personal technique

[UtmostVacuity]

OK, maybe I should wait for more qin players to arrive. But I'm sure Charlie has something to say on this.

As I see it, there is no *one* correct way to perform a technique, but rather a correct *range* that can take account of the shape and size of the player's fingers and idiosyncrasies of power and comfort. Let's focus on the left hand, specifically on the thumb as it depresses the strings.

Now, in various pictures of masters demonstrating, I've seen the string intersect the thumb at all kinds of places, from pretty near the end of the tip to all the way back at the root of the nail. I've also encountered different instructions about how much flesh vs nail should be used. My own history with the technique covers pretty much this whole range. When I started out I used the nail near the edge, and cut a deep groove in the nail itself. It took me over a year to realize that nail growth necessitated that any groove move *forward*! I always confusedly found my groove all the way at the front of the nail, meaning I was trying to stop the string with a suspended length of nail virtually on the central axis of the digit. But often I would cut the nail and start over at the initial position. Finally my teacher told me to stop this nonsense and try depressing the string further back on the side of the thumb. See, the final segment of my thumb is nearly twice as long as hers, meaning that distances didn't work the same between us.

When I started using more the side of my thumb, I noticed that pressure on the nail in this area was significantly more painful. And since a groove in the nail would always move forward, I decided to rely more on flesh. Now it took me almost a year of playing to get my ring finger *solid*, smooth, hard, impervious to pain, and under control. I counted this a major milestone! Currently I'm working on bringing the thumb up to speed, and I'm excavating a groove in the flesh near the root of the nail. It's *intensely* painful to develop, but I have my ring finger as a proud example of what happens with enough pain!

So, Charlie (and anyone else out there), do you have any thoughts on this matter? What specifically did Li Xiangting recommend about your fingering? Where did he depress the string on his thumb? I don't know if anyone else shares this experience, but when people ask me what playing the qin is like, my first response is usually "agonizing". I literally don't want to teach anyone in my life, because I don't want someone to go through this much pain and frustration just in order to arrive at basic technique.

[Charlie Huang]

Well, LXT didn't specifically specify the point of contract. In fact, I think he used a lot of positions on his thumb. I think you can do it like that for the thumb, like when you press on several strings or the one below the next string that you are going to play, you use the first 'bend' in the thumb, flesh. I think he was more interested in the posture of your hand rather than point of contact. I use the side centre of my thumb nail, and sometimes uses the near tip if it naturally leads that way when playing.

I was using the tip, like you, at first (after using the centre I thought it was a bit painful) and it did have the dent, but after a while, I tried the 'suggested' position. Took me a week or so to get comfortable. Relatively painless now. I use that point always in normal play.

As for the ring finger, I had to do a lot of experimenting. I was using a variety of suggested positions, but now found LXT's position to be the most comfortable. That is, the point at the side of the tip of the finger, where the edge of the nail touches. I find this most easy to perform slides as you can use the nail as an edge to glide along the string without accidently slipping off (which happened many times in the past). Also, after over a year and a half of practice, my ring finger is strong enough to keep my hand in posture, rather than use my middle finger to automatically press onto the ring finger (which you're not suppose to).

As for the middle finger, he told me to use the dead centre, but also that I shouldn't put my finger at an almost 90 degree angle, but a 45 degree angle from the top of the qin. Then he advised me that I should move my hand with my arm, instead of my hand trying to move the arm or fixing my arm at a position in space, etc.

I think I got my qiaqi on two strings more or less correct as he didn't comment on that. He did comment on switching strings when I played Guan Shan Yue. There is a section where you have to use your thumb to play across strings 3 to 7, switching as you go. The part I was troubled at was when switching from 5th to 4th, when doing the ti back to 7th hui to move the thumb up to play a gou on the fourth before the lun. That's one of the bits which I have yet to correct.

He was more concerned with right hand technique more than left hand ones.