The Traffic-Jam-Free Piano Fingering - Cairns' Style - Comfort in Every Bar. Certain in Every Key.

My dear Piano Lovers,

Playing the piano can be great fun and deeply satisfying, as long as you have a score with an appropriate piano fingering for you in front of you.

The question everyone asks themselves is what really makes a good piano fingering.

In this blog article, I am not going to go into details as far as the selection of an appropriate piano fingering for you personally is concerned, but rather the layout and how often a figure for a piano fingering has to be placed inside one bar or repeated in a couple of neighbouring bars.

How do you play the piano?

In my opinion, there are three types of piano players.

The first type looks at the score and at the keys. Therefore, their attention is constantly divided between those two places.

The second type, who has already memorised the score and does not need to look at it anymore, only looks at the keyboard while playing.

The third type is perhaps the rarest one, as they just look at the score, and their hands find their way seemingly blindly over the keyboard, with only very occasional glances down at it.

As most non-professional piano players seem to be the first type, it is essential that every time you look at the score again, you find the bar with the piano fingering in question as quickly as possible.

The Optical Layout of a Good Piano Fingering

Not only due to the fact that most dynamics are placed in the middle of the staves, the piano fingering for the left or the right hand can be more easily grasped if the figures for the right hand are placed above and for the left hand below the notes.

In case of legato slurs, the figures ought to be put above or, if feasible, below the outer curve.

As a straight horizontal line can mostly not be achieved because the upper or lower lines of the notes vary within their stave, the figures of the piano fingering should be written quite close to and above the note in question, outside the staves, and without endangering readability.

The Practical Use of Piano Fingering

I often compare piano fingering to a set of handrails next to a flight of well-known stairs.

After some practice of the left and the right hand, you might feel quite sure when to put which finger on which key—and that is how it should be.

However, as soon as you start practising together, it often becomes more demanding to keep the learnt piano fingering for each hand securely in mind.

Therefore, the moment you look up at your score for help, you have to find the bar in question (together with a hopefully helpful piano fingering) within a really short space of time.

It is, consequently, not helpful at all if you have just a rudimentary or no piano fingering at all to rely on in one or even several bars of your piece.

As I am in favour of practising small snippets, I usually provide myself, and my students, with a piano fingering as elaborate as necessary.

I do, however, refrain from putting the same figure above or below repeating notes, as long as I do not make use of those to prepare for a position change at this very point.

Because this is all very theoretical, I end this blog article with a picture of an outtake of the score of an Irish limerick, so that you should be able to judge the layout of my piano fingering for yourself.

A "Doing it Cairns' Style" Piano Fingering: An extract of the traditional Irish limerick "Michael Finnigin", featuring a tidy layout outside the staves, explicit handrails next to bar lines, and a windgust effect carefully composed by Giselle Anna Cairns within the bass clef.

Did you ask yourself why, in piano’s name, did I put the metaphor of the traffic jam in the heading?

Well, as you may get stuck because of too less or too many figures in a piano fingering, this might force you to slow down or even stop involuntarily.

But I must admit that too many figures above or below notes might lead to some sort of mental traffic jam for the player as well…

Should you care to receive the full score for free, kindly drop me a line (via email), and I shall send it to you as a PDF file post haste.