Hello, everyone

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a good way to teach small hands to do "legato" without "crushing" the finger tips? It's not very easy, but a friend of mine uses some simple 5-finger drills at the beggining of each lesson, insisting on smooth legato between all fingers... I call these exercises "vitamines for the fingers!", to keep your fingers really, really strong so you get a great sound. But still my results aren't that good... I guess the exercise itself doesn't matter, the important is the way you teach it. I also would like to know if you find useful to teach legato from the very beginning (so that the students always sees it as the base form of playing) or do you prefer starting with non-legato as traditionally?

Thank

-- Nuno Maulide (nmaulide@hotmail.com), April 16, 2001

Answers

Some kids learn to play legato with out any problems at all, while others struggle with it. I just tell them it's like walking on the keys. When you walk, one foot goes down while the other one goes up (I get up & slowly walk around the room so they see what I'm talking about). When you play legato, one finger goes down while the other one comes up (I then go to the keyboard & demonstrate). After that, I talk about the sound--smooth & connected--so they know what to listen for. Hope this helps.

-- Music Educator (noname_poster@yahoo.com), April 26, 2001.

Try teaching legato with the lid shut and get the pupils to do the walking thing mentioned above on the lid. It really works

-- alison dite (alison.dite@ntlworld.com), July 15, 2002.