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.
[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.
flute
oboe
clarinet
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:
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:
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.
I’m pleased to announce that I have accepted a new faculty position, teaching clarinet and saxophone at Mississippi State University. It has been a pleasure to work with the clarinet and saxophone studios there on a part-time basis during the past year, and I’m looking forward to hitting the ground running, full-time, in August.
The timing is good, as I’ve just finished my final year at Delta State University due to the closure of its music department (and others) as a cost-saving measure. My heart goes out to those who are still looking for a soft landing.
And if you are looking for a great place to study music, please do reach out! Hail State!
One of my former teachers, Dr. Kenneth Fischer, passed away yesterday, after a brief illness.
Dr. Fischer was a protégé of Eugene Rousseau, and, over the past 30 years at the University of Georgia, established himself as a major force in classical saxophone performance and teaching. His close associations with composers like the late Jindřich Feld fueled an influx of new compositions for the instrument. He was active and involved with the World Saxophone Congress and the North American Saxophone Alliance, and was making plans to host the latter’s 2010 conference.
Read the UGA Hugh Hodgson School of Music announcement here.
Here are a few things that I learned from Dr. Fischer.
Some things about saxophone playing:
You shouldn’t have to strain for the altissimo notes. Relax and let them come.
Every note is part of a larger musical gesture. Every note.
There’s something to be said for keeping the fingers close to the keys and closing them with a feather touch, but it’s also worth exploring larger, more aggressive movements for fingering. Saxophone keys aren’t flute keys.
Every sound is interesting and beautiful and musical. If the composer calls for key pops or multiphonics or flutter tonguing, commit to making those sounds really work musically. Practice them like you mean it.
Sometimes, what you really need is to struggle with a piece that’s way over your head. Other times, what you really need is to play a piece that you can absolutely nail. Do some of each.
A pleasing tone doesn’t mean much without good pitch and rhythm. Don’t just work on fundamentals, work on all the fundamentals.
One of Dr. Fischer’s favorite things to say to a student after a recital was, “That was terrific! But next time, use a reed.” It was a joke. Or was it?
Some things not about saxophone playing:
Relationships with other people are more important than anything, even music.
Take time to talk to people. Hear their stories, and share yours. Everything else can wait.
Every birthday deserves a celebration, complete with singing and cake.
The most recent release of the Fingering Diagram Builder introduces some “shortcut” controls that make it easy to turn certain keys on and off. For example, with a quick check/un-check of a box you can turn on clarinet half-holes or some non-standard keys.
Or, as always, there’s a dropdown list of “key sets” (which I referred to as “presets” in previous FDB versions) to turn on and off the right keys for a complete instrument variant.
“Bass clarinet, pro,” for example, turns on (among other things) the right thumb keys down to low C found on many professional bass clarinets. “Standard Boehm” turns them off.
All of these menu controls work by changing the behavior of the keys present in the instrument diagram. The behavior of each key, or group of keys, can be set to “Always,” “Never,” or “As needed.”
If you have a specific set of keys in mind, you can set the behavior of each key directly. Let’s say I have a fancy new oboe with a left-hand “long” C-sharp key and a left thumb low B key, and I want to make a fingering chart to map out some of the new fingering possibilities. (There’s currently an easy check-box for the left C-sharp, but we’ll ignore that for now to explore the hands-on method.)
I’ll start with the thumb B key. If I open the “Keywork details” section of the menu, and then the “More keywork details” section, I see a long list, partially pictured here.
The last key in the picture is the key I want to use in my fingering chart. Before we go on, notice that its name is aligned all the way to the left, meaning that it is a stand-alone key, not part of a group of keys. A little above it you can see the name “Thumb octave keys,” with four keys below it and indented. “Thumb octave keys” is a group, and the keys listed below it (“First octave key,” etc.) are in that group.
Okay. “Left thumb low B” is currently set to “Never,” which is pretty self-explanatory: the key simply never appears in the diagram.
