fingering numbers and why i pencil them over every hard measure
new module. we're done with "which key, how long." now it's "which finger," and this one saves you weeks of frustration if you do it early instead of after you've already taught your hand the wrong way.
here's the thing behind the thing. your hand only has five fingers and a piece of music might ask you to play seven or eight different notes in a row. so somebody has to decide, ahead of time, which finger plays which note, and when your thumb tucks under or your third finger crosses over to keep the hand from running out of room. that decision is fingering. the little numbers you see printed above or below notes, 1 through 5, thumb is always 1, pinky is always 5. same on both hands.
good sheet music prints fingering for you already, especially the beginner stuff. but plenty of pieces only mark it in the first measure or two and then leave you alone, assuming you'll keep using the same pattern. you won't. your hand will find whatever's easiest in the moment, which is usually wrong for the measure that comes four bars later. so it falls apart right when it matters.
why i pencil in my own
i keep a mechanical pencil sitting on the piano at all times, same as i keep a hook and a scrap of yarn wherever i'm crocheting. any measure that trips me up twice gets fingering written in, every note, before i try it a third time. i'm not guessing anymore after that. i've decided, on paper, and my hand just has to obey the decision instead of making a new one every pass.
i showed clyde from the ward my practice notebook once and he said it looked like a crime scene diagram. fair. numbers everywhere, circles, arrows showing where the thumb tucks under. it's not pretty. it works.
how to do this at home
find the measure that's giving you trouble. not the whole piece, just that one spot where your fingers keep landing wrong or you keep stopping.
play it slow, one note at a time, and as you play each note say out loud which finger you used. thumb, two, three. this feels silly. do it anyway.
now decide on purpose. usually there's a finger that makes the next stretch or the next black key easier to reach. write the number right above that note in pencil, small, so it doesn't crowd the notation.
play the measure again using exactly the fingering you wrote. not close to it. exactly. if it doesn't work, cross it out and try a different number. this is normal and it's not failure, it's the actual job of fingering, you're solving a small hand-shaped puzzle.
once it works twice in a row, slow, move on. don't speed it up yet. that's next lesson's problem.
a rule i actually hold to
show me the fingering before you play it. if a student comes to me with a hard measure, i ask them to point to each note and say the finger number before their hands touch the keys. catching the mistake in your head is free. catching it after your fingers have already memorized the wrong pattern costs you a week of unlearning it, and unlearning is always slower than learning right the first time. i know this one from experience, not theory, we'll get to that story eventually.
the posture thing, my opinion, take it or leave it
a lot of method books want you obsessing over curved fingers and a perfectly domed hand before you've even got the right notes down. i think that's backwards for a beginner. get the correct notes with the correct fingers first. fix the shape of your hand once your brain isn't actively on fire trying to remember what comes next. a beautifully curved hand playing the wrong note has helped nobody. ugly hand, right note, that i can work with.
that said, if your wrist is dropping low enough that it hurts, or you're bending your fingers back at the knuckle instead of curving them forward, stop and reset. that's not a style preference, that's your hand telling you something before it turns into a real strain. dry air and a stiff old keyboard action make this worse, so if your keys feel heavy and your hand's cramping, take a break before you push through it.
on the keyboard itself
this is also why i tell everyone to buy the cheapest full-size used keyboard with weighted keys instead of a cheap toy one off a shelf. weighted keys teach your fingers the actual resistance a real piano gives you, and fingering habits you build on springy toy keys don't transfer.
i bought mine off a classifieds listing, drove up to draper straight from a landscaping job, still covered in dirt. the guy who was selling it took one look at me and assumed i was the one there to sell, not buy. i tested every single key in his garage before i handed over any money, found two dead notes down in the bass, and used that to knock forty dollars off his price. worth the drive. worth showing up looking rough. check every key before you buy, always, dead notes are common on used ones and you won't hear them until you're home and it's too late to negotiate.
before next time
pick one measure from whatever you're working on that keeps snagging, and pencil in fingering for every note in it. don't do the whole piece, just that one spot. we'll build on it.