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| A common pop music piano arrangement! |
Were you "in the band?" Did you play some wind or brass instrument? Most of these contain a "fingering chart" at the start of their basic book. Bit by bit, the wind or brass player learns that a certain note on the staff is telling them to form their fingers as the fingering chart says. If the person sticks with it long enough, that note on that particular line or space (those who know something about music can understand me!) is thought of as a particular fingering on their instrument. Such folks usually advance to First Chair.
The problem with keyboarded instruments is that each song has a different fingering. This is so much so that CPE Bach spends his entire first chapter in his 1763 book "Essay on the Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments" on Fingering. That chapter runs a full 38 pages. However, it is very pragmatic, reflecting the fact that CPE had learned from his father,
Johann Sebastian, a professional musician who wanted to get a job done.
Another trouble is that the ideas of fingering are currently controlled by academics who change their minds on fairly regular basis. This creates problems, mostly for the student of keyboards.
A third trouble is that most popular music has zero fingering suggestions. If a student has never been trained in how to "make up" their own fingering, then the music has nothing to tell them and they are thus without directions (even, as you can grasp from my comment earlier, if the directions are not that great in the first place!)
This fingering thing can be a problem, sure. However, as great a trouble as it is, still folks don't find it enough trouble to stop them from wanting to play these instruments. That, I believe, is wonderful!
2 comments:
Great article -- Dan -- fingerings are a challenge until one learns proper finger placement and can recognize patterns of chords and notes.
This can take years of study -- yet the effort is worthwhile.
Interesting about CPE Bach learning from his dad.
Dan Starr replies:
Although keyboard is not as prone as guitar to PHYSICAL patterns, it is much easier to recognize notes as there is only a single location for each note (instead of multiple ones such as a guitar presents.) The real work is the fact that each song changes it's fingering, however, that is not beyond the bounds of doable for almost all humans.
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