Ten Things I Wish I Could Have Understood about Taubman Technique from the Very Beginning
7. You need to cultivate a solid ulna-pinky relationship
Pianists tend to associate Taubman technique primarily with supinating and pronating the forearm in coordinated ways (otherwise known as rotation). It is stupid-easy to supinate the forearm prior to lifting fingers 1, 2, 3, or 4 because the supinating muscles afford plentiful range of motion. But on the pinky side, where you virtually always pronate to lift the finger, there is little range of motion. Compounding this difficulty is that (unlike fingers 2 and 3) the pinky articulates (is free to move) at the carpal/metacarpal joint, making it something of a moving target for creating useful rotations. There is a sweet spot for making the rotation into the pinky useful, and it involves getting the ulna leaning against the pinky appropriately. (Thomas Mark talks about the ulna-pinky advantage in that great book I keep mentioning.) If you don’t cultivate this pinky-ulna relationship, you lose considerable biomechanical advantage.
If you'd like to get this coordination into your playing as soon as possible, practice drops onto the pinky from a pronated position. After you've really learned the feeling of using gravity, and of good hand/wrist/arm structure, you can practice doing these drops in actual pieces--but don't go sprinting that 100 yard dash just yet! Do this slowly enough so that you feel the drop, and you feel your ulna snuggling your pinky against the note afterwards. This is more like meditation than any other practicing you're likely to have done, and well worth the time.