I’m pleased to present something I’ve been working on, on and off, for a while now. I’m pretty excited about it, and I hope you will check it out and let me know what you think.
This project developed from my own need to quickly and easily create fingering diagrams for the woodwind instruments that I play and teach. Frequently I find myself scribbling saxophone altissimo fingerings onto a scrap of paper during a private lesson, cutting-and-pasting at the photocopier to put together simplified charts for a woodwind methods class, or penciling cryptic markings into musical scores to remind myself which pinky finger to use.
And so, I’m pleased to introduce the Fingering diagram builder. I hope you’ll take it for a spin.
[One caveat: it currently doesn’t work in any version of Internet Explorer, due to IE’s lack of support for SVG graphics. If you’re an IE user, I hope you’ll consider downloading an excellent, free alternative browser and give the Fingering diagram builder a try anyway.]
Here’s a taste of what the Fingering diagram builder can do.
I created and downloaded this array of some of my favorite F-sharp fingerings in under two minutes (really). Click to see them larger.
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| flute | oboe | clarinet |
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| bassoon | saxophone | recorder |
These six instruments are immediately available, but I hope to add a few more soon. Hit me up with your requests.
Some of the instruments have cool options if you mess around with the “Keywork” toolbar. Here are a few of the most obvious examples:
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| The oboe chart has English horn keys, too. | The clarinet chart can do bass clarinet. | And the saxophone chart can accomodate a baritone’s low A (or even a soprano with a high G). |
The “Options” toolbar lets you resize or customize the look of the diagrams:
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| Change the line thickness. | Use colors to show trills or optional keys. | ||
The downloaded images are in .PNG format, which means they are compatible with virtually all current word processing, graphics, and music notation software. Plus the file sizes are small, so they can be easily dropped into an email or blog post. (You may have seen some early versions of these fingering diagrams appearing in my own blog over the past year or more.)
I’m interested in your feedback, so let me know if you run into any problems, or if you have an idea how the Fingering diagram builder can be more useful. Leave a comment below, or send me email.
And, be sure to subscribe to the feed so you won’t miss upcoming articles with tips and tricks on using the Fingering diagram builder.
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