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Recently I’ve had several adult students with double-jointed 4th fingers. I’ve never seen it before in my teaching career, but to see it twice in a short space of time has been very strange. I’ve been looking at ways to help them and I think we have found a solution, so I’m sharing this in case it’s helpful to others.  What is a double-jointed finger?This is also referred to as hypermobility, or hypermobile joints. What has been particularly interesting is that neither of my students realised they had double-jointed 4th fingers until they started playing the harp. How this manifests is that the joint at some point collapses whilst you are playing and you can’t “fix it” and pop it back into place when your hands are on the strings. You’ve got to take your hand off and reset.  As you can see from the picture, the middle joint completely collapses. No amount of finger strengthening exercises is going to change this; it’s a physiological issue. You apply pressure and the joint is going to bend inwards. I’ve been trying to work out workarounds with hand positions and changing fingering so that it’s used as little as possible. These all worked okay at beginner level, but once you want to technically advance the playing it obviously just becomes an issue you can’t ignore. I think we have found a solution! These are oval finger splints that you wear on your finger to stop the joint bending inwards. They seem to be easily available online and come in all sorts of quality of material and sizes. She bought the cheapest ones, which are the rigid plastic ones, to check that they worked, and they do! The important thing is the size; you need to measure your finger joint. As you can see I have surprisingly fat knuckles (LOL) and I fit a size 6; my student ended up using a size 4. My husband tried one on and he couldn’t fit into the size 7, which is the largest one in this particular packet. So measure your knuckles! You wear them this way round.    For someone who doesn’t need to wear them (as I don’t have double-jointed fingers) they are surprisingly okay to wear. Personally I find them much less annoying than wearing a ring when I’m playing. There is however a downside and I’ll explain about that later. Let’s look at the positives. For my student it absolutely works, and here is a front view of her playing wearing the splints. Here is a back view of her playing wearing the splints. Most important thing is what she thought, and (direct quote) “it feels like I’ve got a new finger.” It can only be a positive step forward. DownsidesIf you need to wear one, you’ll need to always wear it when playing the harp.
Damping (muffling) will be an issue, as you can hear it on the strings when you approach the strings with a flat hand. But I think it’s a small price to pay for being able to use your 4th finger fully. Easy workarounds for damping/muffling whilst playing would be to get used to individually touching offending notes when you have changes of harmony. Hope this is helpful for anyone with double-jointed fingers on their harp journey!
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