Had a conversation with Larry about the right thumb position on saxophone. Specifically, the issue was whether the thumb should be bent. More an issue for people with bigger hands. Larry sent in a question via the question form on Sax Station.

Question:

I wonder if my right thumb is holding me back from playing the Bb key. I was born with backward thumbs. Seriously. At the first knuckle (closest to the fingernail), I can bend my thumbs backward at a 90-degree angle, but cannot bend them forward (toward the palm).

On my tenor sax, I am finding it impossible to contort my right hand to hold down the Bb key without completely removing my fingers from the regular key pearls. I have tried adjusting the right thumbrest lower, as well as placing my thumb in the rather uncomfortable position in which the thumbrest is resting on the knuckle rather than the end section of my thumb. This helps a little, but it is not comfortable and it makes the knuckle sore.

I wonder if this is due to my inability to bend my thumb inward in order to move my hand against the Bb key, or whether this is a common beginner’s problem that I simply need to overcome.
-Larry

Response:

Which part of your right hand do you press the Bb key with?

-Neal

Larry:

Hi Neal,

It’s very kind of you to respond to my question.

The side of the knuckle attaching my first finger to my palm tends to comfortably hover over the C key. To get it to press the Bb key requires a distortion of my hand in which I have to bend my wrist, re-angling my fingers so that the tips no longer rest on the pearls, or if they do, it is very uncomfortable.

I have repositioned the right thumbrest as low as it will go, in order to force my hand into more of an upward angle, and this has helped a little bit, but I still find it pretty much impossible to use the Bb key without releasing the fingertips from the pearls, and thus making fluid playing impossible. As a reminder, I’m playing a tenor sax: Yamaha YTS-475.

I’ve played with this for hour after hour, since the few discussions of this issue, including the excellent lesson on your site about the Bb key, assert that this is a common beginner’s problem, and therefore I should be able to train myself out of it. And maybe that’s true. But I still wonder whether my inability to hook my thumb inward is part of the problem. I can hold my thumbs perfectly straight or hook them back at 90 degrees (which is actually a plus for the left thumb use of octave key).

So after all these words, I guess my question is: do you find that you hook your right thumb inward at all when playing the Bb or C keys?

I don’t have a teacher within reasonable distance I can ask in person, so your reply will be gratefully appreciated. And I will consider subscribing to your lessons once my life settles down next month.

Thanks again for your attention.

Best regards,
Larry

Neal:

Hello Larry,
Since you have seen the video about pressing the Bb key that I made, you probably have an idea of how I move my hands.

How would you describe the difference between how you move your hand to play the side Bb compared to how I do it? And are your hands a similar size to mine?

Thanks

Larry:

Neal,

Sadly the video isn’t quite behind the body of the sax enough for me to get a clear idea of what’s happening with your thumb, or whether your hand is in a smooth arc around the body of the sax. It seems that my hands are bigger than yours. It appears that you touch the Bb key with the middle of the first section of your finger. If I move my hand in that way, it inevitably takes my fingertips off the pearls.

When I’m holding the sax, there’s around a half inch gap between my finger and the Bb key, so a fair distance has to be crossed to make contact. To reduce the distance, the thumb rest would have to be practically at the root of my thumb.

I tried taking a picture but it didn’t work.

Neal, I appreciate very much that you’re trying to help me figure this out, but I realize that doing it by text description in an email is confusing to both of us. I’ll just have to find a saxophone player somewhere to help me work this out in person. I need to get past this issue before I can really expect to play at all. Or if it really is a problem caused by my inflexible thumbs I might have to consider some sort of custom made thumb rest to compensate. The thumb issue definitely held me back as a violinist when I was younger, and I was told in no uncertain terms by a professional violinist mentor that I had no hope of ever playing at a high level unless I corrected the problem with surgery. I sure hope the sax isn’t going to present the same issue.

Best regards,
Larry

Neal:

Do you have a curve in your fingers as you play? As if you were holding an orange?

Neal,

Larry:

Yes, it seems that my fingers are curved as you describe. But the thumb is straight.

Thanks.

Neal:

Hey Larry,
I thought more about what you said and took some photos. Including the callous on my thumb where you can see the contact is.

It’s possible your thumb is in a different position than mine, maybe try positioning your right hand more like I do.

Did a more top view, you can see the point where my thumb contacts the thumb rest by where I have a callous too. It’s kind of like the thumb is pushed in more past the thumb rest. That gives my hand a position that works better to press Bb and all that. To press the keys above Bb (alt C, etc) then I have to get my hand out of position and my fingers do leave the pearls. But Bb is the key you’ll use most often, so that’s the one that I want my hand to fall most naturally on.

Therefore my thumb is in the position it’s in, which maybe isn’t always taught and/or discussed.

Larry:

Neal,

You’re great. Thanks! And that’s some major callus. I will try sliding my thumb over a bit more. And your photos answer my question about thumbs needing to hook inward, which by your photos they don’t in your case, which is a huge relief to me. I’d rather the problem be one I can solve through repositioning and experience than surgery.

You might consider adding these photos as a supplement to your online lesson about the Bb key. Really quite useful.

I need to get through a temporary financial crisis, after which I will sign up for SaxStation courses.

Cheers,
Larry

Neal:

Hadn’t really thought about my thumb position for a while, but I’m sure it is a bit different than it was when I started playing tenor at 11. Some people with smaller hands tend to have issues, you said that wasn’t the issue for you, so I wanted to figure that out. And basically I do push the thumb in more to get the position I want, so hopefully that works for you. Surgery didn’t sound like fun.