Setting it to “Always” is also clear enough: the key will be visible all the time, pressed or not. If I set it to “Always” and don’t press any of the oboe keys, here’s what the diagram looks like:
Visible in this image are the six “main” keys, with a little horizontal line visually separating the left hand from the right hand, plus the thumb low B key. All of these are now set to “Always.” The other keys—the octave keys, the little finger keys, etc., are not visible. This particular layout is probably not what I want. Some people like every available key (including the octave keys, etc.) to be visible in every image, but I prefer and recommend showing only the most relevant ones for the particular fingering. The left low B will only be relevant for a specific note or two.
So let’s set that key to “as needed” instead. Since this key isn’t part of a larger group, its “as needed” behavior is easy to understand. When it’s pressed, it appears in the image. When it’s not, it doesn’t. I will still be able to see where the key is while I’m using the FDB, because it will appear in gray outline when I hover over the diagram with my mouse or trackpad, or appear constantly if I’m using a touch device, but it won’t be part of the downloaded image.
If I set it to “As needed” and hover my mouse pointer over the diagram in the FDB, I see this, with the left low B present:
And if I download the image, I see this:
Now let’s turn to the left C-sharp key. Since it is part of a group (“Left little finger keys”) its behavior is a little more complex. Here’s what the group’s behavior settings look like for the “Conservatory” key set:
Several of the keys are set to “Always,” and several are set to “Never.” But the group itself is set to “As needed.” Here’s how that works: if none of those keys is pressed, the FDB determines the group is not “needed,” so none of the keys are visible. But if any of the “Always” keys is pressed, the FDB considers the group needed and makes it visible, including all the “Always” keys within it. (The “Never” keys are still not visible.) So, for example, if I press the “Left E-flat,” I get this:
Only the left E-flat is pressed, but the other keys in the group appear too, to give a little visual context.
So, to make the left C-sharp available, I will set it to “Always.” But when an oboe has a left C-sharp, the left F-key usually gets moved over a little and has a little different shape. So I’m also going to set “Left F” to “Never,” and “Left F (with low C-sharp),” a key designed for this situation, to “Always.” Now I have this (low C-sharp in red, altered left F in yellow):
By setting the behavior of individual keys, you can do just about any combination of keys you can think of. And you can use the “Custom key sets” menu to save your settings for future use.
This system also makes it relatively easy for me to add obscure or unusual keys to the diagrams, and keep them hidden except when people need them for specific purposes. So, if there are keys you would like to have in your images, and you didn’t find them in the “More keywork details” list, let me know and I’ll consider adding them in future versions. It’s extra-helpful if you can send good photos.
Today makes ten years since I started the blog. At the five-year mark I did a little retrospective, and I don’t think there’s much need to do it again. Basically the things I was excited about and proud of then are the things I’m excited about and proud of now. Other than publishing my book, which grew largely out of this blog, it has mostly been more of the same: another 250 or so posts, another few hundred musicals added to the doubling list, new and updated web tools and resources for musicians, and of course lots of comments, emails, donations, and other happy connections with woodwind players around the world. I hope you will continue to read, engage, and of course make music.
A few weeks ago I put out a request for questions from my readers. I got some good ones, and here are some answers:
Backstage with my instruments and a space heater. Only one of us enjoys the recital hall’s powerful air conditioning.
I’m pleased to share some audio clips from my recent faculty recital at Delta State University.
It was the first evening concert of the new semester, so a nice crowd of students came to start accumulating their recital attendance points, as well as colleagues, friends, and community members. No one seemed daunted by the prospect of a solid hour of Debussy.
I enjoyed playing the flute Syrinx, clarinet Première Rapsodie, and saxophone Rapsodie, all of which I had studied in school but never performed publicly. The brief and charming clarinet Petite Pièce was new to me, and seemed to be a crowd favorite. I rounded out the recital with some of Debussy’s piano works, arranged for oboe and piano and for bassoon and piano. It works well for me to play all of the reed instruments on a recital, because that gives all my reed-playing students something to sink their teeth into, and the fabulous Dr. Shelley Collins was very gracious about me playing a flute piece on her turf. You can read my program notes here.
Having learned a couple of things from the last recital, I warmed up a little more extensively this time, and also brought in a space heater to keep my instruments warm backstage in the icy air conditioning. Both of these things seemed to help make the evening go more smoothly. One new experiment for me was the use of a bassoon harness, so I played that instrument standing up for the first time in public.
