Scale Fingerings Made Easy

Just written a post categorising the two basic unison scale fingering (which comprehensively covers 22 out of all 24 keys plus the two exceptions required for B flat and E flat). This a slightly edited version of a document I've prepared for students, that I'd normally illustrate with demonstrations- although I hope it's pretty clear and understandable as presented. I hope it serves to eradicate the seeming mystery of scale fingering and the illusion that certain keys involve more difficult fingerings than others. I'd be interested to know how many people have made the same kinds of observations, or whether your scales were just learned by rote.

You are very thorough and systematic and your students are lucky to have someone who cares about details. I would like to share with you an idea about scales taught to me by Steven De Groote. He liked to finger parallel scales so that the thumbs play together. The big problems in scales are to get them smooth, without bumps, and to keep the hands perfectly together. The turn over/turn under is hard. If you align the fingering to play both thumbs together, it gives you a little more of a fighting chance. Your article notes that a B-flat major scale has no meeting point of the thumbs. That's true with the traditional fingering. However, you can make the thumbs meet if you wish to. In a parallel B-flat major scale, Steven would put his left thumb on C and F. C major would have the left thumb on C and F, D major on D and G, etc. This isn't dogma. It's just a choice if you have a passage that has a long scale or even a fragment that could benefit from getting the thumbs together. It's not traditional. I don't teach children, and I don't know when it would be appropriate to introduce them to such an idea. I learned that in college. It's just another choice. Maybe someone else will like it, too. Jai Jeffryes NYC

You are very thorough and systematic and your students are lucky to have someone who cares about details. I would like to share with you an idea about scales taught to me by Steven De Groote. He liked to finger parallel scales so that the thumbs play together. The big problems in scales are to get them smooth, without bumps, and to keep the hands perfectly together. The turn over/turn under is hard. If you align the fingering to play both thumbs together, it gives you a little more of a fighting chance. Your article notes that a B-flat major scale has no meeting point of the thumbs. That's true with the traditional fingering. However, you can make the thumbs meet if you wish to. In a parallel B-flat major scale, Steven would put his left thumb on C and F. C major would have the left thumb on C and F, D major on D and G, etc. This isn't dogma. It's just a choice if you have a passage that has a long scale or even a fragment that could benefit from getting the thumbs together. It's not traditional. I don't teach children, and I don't know when it would be appropriate to introduce them to such an idea. I learned that in college. Interesting idea! Another one I've heard about is using C minor type fingering for E flat,so the thumbs land on C together. Presumably that could also be done with constant meeting of thumbs on C and F too though. Most of the variants I've heard about before are geared around turning onto black notes whenever possible- which gives some truly bizarre coordinations when playing unisons scales. I find such fingerings pretty useless except as a variant to use in individual hands (certainly not as a variant for unison playing), but it's interesting to think about way of keeping the thumbs together even in those that normally work differently. As far as teaching students goes, I think I'll probably stick with traditional fingering for those two, but I do like the idea of having variants with extra thumb reference points. I think the thing about traditional fingering for those is that it's physically slightly more comfortable when doing the left hand on it's own (I depart from traditional F sharp minor fingering because I'm not convinced there's any advantage at all, even when playing the left hand alone), but I like the idea of extra thumb meetings. In fact, it might also be useful as a kind of "backup" fingering for students that greatly struggle to grasp the coordination for the traditional fingering on those two I'll have to try the extra one for C major. I think I might find it very odd at first (even though it's scarcely different to F major), but it definitely sounds worth experimenting with. Your post also reminds me that I should probably write a simple explanation of arpeggio and broken chord fingering sometime too. So many people struggle with these, but it's very simple when the logic of where the fingering comes from is understood. In the ABRSM syllabus, for some bizarre reason they don't always line the thumbs up in arpeggios. In the case of arpeggios it seems like absolute madness not to work around thumbs that meet up (at least in unisons). They also start flat keys solely in root position- rather than train the feel for positions by starting with first inversion. It's a really stupid case of putting the cart before the horse- in a way that disguises the fact these keys are scarcely harder than those that start on white notes.

