7 Rules of Piano Fingering

piano fingering is one of the most crucial aspects of learning the instrument yet it's also among the most overlooked early on in my own piano studies I managed to come up with some pretty odd contortions of the hands as I try to solve problems of fingering thankfully my teachers were really helpful at showing me more natural fingerings that resulted in a better sound as a preface let's start with a rule of thumb that's something of an exception to all the other rules of fingering and this is we'll call this rule zero fingure it out for yourself now your hands are Uniquely Yours what's perfectly comfortable for me might actually be unplayable for you so if you have small hands for instance you might need to find a very different solution to playing a challenging passage than someone with larger hands and by the way there are plenty of great players with small hands it's therefore a good idea to come up with your own piano fingerings rather than say rely blindly on the editor's fingerings fingerings are also ultimately Inseparable from interpretation and the editor likely chose fingerings that achieved his or her desired touch so you may well hear the music differently and often different fingerings would better suit how you hear the music now there is an exception and that might be the composer's own fingerings but these are generally pretty rare and they sometimes apply just to the instrument that was used at the time so maybe the composer wrote this for a forte piano in other words a historical piano it's very different from the modern one or maybe the composer wrote it for a Harps ACC chord so they might not work as well on a modern piano and this is why I sometimes recommend unfingered sheet music editions yet in any case editorial fingerings are very often a helpful starting point just make sure that they fit your hands and match your desired articulation there's no need to be shy about changing editorial fingerings if you find a solution that suits you better now that said it is important to play by the rules so good piano fingering is BAS Bas on the natural shape of the hand generally what's most natural is also most comfortable and what's most comfortable sounds the best as well ultimately the goal of fingering should be to achieve the most beautiful and effective sound possible in the most natural and comfortable way possible so here are seven essential rules to help you achieve just that rule number one the natural hand position the first rule of piano fingering is that the shorter fing fingers play the longer keys and the longer fingers play the shorter keys so the shorter fingers are the thumb and the pinky fingers one and five and these play the longer Keys namely the white keys and then the longer fingers are the index middle and ring fingers fingers two three and four and then these play the Black key so this is a piano finger in Rule and it's exemplified by the natural hand position so in this position Fingers 2 three and four the longer fingers that are in the middle they just rest on this group of three Black Keys F Shar G sharp and a sharp and then fingers one and five are on white keys I use e and C now chopan always started his students with a slightly modified version of this hand position so he just used B in place of C because with this then he could teach the major scale so we can teach this as a hand position now this means that in general it's most natural to use the middle fingers fingers 2 three and four for the Black Keys a coraly of this rule is that the thumb is usually but by no means always it usually avoids playing The Black Keys rule number two scales one of the reasons it's so essential to know all of your piano scales is so you can play the piano with the most natural and effective fingering when reading piano music our fingers need to know where to go and since so much of music that we play is based on scales knowing all of our scales without ever having to think about the proper fingering is really an enormous Head Start so in other words you could practice your scales and like know them so well that you don't have to think any more consciously of exactly what the fingering is for that scale you just know because you've done it so so many times in general you want to play scale passages with with the same fingering that you use when playing those scales alone there are plenty of exceptions to to this rule by the way so we don't want to Simply stick to this rule slavishly but that's probably the first thing that that we'll try in general rule number three arpeggios just like with scales it's essential to learn the standard fingerings for our arpeggios also referred to as broken chords so we don't want to just learn let's say the chords in root position right we'll want to learn the inversions as well and so on rule number four symmetrical fingering and the hands are mirror images of one another if they're moving in opposite directions like opposite direction arpeggios then it's far more natural to change hand position at the same time in both hands if possible and it's easier to remember passages in which the thumbs coincide for example so if we were doing this and then both the thumbs play at the same time then it's actually easier to remember passages like that so this rule should generally not override the rule of scales so scales in contrary motion do need to retain their proper fingerings rule number five use a consistent fingering for repeated motives if a motive or a figuration is repeated in a different key it's often best to keep a consistent fingering even if it sometimes means breaking other rules particularly in fast passages a sudden change from say 1 two to 2 1 it can actually disrupt the fingering pattern and it could sometimes lead to mistakes so if you maintain consistent piano fingering for repeated motives sometimes it means a less natural fingering but it aids the memory rule number six five fingers five colors now chopan taught that each finger had its own color changing our fing fingering for a given passage can subtly and sometimes dramatically affect the resulting sounds so try this passage for example with the logical fingering 321 321 and now try the same thing with 432 432 and do you hear and feel the difference so if you do 3 2 1 it might be more articulate but if you do 432 it's a difference but you feel it and it will sound a little bit different so it's only fair to point out that not all pianists agree with Chan's notion of making use of the different properties of each finger for achieving different tone colors so now starting in the 19th century an ideal arose among some teachers to try to equalize all five fingers of each hand now it's certainly possible and also desirable to strengthen weaker fingers but the fingers can never really achieve true equality and I should mention that any piano exercises to this end should really be done only in a healthy manner with the careful guidance of an experienced teacher so you definitely don't want to injure yourself here but be creative with your fingering well in general you should finger in a way that maximizes control ease and efficiency sometimes an inefficient fingering will turn out to be more expressive rule number seven write down your fingerings too many pianists consider writing in their finger rings to be a mere beginner's crutch and something that players should really graduate from once they reach a certain level yet writing down your fingerings is really one of the most helpful of memory aids and ures that we're consistent in our fingering during our practice now the first thing I do after site reading a new piece of music is write in my fingerings now I'm not entirely pedantic my goal is just to be able to look at any measure and then know right away which finger plays which note so I therefore don't need to write in every last fingering but instead wherever there's any ambiguity then I write in the fingering in that place now there is an exception and this exception is very intricate music such as fugues we playing just one note with the different finger can risk derailing a performance try putting these seven fundamental rules of piano fingering into practice and I'm confident you'll soon be surprised by just how much they help you progress in your studies have happy practicing

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Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2024