I`ve just started playing the clarinet and I`m having a little difficulty wih a trigger finger -- 4th finger on my left hand. Can anyone recommend some exercises or other therapy to get rid of this problem?

we all have problems with this finger at some point. interestingly enough, i was just talking about it with my teacher the other day, because any scale or difficult passage, this finger always gets me. perhaps the easiest way to build up the muscles in that area is to lay your hand flat on the table, and lift up just your ring gfinger without moving the ones around it. its hard, because these are attached. but with practice it should get stronger. good luck

may you share the gift of music unto all who listen

My problen is actually that the distal joint gets stuck in the straight position. I think it may be a alignment issue at the joint.

the same thing happened with me. i thought it was just me. i was playing a good 6 or 7 years before it started happening though, and just like you, it seems that it would get stuck in the straight position and not want to go down and i had to kind of force it to swivel and go down. it was the weirdest feeling, like i didnt have control of the bending of my finger... i thought it was from playing clarinet or something. it only seemed to happen the day after i played excessively(like 5 or 6 hours)... but i just recently picked up the clarinet again after not playing for 6 months and it happened on like my second day of going back to playing... it only happens sometimes though, not every time i try to play those notes, and my pinky has never locked like that while doing anythnig else. well if you get it checked out and they find out what`s wrong, let me know ... if it`s like mine, you can still play because it only happens briefly every once and awhile and you can get it down by forcing it in to the rest of your fingers a little then down.

oh, yeah, and it`s a different finger, its my right pinky...

I know there`s a surgical fix but that doesn`t interest me at this point. My father had it done without success.

I have the same problem except that it is both of my pinkys that do it. It did not start to happen until I had been playing for about 4 years. Now it happens pretty much all the time. It really does get to me though because sometimes I can not get it to go down when I am playing and then I have to stop for a while. At this point I really do not know what to do but I know that part of it was caused by playing clarinet and piano. Sometimes all I have to do is stop and rest for a while and then I can go back to playing.