How important is fingering when following the tutorials?

General Discussion
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I’m currently going over the Moon River course and I noticed that sometimes the video shows a huge stretch going over two octaves or some fingerings on the right hand that feel a bit odd/unnatural to me.

Should I try to use the same fingerings or just do what feels normal to me? I’m still a novice/intermediate so I’m not sure if I’m developing bad habits and if I should just imitate how the keys are being played in the tutorials.

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Hi @jasonzaps :wave:

Good question.

We all have different sized hands and so it’s difficult to give exact fingerings that work for everyone.

My recommendation would be to try the fingerings demonstrated in the lessons but feel free to make tweaks, or perhaps omit notes to make the big stretches more comfortable.

Here are some general rules to follow:

  • Always be mindful to keep your wrists in a natural position, ie. not contorting and twisting your wrist to reach the notes. If this is the case, try to rearrange the notes into a smaller register of the piano which is usually possible and I do try to give suggestions for this in many of my jazz standard lessons.

  • It’s better to keep our thumbs off the black notes as this can put the hand and the wrist in an unnatural position. In some instances this is the only option so even that rule has exceptions. For example, when playing chords in ‘black keys’ such as Eb-11 or Gbmaj9.

  • When learning new voicings, it is useful play them chromatically so that we can see similarities (and differences) in the fingerings between the different keys. Check out the first 4 theory lessons in our Chord Extensions Course where we cover 3 useful voicings (Kenny Barron Voicing, So What Voicing, & Herbie Hancock Voicing) and at the end of each lesson I demonstrate playing the voicings chromatically up and down the piano.

  • When starting out with extended and altered chords, the shapes can feel unnatural as often we are playing 6, 7, or even 8 notes in a chord voicing which is different from other styles of music. After taking a voicing up and down the piano chromatically and practicing this for a few days or weeks you should find that you build up muscle memory and that the voicing shapes are easier to both play and visualise.

I hope that helps. If you want to share any specific voicings that are causing you trouble, I can give some suggestions with alternate fingerings or exercises that might help these shapes to become more comfortable and natural.

Cheers,
Hayden

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