Some Thoughts on Practical Fingering

This can be a bit tricky to work out whether you should follow the fingering or not on any given piece of music. On top of this, everyone also seems to have an opinion on what is best practice, so here is what I think should be the case.

First of all, if you have any sort of injury to any of your fingers, you will need to adapt and adjust the fingering. For instance my mother, not that she played the piano, had a little finger that could not bend at all – it was like the joints had fused many years ago and therefore she lost the ability to bend it. You could be like my mother and have a finger that doesn’t bend or you could have arthritis in one or a few of your fingers. I’ve even met a violinist who was missing the top part of one of her fingers (and yes she used the stump of that finger to press down on the strings). There are numerous reasons why a person doesn’t have full mobility and dexterity in both hands and it doesn’t mean that they can’t learn, it just means that the fingering will need to be adapted.

The next thing I would like to state is that you should always try and avoid using your thumb on a black note. This should be avoided as much as possible because then you either have to contort your wrist unnaturally to play the next note or you are left to play the white notes right at their thinnest part, which is also harder to press down. Yes there are definitely exceptions to this rule and I would estimate that somewhere between five percent and ten percent are the exceptions. Golden rule though is that if it is fairly comfortable and makes an easy transition to the next note, then use anything but your thumb.

Again there are exceptions to this, but try not to use the same finger for two notes in a row – it is not good for getting a blended sound between one note and the next. The main exception to this is when you are playing chords with one or both hands. It is often impossible to not use the same finger for two different notes when you are playing chords. If you are playing a series of chords, the aim is to have the fingering so that you can smoothly go from one chord to the next with your fingers not feeling like they are twisted and contorted.

I know that the tendency for beginners is to use their index and middle fingers as much as possible but try and make use of all of your fingers. We don’t tend to have nearly as much strength in our ring fingers and little fingers, so we try and avoid using them. If you are teaching or re-teaching yourself to play the piano, make sure you use all of your fingers – it might feel quite weird at first but you can get used to it.

Fingering is one area where piano players can often choose their own fingering. When working out what the best fingering is for you, take into consideration what works in terms of facilitating the music to sound good as well as what feels comfortable for your fingers and hands.