Fingering Basics, Part One

There are rules of thumb, so to speak, for fingering, which come from piano pedagogy. However, in practice, nothing is set in stone. As you become more advanced, you use the traditional rules of thumb as well as solutions that you devise yourself or even create on the fly as you are sight-reading. At first, fingering can seem overly-compicated, but as you get familiar with common ways of fingering, the mechanical task of navigating the keyboard should become second nature, and you can then focus on the more satifying aspects of playing, such as dynamics and expression.

The size of your hand is important. A fingering solution that works well for someone else's hand may not work for yours. So, use your judgement. If a fingering feels very awkward to your hands, or especially, if it hurts, don't do it. Find another solution. If you are new to the piano, it can be hard to know what is "too" awkward, so I've provided some basic rules that work for just about everybody, which you can use as a reference point.

Should you write the fingering on the music? My teacher always wrote in the fingering when I was little. I think it helped me. After all, you don't really want to focus on fingering any longer than you have to. If you write in the fingering, after awhile you will stop looking at it, and it will become a natural part of your playing.

There is a home position that provides a reference point for navigating the keyboard. Your right thumb is on middle C (that's the C note right in front of the piano maker's name), and each finger takes a note in sequence to the right. The left thumb is also on middle C, and the rest of the fingers take one note in sequence to the left.

The thumb on either hand is numbered 1, the index is 2, and so on to the pinky, 5.

In this home position, the strategy is simple: Play the note with the finger that is above it. Now, of course you will have to move your hand for more advanced music, but this "principle" is relevant no matter what level of music you are playing. If you can play everything you need to without moving your hand, then keep your hand in the same place.

What if you have to stretch or relocate your hand? There are four patterns that seem to appear regularly in piano music. I'll give some strategies for each. They are: leaps, arpeggios, scales and chords.

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