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Any aerial fingering technique exploits your ability to control the
movements of small muscles (e.g., in your fingers) more precisely than
those of large ones (e.g., in your arm).
GENERAL DEFINITION
Within any one position of your arm, the range of available pitches is
defined by two extremes:
a) The lowest pitch is produced by closing your hand; this represents
arranging the mass of your hand farthest from the pitch rod (that is,
farthest without moving your arm or wrist).
b) The highest pitch is produced by opening your hand; this represents
extending the mass of your hand closest to the pitch rod (again, closest
without moving your arm or wrist).
That much may be intuitively obvious. One of the major non-obvious
aspects of the technique (whether you opt for "four,"
"nine," or what EVERrrr) is that if you literally open your
hand, extending all your digits, then four of them (the fingers) move
closer to the pitch rod, BUT the fifth (a.k.a. your thumb) is moving away
from it. Ergo, for consistent control of pitch, it's important to keep
your thumb and forefinger together. So, absent photos, let's refine the
above:
IMPROVED DEFINITION
Within any one position of your arm, the range of available pitches is
defined by two extremes:
a) The lowest pitch is produced by closing your hand--not into a fist,
but with your thumb and index finger forming a circle, and the tips of
the other three fingers (let's call them "the active fingers")
resting comfortably on the base of your thumb.
b) The highest pitch is produced by opening your hand--not completely,
but by maintaining that thumb-and-forefinger circle, while extending the
active fingers toward the pitch rod, so that your hand forms the
traditional "Okay" gesture.
So, them's your extremes. Intermediate pitches are produced by extending
your knuckles, without fully unfolding your active fingers. Try moving
your active fingers as slowly as you can from closed to open position,
and back. Your next step is to find the intermediate positions that
correspond to the pitches you want to produce, and then to train your
muscles to go to those intermediate positions instantly.
CALIBRATION*
I think it's safe to say (and I trust others to correct me as needed)
that the above features are common to the aerial techniques we've been
discussing. The fundamental differences lie in how you calibrate the
pitch control field of your instrument.
Opting for the "four"-position technique means setting your
control field so that moving from closed position to open position
(without moving your arm or wrist) would produce the first two notes of
Wagner's wedding march ("HERE COMES the bride..."), a.k.a. the
first two pitches of "Shenandoah" ("OH SHENANDOAH,
..."), a.k.a. the first two pitches of "Loch Lomond"
("OH, YOU take the high road...").
Opting for the "nine"-position technique means setting your
control field so that moving from closed to open position (without
moving your arm or wrist) would produce the first two notes of
"Over the rainbow" ("SOME-WHERE... over the
rainbow..."), a.k.a. the first two notes of "Bali Hai"
from South Pacific, a.k.a. the first two notes of "Singin'
in the rain" ("I'M SING-in' in the rain...")
I hope this helps. In particular, I hope that you can better follow what
Kevin
Kissinger demonstrates in his videos, especially the one where he
demonstrates how to handle large melodic leaps using a
"four"-position technique (this video provides an excellent,
protracted close-up shot of his pitch hand).
P.S. The number labels come from the basic seven-note scale that
underlies most European music (Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do, a.k.a.
"only the white keys on a piano keyboard"). I put the
quotation marks around them, because in each technique you're actually
learning to find other notes in between, such that the
"four"-position technique actually involves learning to find six
(or even seven) different pitches without moving your arm or wrist, and
the "nine"-position technique means learning to find twelve
without moving your wrist (and 13 or 14 by occasionally bending it).
These latter cardinalities enumerate pitches from the 12-note
"chromatic" scale (a.k.a., running through ALL the keys on a
piano keyboard, or running through all the frets along one string on a
normal guitar).
(Question from Alan in Fresno, Ca)
Brian--Reflecting on what you said, another way to put it is that for
the "9" position method, the pitch antenna field gradient has
to be steeper than for the "4" method. All very sensible.
Exactly. And hence the trade-off: The steeper gradient allows larger
melodic leaps without moving one's hand... but it also means that
infinitesimal motions of the hand translate into more noticeable
fluctuations of pitch.
Or, to nudge things back to our thread topic: the "4" method
is like having a longer string to work with (say, a viola), and so less
effort to play notes that are relatively close together (vs. on a
violin, where the thickness of fingers becomes a non-trivial factor, and
the player may need to move one finger out of the way to make room for
another).
Currently Christopher at RS Theremin
uses the "9" position method for easy octave tuning &
play.
Last Updated 10.06.05
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