The Golden Fingers Technique is designed for pre-conservatoire and conservatoire students whose piano technique has yet to acquire solid foundations, for professional pianists who feel the need to integrate their advanced technical skills into a natural whole, and for teachers.

Ultimately this piano method is for anyone who appreciates the long-term advantages to be derived from establishing a sound technique.

 

You will learn to discipline the fingers, hand, wrist and arm on a bio-mechanical level. One of the results is the correct basic tone of the arm muscles.

In practice this often means eliminating agitation from the action of the fingers, hand, wrist and arm. Often it also involves remedying unsatisfactory muscle tone and a defective set of movement blueprints. This is because ‘despite constant practice, many pianists’ hands move inefficiently’ (Berkhout, p. 34). Fatigue, tension and pain are symptoms of uncoordinated, inefficient finger, wrist and arm movement. If ignored, it is not uncommon for bad posture and movement habits, in the long term, to have a damaging effect on piano technique: they may lead to injuries, as well as producing bad musical and expressive results.

You will learn to play dynamic shadings in passagework with ease. The ability to play a single beautiful note is one thing. Quite a different skill is required in order to have complete control over the refined use of dynamics in rapid passagework rather than remaining at the primitive level of purely mechanical playing. This is a skill which can be specifically learned: there is no mystery about it.

You will learn to play a scale efficiently. A highly disciplined scale technique provides the best basis for playing with the finest dynamic shades.

Scales are often played with superfluous wrist and arm movement and careless use of the thumb, which disturbs the fine posture and movement balance. The fact that students tend to make such mistakes shows that playing a scale is not an action which comes naturally. Eliminating superfluous movement begins with awareness of these mistakes. The reward for good disciplined practice is a fluent scale technique, which has overcome all the tricks and half-solutions.

'About the technique of playing the piano'

 

  

Golden Fingers Books are bought by pianists in:

Australia, Austria, 

Belgium, Canada,

Denmark, Estonia, 

Germany, Hawaii,

Hungary, Israel, Mexico, 

Norway, Spain, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, USA