Tuesday 6 April 2010

Fingering patterns on all keyboard-ish instruments

So fingering patterns - I've just been thinking about this, prompted by the hurdy and by playing the piano in the pub a little more, also the prospect of playing (and ornamenting) piano accordions. I've also realised I probably want to play concertina.

I never really understood piano finger patterns intuitively as a classical pianist, they seemed just arbitrary and far too rule-like. However as with all music as soon as I try to understand something away from score it begins to click into place.

Fingering patterns for each keyboard like instrument are about getting the most efficient and relaxed hand movements and the using the natural flows or stops of the instrument to articulate the music really well.

It took me 3 years to properly grok how to communicate how it worked on harp. Hopefully the next instruments will take less time. I want patterns for piano and hurdy gurdy (and probably concertina). To be fair, I want meta-patterns.

So I'm going to start by looking for:
  • naturally fitting patterns under the hands
  • shapes in the music I'm playing that I need to acheive time and time again
  • solutions to the awkward things
Like all aural traditions the craft, the art is the composition of something complex from relatively few small chunks. If you go in with that expectation then it makes it a lot easier to analyse. Trouble is the frequency of thoe chunks changes for each group of repertoire, like syllables in a language. For the hurdy music I'll pick English tunes and the few French and Breton tunes I know, for piano it's got to be Irish and English, with the added excitement that I'm adapting for different right and left hands.

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