping your arms down to the side and lifting your hands in a relaxed position over the keyboard. What’s the interval you naturally reach?

 

I like to start building what I call the pianist’s “embouchure” with exercises built on sixths. As you land on the white notes (in the key of C), move up and down the keyboard a bit. You’ll find that both major and minor sixth intervals fall white to white. Let’s look at the span of C to A, a major sixth. If you put this interval in the key of Gb (Gb to Eb), you’ll see that the interval falls black to black. This feels different because the black notes are shorter, higher, and narrower. If you play the major sixth up or down by half steps you will find it can also lay black to white (Eb to C) or white to black (E to C#), as in Example 1a.

 

Ex. 1a. Begin building your keyboard embouchure by playing major sixths chromatically in contrary motion. Here we’re starting on Gb in the right hand, but you can start elsewhere. Ex. 1b. Keep your middle fingers in place on the black keys while playing minor sixths with your thumb and fifth fingers. Remember to work in contrary motion.

 

Exercises such as this stabilize the sixth interval between the thumb and 5th finger, helping to shape the hand. Brass players could probably liken this to buzzing on the mouthpiece.

I once saw Bill Mays play and was envious of his hand shape in all registers of the piano during his solos and comping. Determined to get my own hands in shape, I developed a table-top “see-saw” exercise: Put both hands in front of you on a flat surface at elbow height. With the three middle fingers resting on the surface play 1-5-1-5 etc. (fingers moving in opposite direction). Make sure that the 5th finger moves up and down from the knuckle joint and that the thumb moves up and down from the third joint which connects at the wrist. Keep the arm and wrist relaxed, and be aware of any physical difficulties with the digits going up and down. Keep it light — no hammering. You can do this drill almost anywhere. Try it on the keyboard with the middle fingers on the black notes and the thumbs and fifth finger in the valleys, as in Example 1b. Enjoy the whole tone sound, too!

Okay, here comes the real workout. Try this with major, melodic, and harmonic minor scales as well (in all 12 keys, hands separately), as in Example 2. The two most important things you can do as you explore this is to relax the arms, hands, and fingers, while actually listening closely to the sounds you are making. If you connect the sound of the interval to the feel of it under your fingers, you’ll be hooking up to the real magic. Remember also that the minor sixth is an inverted major third and the major sixth is an inverted minor third: Anywhere you use thirds to skip around on the keyboard, you could use hand-shaping (and very melodic) sixths instead.

Ex. 2. Practice playing sixths up and down the major (a), melodic minor (b), and harmonic minor (c) scales in all twelve keys.

 

Harold Danko is the chairman of Eastman’s Jazz Studies and Contemporary Media department, and the author of the Illustrated Keyboard Series. His latest release is Fantasy Exit (SteepleChase). He can be reached at hdanko@esm.rochester.edu.