Tenths and increasing your hand span
how can you play walking/running tenths if you can't reach a tenth?
and can you really do without being able to play full tenth chords?
is there anyone here who succeeded with increasing his/her hand span or with improving his/her hand flexibility enough to be able to reach intervals that used to be out of reach before? if so what kind of exercises you did and how long it took?
thank you
There are 26 comments, leave a comment.
but if you're working towards a merit badge in 10ths-playing, by all means, knock yourself out.
i have short hands. 2 years ago, i could barely touch the 9th white to white. now i can do any 9th with the exception of bb-c and eb-f.
first time i saw a teacher, and i kid you not, he yelled to his buddy downstairs "hey dave, come see something funny" after seeing the size of the hand.
my lh can somewhat stretch a minor 10th now, and i'll flirt with 10 white to white.
you know what bothers me the most, it's not the 10ths, it's the octaves. anytime i try to play salsa or garner, or garland, my hand gets tense just stretching an octave. and that's just that much more tiring.
so bottom line, it stretches. that much i know. i didn't stretch them, they stretched on their own. i think there's still some room, but i'm not gonna push it.
now, i did ask that question to another teacher. a highly regarded classical pianists, and he said 2 things:
do not try to do stretching exercices in a v. don't use one hand to pull fingers apart. that's dangerous.
what you can do, gently, is push the fingers, one by one, against the piano, i do it at the beginning of this video:
for the story, the first teacher could easily reach an 11th. he guaranteed me that my hand would stretch, and said he could still remember when his teacher asked him for a wide stretch.
the classical teacher was a guy built more or less like me. no large hands, but he could stretch them to a point that it's almost gross. if you watch keith jarrett on youtube, you'll see what i mean. he could easily walk 10ths.
as far as breaking 10th. they told me to do it, i don't believe a word of it, it's easy to say when your hand can just fall straight down ...
i think i also did exercises like playing oct, 9th, 10th, 9th, oct etc... (major and minor)
good luck and don't sweat it. like cynbad said - ya don't have to:)
https://www.jeff-brent.com/lessons/lh10ths.html
i had the same problem and i did r,5 pedal 10 and r,5,pedal -10 exercize every day around the circle (5min)and after a half a year i was doing r,5,10 and r,5,-10 arpegois without pedal quite confortably
lol!
hey, how about prosthetic finger extensions?
are the splits the only physical hand exercises you did to increase your span? how long you performed the splits everyday? before the exercises and increasing your span, what interval was your max?
i also read an old post from "jazzvirtuoso"
he says that he increased his span through exercises because he wanted to play tenths. if you're reading this i wonder whether you could tell me what kind of stretching exercises you did and for how long each day.
thanks everyone for your replies so far
i also did the exercises i mentioned above...
for how long you practiced them in order to increase your span?
everyday? each other day? for 15 minutes? for 30 minutes? for 1 hour?
i do wish i didn't have to stretch or try to do things beyond my normal physical capability, but 10ths are just functionally so awesome! so i guess i'll just start stertching. i wonder if my hands are even capable of doing it though, since at nearly 180 degrees apart, my hand barely spans a 9th. but i guess if you add an inch to that, 10th seems feasible.
i just don't even remember hand size or 10ths or reach being an issue at all. generally the first thing you do with a piece of music is determine fingerings that work for you. sometimes you split things between hands differently. sometimes you roll or break a chord quickly if you can't quite reach. it was just never an issue. i can't imagine somebody trying to artificially stretch their hands. sounds like a recipe for disaster.
first of all, i don't think there is anything artificial about stretching any body part where there is room to do so.
secondly, i agree that during a 4-year piano degree the subject of 10ths would not be much of an issue. as you said, fingerings are sort of choreographed when learning to play a written piece of music and usually there is a way to roll or fudge things that seem unplayable.
however, being able to play 10ths comfortably when playing solo jazz piano can be quite an asset, especially in stride-like situations. i love the sound of walking 10ths, so i worked at being able to do it.
at the same time, i do not think less of a player who does not play 10ths whether by choice or the limits of hand size. music is music with or without 10ths:)
i think for a player dealing with this,the head trip involved(i.e."i'm going to try to play 10ths which i can't execute physically yet but might be able to if i work on this or that",etc....)might be secondary to the following factors involved in any given player who could stretch to tenths' situation-
voicings that use a "spread lh concept" which are unfamiliar in this form but mastered in a closer voicing concept using the same notes can be practiced as an alternate form of the 2-hand voicing type you already know..this way you're not just spending time trying to make the tenth but internalizing it's use in a given situation you're already comfortable in..........
but people here have been talking about special exercises outside of practice, and i remember one thread where someone talked about even getting surgery to cut the webbing between the fingers and increase the reach! i'm just saying that you can end up crippling yourself if you're not careful with your hands. and then you won't be able to play at all -- much less 10ths.
if you can manage to play walking 10ths, that's great. but music is an art, and people should be expressing themselves in their own way, using their own bodies, not trying to make their bodies conform to somebody else's music. jazz in particular! jazz actually ought to be freer than classical music! you should have even more opportunity to finger and reconfigure things the way you want.
(and i was just kidding about stretching myself on a rack for two hours a day - i bought elevator shoes instead :)
There are hand stretching exercises and an effective device.You can find easy by google increase handspan.
It's pretty easy to get more reach using this simple hand stretching technique
How far a person can reach is based on finger length and hand width. A person with short fingers and big hands can often reach further than a person with long fingers and small hands, for example.
A simple method of increasing reach, something I've been doing for years (I have relatively short fingers and medium sized hands) is by grabbing my leg (left hand, left leg), then taking the thumb and slowly pulling it up and in while leaving the rest of the fingers on the leg.
You'll notice right away when you're doing it right because you'll feel a stretch that goes from the base of your thumb to the base of your little finger, right across your hand.
Don't do it to the point of pain, just to the point of stretching.
If I do this before a solo gig, I have an extra half inch of reach (and the benefit of stretching out my hand!)
I'll also use this technique on my other fingers, but much more delicately since they don't really want to stretch like this.
Remember all these stretches must be done without damaging yourself. Start slowly, start easy, and as time goes on you'll benefit greatly from it.
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by Scot Ranney on 06/25/2015, 00:14
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