I mentioned "fingering" in another thread and I thought I would touch on it here too.

Something I never forgot. One of my best friends in London was an organist that could play just about anything. I really looked up to him. One day I said to him,jokingly, "is there anything you can't do on that keyboard?" His answer was "yes, correct fingering?" He went on to say he never learned how to use the fingers properly and that while he wasn't limited to what he could play, he had to do a lot of it "the hard way."

I was looking at my Chopin book, and noticed the run in one of the pieces was "going down the scale in thirds). The first "third" was fingers 2 and 5, and the next third was 4 and 1. It made me realize that, though I have fast fingers, I don't even have the best fingering myself. I get away with a lot of "runs" because I've been playing so long.

And finally, when I was young, all great musicians looked perfect on that keyboard. As I got older, I began noticing that many of them are self-taught. When I see a player now, I watch the hand movements. If the 4th and 5th fingers go up in the air while using the 1,2,3 fingers, you're not playing correctly. The same holds true for the thumb. If it goes up in the air while you're playing the 4th and 5th fingers....again...bad fingering. All fingers are supposed to be spread out evenly and just slightly above the keyboard during playing. The resting fingers don't move up or down while the active fingers are working.

It is all just interesting to me. Doesn't mean a hill of beans except to see where a lot of players are coming from. Did they teach themselves and that's why they're good? My personal opinion is the very "correct" players tend to play a bit too stuffy while the ones who are self-taught don't think about anything but playing good music!

Just felt like writing something before I went to bed.

Mark

Correct fingering comes mostly with classical trained keyboard players...

But since many of them never learned to play what they feel, but try to play whats written in sheetmusic, they often sound less naturall then selftought players..

Current teaching methods try and learn our youngsters both, play sheet music with correct fingering, while also playing based on their feelings, with no sheetmusic but still using correct fingering.. i.e. one day they are playing Chopin from sheetmusic, while the other day they are improvising on a Bluess mellody witouth any sheets or notes..

Mark
Look up the thread on Arpeggios. Doing scales then arpeggios correctly from the start is the key. Again no shortcuts for that.
I think the "stuffy" comes from the disciplined structure some players learned with. Same reason some are stuck to a printed score. Just can't cut loose.

Hi Bill.........thanks for reminding me about this thread. I actually already had it on my list of videos to watch when I finally switch to Broadband (which I have now).

With your prompting, I watched four of that series in a row, walked over to the piano and a whole new world unfolded for me. Like Donny, I never quite understood HOW a pianist plays variations of arpeggios, though if you listen to me you'd never know it.

Now......when I play "sus" chords, they are usually with 4th's. I tend to forget about the #2 note also being a "sus" tone to be used in a run. Plus, my arpeggios are pretty much up and down the scales....never thought about going up and down and UP again or breaking up that arpeggio in any way.

This was something I wish we had years ago. Tutorials on Youtube for just about anything. I don't even think you need lessons anymore. Almost everything is covered on video.

I'm now going to place my laptop on the piano and begin studying all of these videos. Some are amateurish, but the professional ones (that Donny mentioned here) are extremely helpful.

Mark