As a beginner I find I spend a huge amount of time slowing down and repeating the videos trying to figure out fingerings. It would save so much time to have the fingerings marked on the pdfs. I realize that there are often multiple ways to finger something but at least as a place to start it would be helpful. Im also subscribed to irocku and their materials generally have the fingerings and I find Im making much faster progress as a result.
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Thanks for this suggestion @mleonard
What material are you working on exactly? ie. which course/lesson/song? Iâm sure I can give you some guidance with fingering and/or provide the fingerings for the piece your are working on.
We have thousands of PDF files on PianoGroove and so adding fingering to all of them would be a monumental task.
In addition, many of the PDF files on the site are quite advanced notation and it would be difficult to add all of the fingerings without the PDFs looking extremely cluttered.
Please can you provide a screenshot of an example? So that I can see what it is you are looking for and I will try my best to incorporate this for you.
The main goal of PianoGrooveâs beginner jazz lessons is to help students read and interpret lead sheets, and so I always recommend students not to become overly reliant on transcriptions or reading/playing jazz piano using 2-staff notation.
I appreciate that having the specific fingerings in notation could allow a student to more quickly recite a piece of music, but then when working from lead sheets without the fingering we would be back to square 1.
Anyhow, if you can let me know what material you are working on, I can give you some more specific guidance, as right now Iâm unsure if you want fingers for a chord worksheet, a progression worksheet, or a jazz standard arrangement.
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Thanks Hayden I appreciate the response and yes I realize it is impossible to add fingerings to all of your material. Iâm not stuck on any particular piece regarding fingering just that when I find material with the fingering I can get down to the actual practicing more efficiently . I know the ultimate goal is to read the lead sheets and improvise from them and not rely on transcriptions but as a beginner the best fingering is not always obvious. I want to establish sound fingerings that hopefully will become second nature sometime in the future. I suppose thatâs also why I should be practicing my scales and arpeggios according to best practices as well. Thanks
My pleasure, Michael.
I completely appreciate that fingerings would make it easier to sight-read the PDF jazz standard arrangements, for example, without having to consult a video file. The issue for me would be where to start adding fingerings as there so many PDF files on the website 
and also as you will see from my explanations below - I really donât think it would be in the best interest of the students.
Here are some general tips which I think will be useful for you:
1) Fingering For Chord Progressions:
If you check out the whole step 251 course here: 251 Drills & Exercises | Master The Most Important Progression In Jazz - you will see that in most cases my fingering stays the same throughout all 12 keys.
This applies to 251s with 3-note voicings, 251s with extended voicings (9s and 13s) and also 251s with altered tones (b9, #9, #11, #5). These hand positions or âgripsâ as they are sometimes called, are important shapes to practice, and the fingering usually stays consistent as you move through the keys.
Drilling progressions in the whole step sequence helps to internalise the starting positions, the movement between the chords, and also helps to build muscle memory so we can âfeelâ our way through the progressions. This can be achieved simply from lots of repetition.
The key point here is that once we have learnt the fingering for a 251 progression in 1 key, it typically stays the same, or very similar for the other 11 keys.
2) Fingering For Jazz Standards
As a beginner learning to play from jazz standards, it is difficult to visualise the fingering and the notes spread over 2 hands. I completely understand and a common question I receive from beginner students is âwhat is the formula for spread voicings?â.
Whilst there is no magic formula, there are general guidelines to follow, in particular:
Play the root of the chord with the left hand pinky, the melody note with our right hand pinky or 4th finger, and then the chord tones in between; often sharing the chord tones between both hands.
This doesnât work in every situation and so the best way to develop a good working knowledge of spread voicing fingering is simply from playing lots of tunes.
In the Novice category of jazz piano lessons, I move very slowly through the songs and the chord changes and so you should find in these lessons that you donât have to rewind/slow down/loop the video as much, as I move extremely slowly and hang around on the chords whilst explaining the theory.
I just added a new course to this section and so there are now 9 jazz standard studies split between 4 courses. I recommend to start on these courses as it will allow you to focus on the essentials of the harmony (roots, 3rds, and 7ths, and the voice leading) and once we are comfortable fingering the âskeletonâ of the chords, we can tweak our fingering if needed to include other tones like chord extensions and alterations that we cover in the more advanced courses.
3) Fingering For Chord Voicings
In the following 3 lessons on common and useful chord voicings - from our chord extensions course - we finish each lesson with a drill where we move the chord voicing through all 12 keys chromatically:
When performing these chromatic drills you will see that the fingering is often identical between all 12 keys. For example, when I play the âSo What Voicingâ or the âKenny Barron Voicingâ - my fingering is exactly the same for all 12 keys. So in reality, we only need to learn the fingering once and then apply it to all 12 keys.
The âHerbie Hancock Voicingâ fingering is not the same in all 12 keys. So that would be something to note and perhaps practice separately.
When we come to apply these voicings in context of a song/jazz standard, my fingering might change depending on what is happening in the melody, what chord is coming next or what chord I have come from in the previous bar etc⌠and so to tie back into point (2) itâs really important that you are playing lots of jazz standards.
I completely understand that it can be painfully slow when first starting out with jazz theory, but it becomes a lot easier with practice.
To give you some additional reassurance, I never used transcriptions when learning jazz piano and when transitioning from classical piano studies to jazz piano. I never was a strong sight reader so perhaps thatâs one reason 
- but the point Iâm trying to make is that by following the guidance and lesson links above you will develop the muscle memory to play chords, progressions, and standards, just using lead sheets and not needing a transcription.
I hope that helps and check out the lessons/website sections that I reference as a priority.
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Thanks for all this Hayden very useful!
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For what itâs worth: I, too, worried over fingering at first. Iâve come to find that itâs really a question of trial and error. Iâve seen charts with suggested fingering that just doesnât work for me. I think sometimes itâs a matter of hand size, flexibility, and familiarity with the material.
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