“Use your 2nd finger, find D, hold it for two beats while your left hand plays an F# for one beat. Don’t forget the pedal. Make sure you’re playing mezzo forte.”
Piano students have a lot to think about! The above is just a snap-shot of what they need to be thinking just to play one note of a piece! For a young child this can be overwhelming. And when things become overwhelming, something’s got to give. That something is often fingering.
Bringing Piano Fingering From Forgotten to Functional
In order for your beginning piano students to flourish as intermediate and then advanced players, they need you as their teacher to be on top of this from the very start. It’s all fine and dandy to invent your own fingering when you’re playing easy repertoire, but incorrect and improper fingering hinders flexibility, speed, accuracy and even musicality when playing more difficult pieces. And while reminding them repeatedly to use the correct fingers, highlighting finger numbers on their page, and writing in finger numbers in difficult sections of their piece seem to work in the short term… those same students will turn around and require the same reminders and crutches on their next piece.
Fixing Piano Fingering
While you may have a difficult time convincing your piano students to care about correct fingering… and while you may still encounter oddly inventive fingering from time to time, the following tips will help to fix fingering issues with your beginning piano students.
1) Learn to find natural hand shapes on the piano – a basic rule of thumb (excuse the pun!) with piano fingering is that it should feel natural. Playing with correct fingering is in large an intuitive process. Teaching your piano students to be comfortable with hand shapes on the piano will get them used to easily and intuitively finding the correct fingering for a given passage. Think root position chords, inversions, intervals, dominant and diminished chords etc. Can your student quickly find how these “feel”?
2) Play scales, triads and arpeggios fluently – once your students hit more advanced repertoire you can bet they will encounter a lot of these in their pieces. Starting with scales, chromatic scales, triads and arpeggios from the very beginning of their piano education does them a big favour. And don’t always start with the easy ones. You create a mindset of “difficult” when you save scales like C# minor harmonic for later in their piano career. “It’s not difficult… it’s different”… my students hear this a lot!
3) Be consistent – this is key when working on fingering. Teach your students to use the same fingering on recurring passages, repeated motives and sequences within their piece. Consistency when practising also counts. Write needed fingering onto their page so that they learn use the same fingers each and every time. This will also aid in the memorization of their pieces.
So, the next time your student attempts to tuck their thumb onto a black key or “bunny hops” their 5 finger to the key beside… remind yourself that it’s worth it to stop and really fix it; this means not simply correcting the fingering in the moment, but correcting the way they approach fingering in general.
Looking for more piano technique tips? Check out our other posts below:
How To Teach Piano To Kids: Building Strength And Dexterity In Little Fingers
3 Video Tips For Solving Your Piano Student’s Stiff “Pinky Finger” Problem
leslie says
Yes!!! And I also feel free to change strange fingerings I encounter in certain editions, and take the opportunity to explain to the student why we are changing it, based on good fingering principles. I’ve found that my students gradually learn to fix such ‘mistakes’ on their own. Great article!
Ryan Record says
Very well said,
I think it is important for us to point out what actually is natural. Sometimes bad fingerings feel natural at the time to inexperienced players but it is our job to govern that a little bit without always giving away the answers.
I usually just let my students make fingering mistake the first time and then I am going to an explanation of why we use a different one.
I never really thought of using chords as a way of covering fingering but it is something I think I’m going to try
Sandra says
I have a student who avoids using certain fingers. I can get things going at the lesson and she reverts to her favourite fingers at home. What has done the trick is reverting to an older method book heavily over fingered. She has learned that that if she uses the suggested fingering everything goes more smoothly. BUT I plan to ease her out of that book soon. …My mission has been accomplished, and I don’t want her to become dependent on those finger numbers.