Special Techniques

Base of Finger 1

I have always been a very curious person and although I admit and know that not all curiosity is legitimate, I also find that being curious in a correct manner opens the doors to many very useful insights or even discoveries. While observing a fiddle player I noticed that he would often stop notes on the first string of his violin using the lower tip of finger 1. Where the finger meets the palm of the hand. Naturally this caught my attention especially because he achieved a total different sound making practically no apparent move on the fingerboard. I was incorporating the technique in my guitar playing that very same day and I cannot enumerate the countless times that this very subtle technique has come to the rescue and helped me optimize the work of my left hand. The key to the matter is that your technique is the most scientific aspect of your playing and depending on how solid and well though out your left hand moves are, your playing will benefit accordingly. No shortcut must be taken when learning and "creating" your own technique. Soon after I would find that quite a few guitar players also used the technique and that only reinforced what I had observed a short time earlier.

Finger 1 must be seen as having 2 tips: One is the "traditional" where the fingernail is and the "other" tip is where the finger meets the palm of the main knuckle at the palm of the hand. Below is an excerpt from Handel Pasacalle where the base of finger 1 comes in very handy.

The use of the base f finger 1 comes in very handy because it is always best not to change the curvature of finger 1 unless the technical scenario requires us to do so. You will see master violin players se the technique a lot and belonging the guitar one of the stringed instruments it can borrow or share this technique with the other stringed instruments being the violin "the King of them all".

Below is the Animation of how I play the F (staff above) from Handel Pasacalle, staff #5