I'm a little bit confused at the moment. I have a few new students coming from other teachers and they are terrible at reading fingering. I keep reminding them that it's there and that they have to read it but they kind of ignore it. I have discovered that these previous teachers have been scribbling out the fingering written in the music so that the students are not used to reading it. I find this really strange. Why would you get rid of something so important?! Maybe this is the way I am meant to be doing it but I cannot understand how this helps. Please tell me if I'm wrong but isn't fingering one of the most important parts of learning the piano?

Maybe the other teacher is trying to get pupils to recognise from the shape of the music when to move, rather than have to have it spelled out? Otherwise it's a bit of a mystery to me. I always try fingering as written and if I find it difficult to think that way I don't have any hesitation in changing it. The exam regs say that they will only ever comment on choice of fingering if it gets in the way of the quality of the performance, so if you can produce a smooth legato with the "wrong" fingers so be it. But I just can't learn a piece unless I am at least consistent with fingers, I get it all worked out and then practice over and over with the exact same fingering each time, and I just can't imagine someone crossing out all this information then wanting students to practice with the potential they will practice one set of fingers the first time and a different set the second time, I just can't see how that is building on proper practice.

And this from someone who is neither piano teacher nor dedicated student nor huge advocate of fingering rules!

If these are easy pieces, where the hands don't move around the keyboard, my guess is (similar to RoseRodent's first comment) that the teacher was trying to avoid the pupils 'reading by finger numbers' and instead trying to encourage them to read / find the notes.

In pieces less elementary, fingering is of course an individual matter and what suits one hand will not necessarily suit another. (Although I prefer to think in terms of useful / unhelpful fingering rather than right or wrong). But if there is wholesale crossing out, it suggests it may be the former - ie superfluous. I regularly 'tippex' out unnecessary finger numbers in order that they are not relied on.

The brain has to be "programmed" just like a PC. The player is the one who has to appreciate this. The phrasing is all important to make musical "sense". The process of programming can only be by constant repettition. This means that , if a particular bar needs extra work to get the fingers and hand position habitual, 20 or 30 repeats of the difficult bar is not too many, each hand separately, then together. This is the only way to perfect the fingering, and hence an accurate performance. Even the greatest pianists will practice in this way. All physical skills need this dedication, even in sport or working machinery. Boring it may be, but essential. Not all editors remember that they may have larger hands than young players, so the piano teacher must alter fingering to make sure the phrasing can be achieved. Busylizzie

I too scrub out fingering, but again only when the hands don't need to move anywhere, ie they should read the notes and not rely on the fingerings, but because their hands don't move they will use the same fingers each time (e.g. RH 1 on C, 2 on D etc for whole piece).

Once the hands start moving around, I point out how useful fingering can be and we don't scrub it out anymore...

The danger of not doing this is that they may never read the notes properly, just the fingerings, and might even connect the numbers with the notes! I showed my young cousin a few things once and she initially decided that middle C was 'one', D was 'two' etc, and then played them with whatever fingers she liked...d'oh. So we worked on that, but it was only one 'lesson'. Wish I could teach her but she lives really far away.

Nor do they consider that they may have smaller hands than some of us.

Actually I think that editors often go out of their way to find fingerings and ways of sharing notes between the hands that suit smaller hands. Many of the fingerings in "student editions" are silly and fussy even for normal sized hands that can take an octave comfortably and a ninth if they have to, never mind the sort of hands that you'll find on most adult men that stand over 6 feet tall.

I've had that with beginners as well....It's the wally factor - we take things as read and forget about the wally factor. Kids are logical little machines, really. It's us teacher/programmers that can miss the wally factor - we being the wallies!

I agree with you about when finger numbers should be there and when they shouldn't in beginner stages. If 1 is on D, for instance, it makes no sense for a 2 to be written in at E. The child needs to see from the notes that E is next door to D and use whatever finger works best, which, unless they've lost a digit in a mincer, will be 2. A starter finger number is a good idea at the the beginning, but after that, I think it's best to teach them that "that number is written in as a suggestion as to what will work best here, seeing as you've had to change hand position". The other time it's handy is when 3 or 4 needs to be brought over the thumb - they may not be looking ahead enough at this stage to see whether they will need to play a further 3 or 4 notes in the downward direction, and possibly run out of fingers unless they can grow another thumb. (Although bringing another 2 over shows an initiative which will help in sight reading!) We can be too restrictive in our teaching, and actually make younger pupils unnecessarily hesitant.

I actually prefer to see beginners ignoring finger numbers rather than relying on them. It shows they're thinking for themselves, and trying to keep going. Sometimes it just adds too much to think about when they have to find the note and then think about the finger as a separate issue. Like always working out a letter name, it can provide a block in the forward process. If their own fingering works, we leave it; if it's not ideal, I'll suggest - only suggest - something else.

However it's not clear what standard of pupil the original poster is talking about. Coming from another teacher, they may not be beginners. Consistency of fingering (not right or wrong, but consistency) becomes much more important as time moves on, but this (in practice and performance) is a different matter to what I've just been waffling on about with regard to teaching beginners to read the music.



Add on 'somewhat stout', and it can all become actually quite funny.