How many different, practical fingerings are there for a chromatic scale? I will wait for a few of you to holler before I put my 2 cents' worth in... And Andrew, what do you mean by "Most of the variants I've heard about before are geared around ..." ? All best, AFF

How many different, practical fingerings are there for a chromatic scale? I will wait for a few of you to holler before I put my 2 cents' worth in... And Andrew, what do you mean by "Most of the variants I've heard about before are geared around ..." ? All best, AFF Sorry- turning 3rd and 4th fingers onto black notes, I mean- rather than turning the thumb onto black notes. There's a very odd system I heard of, that might involve starting the left of A major or D major on the 2nd finger say. Absolutely useless for unison scales. Some of these ideas can make for useful variants elsewhere, but I'm not personally convinced it's necessarily easier to turn onto black notes unless you have a whole bunch of them While turning three over the l.h. thumb note B onto C sharp is very comfortable in B major, I find it highly cumbersome if a D natural follows. Personally I find turning onto white notes in standard D major fingering far more natural. I like the r.h. 4th finger on B flat for chromatics, although I've always been too lazy to incorporate the equivalent 4th on F sharp in the left. I was recently thinking of working on extending the 5 finger groups that Busoni suggests in Wilde Jagd. If the join can be covered, I doubt if there's any faster fingering- although it's obviously a pretty major 'if' when taking it out to an extended scale!

How many different, practical fingerings are there for a chromatic scale? I've taken to a repeating pattern of 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 in the right hand starting from E. I think I found it in the chromatic run in Chopin's Nocturne in E minor (at least, in the edition I've got). It's not dissimilar from the legato variant in Hanon, but wasn't too keen on his since it varies in each octave. I've not explored the left hand equivalent, but I guess it would be something like 5 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 starting on C sharp. I'll admit I haven't considered how well they'd work hands together, and haven't played around with either much, but they have some logic to me, which is probably why I remember them.

[I've taken to a repeating pattern of 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 in the right hand starting from E. I've not explored the left hand equivalent, but I guess it would be something like 5 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 starting on C sharp. I like these, they are new to me. Any others? Can anyone guess the one I'm looking for? AFF

[I've taken to a repeating pattern of 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 in the right hand starting from E. I've not explored the left hand equivalent, but I guess it would be something like 5 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 starting on C sharp. I like these, they are new to me. Any others? Can anyone guess the one I'm looking for? AFF Not the constant groups of all 5 fingers? I've considered one approach that involves never doing less than a group of three fingers in order to cut down on thumbs- although it's a little confusing due to repeating only every two octaves. I'd only ever use it for a hands separate scale. For the right hand descending from B flat (or left hand ascending from F sharp) it would be 4321 321 4321 321 4321 321 321 before repeating itself. I can't imagine anything that could possibly go quicker except for five finger groupings.

"For the right hand descending from B flat (or left hand ascending from F sharp) it would be 4321 321 4321 321 4321 321 321 before repeating itself." That's the one I was looking for. I forget who taught it to me in Montreal but this was considered the standard chromatic scale fingering to facilitate speed at the time. And we learned it hands together! Now: are there any other possibilities? AFF

That's the one I was looking for. I forget who taught it to me in Montreal but this was considered the standard chromatic scale fingering to facilitate speed at the time. And we learned it hands together! Now: are there any other possibilities? AFF Ah, interesting that it's the exact same one. To be honest I cheated a bit and did a quick google search. I saw someone mention the idea of trying to use the fourth finger as often as possible and it was the first thing I managed to come up with based on that principle. I think there's something very natural about how it fits the keyboard- even if it doesn't seem especially logical at a first glance. Once I figured it out, I couldn't see any other obvious alternative on the same lines. I think it would be very difficult to learn it by rote but it's already starting to feel quite natural by relating it to the layout of the keyboard. I still have to concentrate quite hard just for the one hand- but I'll have to try to get my head around doing it hands together sometime! Have you tried the constant 5 finger groups? I doubt if there's any other way to play the 10 note descending scales so quick in Wilde Jagd. They can literally sound like a glissando. However, I think it would take pretty much superhuman technique to do 3 or 4 groups of 5 fingers at that kind of speed, without an obvious hole. I have been trying it occasionally recently, but two groups is still about the limit of what I can reasonably get away with.