More About Fingering

 

If you read my previous post on fingering, you'll see that I disagree with a lot of the "traditional" beliefs about fingering.

I recently read the blog post of another teacher of the piano, whose advice is basically the same as the old ideas that have been passed down through generations of teachers and pianists. He doesn't offer any new ideas at all. One of his ideas was so bizarre that I want to respond with my own thoughts on this.

He said, when it comes to fingering, "always look back, never forward." Just reading that statement should make you say "huh??" To paraphrase, he says look back to the finger you used on the previous key and that will determine the finger to use on the current one. If fingering were as simple as that, one could, theoretically, determine the finger to use on the first note of the piece and the rest would be obvious. But clearly that is not even remotely the case. Consider this example: when you play a basic scale and start with thumb on the first note and then use the second and third finger, you would presume you would use the fourth finger on the next note, since that would seem to be the logical progression from the third finger on the previous note. But, as we all know, you are almost certainly going to want to get thumb on the next (fourth) note, so that your hand is positioned to complete the remaining five notes of the scale. So in fact, the exact opposite is true: your fingering is determined by where your hand needs to be next. This is such a simple truth that I can't understand how this particular blogger could have missed it. The same would be true of any arpeggio, as well as any phrase that spans more than five notes (the five fingers), which is practically all music! So my motto would be "always look forward, never back."

(The whole issue of crossing the thumb under is also a badly misunderstood concept. Once again, it is not about the thumb at all, but rather about a means of getting your hand to where it needs to be next.)

This person also said that your teacher should write in the fingerings in your manuscript and you should follow it. Sadly, this is what a lot of people do. There are several problems with this idea.

1) It makes you dependent on the written fingerings to the point that you never really know how to figure it out on your own. You will be lose the opportunity to develop your own understanding of fingering, and you will be forever dependent on the teacher. What happens when you are no longer taking lessons? 

2) Most of the fingerings should become obvious to you over time. Again, if you are aware of where your hand needs to go next, all you need is a minimal number of fingerings written in to remind you of this hand position change, and the rest will follow. Writing a finger number over every note is not only distracting, but tends to make you focus on each note separately instead of the whole phrase. It can lead to "note-wise" un-musical playing.

3) If your teacher does write fingering in, it had better be based on your hand, not theirs. In my previous post I say that fingering is not a one-size-fits-all. I have heard of teachers who write every finger number in the music before even seeing how the student would play it. Clearly, at the very least, people with small hands may do things differently than people with large hands.

4) Keep in mind that people who play by ear and/or improvise often have astounding technique and play with speed and brilliance without the "benefit" of reading written fingering. It should be obvious that this is possible. And if you are tempted to reply that "those people are just talented," I would say that you want to work towards becoming talented in that way. You will never develop those instincts in you slavishly follow the fingering prescribed by someone else.