Like others I wouldn't expect 'reading' fingering. It does tend to stop them reading the notes with the added problem of not noticing note values either.
In the early stages I aim for as little as possible and later on fingering generally indicates a change of hand position. I've even begun changing fingering in beginner books ...... I really don't see the need to play G with 4th finger of LH if that's the ONLY note that the LH is playing in a piece.....I wouldn't do it so why should my young students?
As Dulciana said it's consistentcy that's important.

Just to reply to everyone's comments. The pieces are about Grade 1/2 standard and with a lot of moving. That's why I'm frustrated, they do their own awkward fingering and when I point out that the fingering is there to help they seem to have not even noticed it. I agree that you don't need a lot of fingering at times and I do change it if it's not working. Also, it's not the same teacher that I have students from it's a few different teachers. That's why I thought I was going mad. For me, you must do the same fingering all the time in a piece and learn how to read it with the notes.

Sounds like it needs more training to take notice when needed then.
I'd start by going through pieces (or sections of pieces) carefully in the lesson before sending them home. It's quite likely you do this already. Maybe also use this as an opening to teach a practice skill by identifying and siolating position changes for practice before putting them into context?
Not doing it doesn't necessarily indicate that they've not been told. Sometimes it can take a long time for things to sink in. And that's not including those who like to think that their own way is fine anyway.

I prefer pupils to look at the notes more than the fingering, especially around grade 1 - 2 level - it's where it starts moving around a lot and the 'fingering-readers' become very poor sight-readers/new piece learners.

That said, there are always a few key fingering moves.

In a piece with about 20 markings, I'll highlight (marker pen, ringed ten times) 5 or 6 as being essential i.e. you MUST put your thumb on that note at the start of the passage or turn onto the 4th at that point because everything else sort of follows and otherwise you stand no chance.

Scales! Far from a pianist, but in the context I know, a string player has a similar issue in that intitially they have very numbered and marked part showing all their recommended position changes, but as they progress they need to be able to read ahead to see that they are going to run out of fingers or come across something awkward that will not fly in 1st position, and they need to make sure they are up in 2nd+ in good time. So at that point I'd set some pieces that are thoroughly marked in the positions, then some pieces that are only outlined at the shift points and then on to pieces where positions have to be worked out for yourself. You don't want them reliant on a marked part but you don't want them failing to notice what is a good shift and what is likely to result in a dodgy moment. Through that process they learn what is easy and what is awkward for them personally as some find it easiest to shift onto the first finger (piano 2nd) and others like to shift onto the 2nd, and I wouldn't want to impose fingers from a text onto someone if it interferes with their fluency.

Maybe if this student is not thinking ahead to the issues of fingering and substituting awkward stuff because he's not noticed to work ahead it would be useful to go through a new piece together and work out where he thinks he's going to need to change positions, what way he thinks he's going to get to that note, so then it's his input and choices but also you are constantly reinforcing the idea that fingers matter, and you can't just busk through and suddenly find you need an extra finger and shove anything on it. Let him show you what fingers he was planning for that section and then point to the next bit and say right, how are we going to hit that note there? Wouldn't it be easier if we went like this, create a shape for yourselves and then he's kind of part of the promise to use those fingers? When he gets used to working from his own finger markings maybe he'll just naturally start to notice suggestions in new pieces. We can but hope.

And just from what some others are saying yes if a book arrived with each and every finger marked on it I'd scrub them out too! A student has to learn to make the connections. When I used to support the string sections in a junior orchestra I came across way too many parts where the kids had written on each and every finger number and sometimes even drawn the spacing diagrams on them too! Not sure if these children could read music, they would certainly have come a cropper at sight-reading. You need these things marked in a "teach yourself" book to reinforce that you have to use fluency of 12345, but not in a book you take to a teacher.

My daughter (who is playing at around grade 1) uses what I think are awkward and inconsistent fingerings. She has just changed teachers and her new teacher is trying to fill in the gaps in her technique. At the end of her last lesson I said something to her new teacher about her fingering not being logical and her teacher said that it was because my daughter's hand shape hasn't been properly formed and the muscles aren't properly developed and that what seems logical and comfortable to us is no more logical to her than her own "weird" fingering. She said it happens a lot with children who have played too complicated pieces too early (an accurate assessment of what my daughter did with her previous teacher).

Alongside her grade 1 level pieces, she has given her warm up finger exercices to do (which previous teacher had not done with her) and also some five finger position duets to reinforce hand position. She said that she is confident it will sort itself out once her finger and hand muscles have developped a little more.

You simply have to insist on fingering at all times, pupils will just keep ignoring those magic numbers by the notes, out of laziness. Every professional or talented amateur pianist knows how vital fingering is, Chopin, of all great teachers, insisted that assiduous repetition of correct fingering is the only way to fluent execution of passages.

I find the ABRSM grade books to be consistently good with suggested fingering but of course, as previously pointed out on this thread, people are individuals and sometimes they can be changed.

Kerioboe, I have inherited a number of (French) students who fall exactly into that category - they have played way too complicated pieces way too early and have never developed the basic 5-finger-5-notes hand position.
One girl could quite happily play C with her thumb and then D with her 4th finger (the other fingers sort of cramped together and sticking upwards) AND not see any problem. She could cross the third finger over the second or indeed under - anything goes in fact.
We spent a term doing 5-finger position pieces/exercises (she couldn't read music either so it all went together - and yet was playing a Grade 3 piece!) but it took her at least 18 months to really sort it out - and even now, if in difficulty, she'll revert to type. It takes patience but it does come right.