Thanks, Tim. I regret that it doesn’t work with IE. I’ve worked a few different angles to try to solve this, but haven’t been able to come up with a solid solution. I wrestled with the issue of whether to release this to the public while it still has the IE problem.
The upcoming version 9 of IE is expected to have SVG support. I’ve experimented a little with the beta release, but in these early stages there still appear to be significant glitches—hopefully these will be ironed out at some point.
This is great and very easy to work with. I would like to request the option for contrabassoon as a set of keys for bassoon in addition to standard and student. This does entail adding another key option as some contrabassoons do have low A keys even though the one I’m currently playing on does not.
Thanks, Richard. Contrabassoon is definitely part of the plan. I didn’t get it done for this initial release because there’s some variation in keywork and I wanted to research it a little more thoroughly first. Keep your eyes peeled for it, though!
I’d like to see some option to generate a reverse image. I find it easier in many cases to conceptualize the fingering as if I am looking in a mirror (or through the instrument a la x-ray vision). For the bassoon, it would probably be prudent to allow the thumb quadrants to be reversed independently (if at all) since those keys are directly visible but not in the mirror. More to follow as I have fun playing with this excellent tool…
Hey, Tim, that’s an interesting idea and one that I will think over. I do want the selection of available fingering charts to grow, and it’s certainly a technical possibility to have multiple diagrams available for each instrument, to suit various tastes or needs.
This is excellent! Thank you very much for all of your work on this. I will now be able to email my students clear diagrams of bassoon fingering without having to make silly drawings for them every lesson.
Very nicely done, Brent. I would ask for only one more feature. Would it be possible to show also the actual holes that are not touched by the fingers but operated by levers via depressing another key?
For example the Bb key hole operated by the Bis key on sax or the Bb hole on top of the left hand of flute that is operated by the thumb or right hand 1 or the right hand above the F key.
There are many non-standard, alternative fingerings used for pitch control or change to timbre that need to notate these keys that are usually not touched.
Thanks, Jerry, that’s an interesting idea. If you (or anyone out there) have a good example of a fingering chart that shows those kinds of techniques, I would be interested in seeing one.
As always your website continues to astound me with the scope of the content offered!
I was just checking out your fingering chart builder – looks great! – and had a thought for a possible future update. It would be great to have the option to attach notation for the note you are fingering to the diagram.
For example, build a clarinet E fingering first line and then open the “notation builder” window and attach the staff/clef/note/necessary accidentals for that particular fingering.
That’s an idea that I had toyed with for initial release, but I have abandoned it for now. The trick is that I want the FDB to be useful to people doing unusual fingerings—trills, tremolos, multiphonics, etc., which could mean having to show multiple notes on the staff, and it started to seem too much like writing a full-blown notation program. I’ve still got the idea in the back of my mind, and will continue to consider it for future versions.
Just wanted to let you know how fantastic this tool is! I’m a composer and whenever I use mulitphonics, timbre trill etc. I like to notate the fingerings in the score and parts. This tool makes it’s so much easier both for the composer and the musicians! Thank you so much!
I love that you can use colors to show the trills but would it be possible to have the option to show a trill sign as well/instead? I’ve seen this in a lot of scores and although using colors is great in educational settings (fingering charts and so on) scores are usually printed in black/white. This is just a future suggestion as it’s fairly easy to achieve this by adding a trill sign in Sibelius or Finale, but I would be great to have it in your fantastic tool as well!
came across your tool via FB. Your tools seems to me a great thing to have, thank you for this!
A suggestion that might be easily to build in as you mention svg already:
How about adding an svg export option to the system? All your export features for now (png/tiff) are pixel-based, i.e. resizing them will result in blurry graphics. With a vector-based format such as svg, it would be possible to generate resizeable (and therefore also properly printable) charts.
svg can easily be converted into eps and pdf format ,something IMHO you do not necessarily have to provide as people can do that by themselves.
Another suggestion would be to look at differences in european and UK fingerings on e.g. clarinettes; might be interesting for people to even be able to convert between. (no idea how easy that’d be though and I like your tendency to provide a simple tool rather than an feature-laden beast).
As a third suggestion, I’d like to point you to my controller booklet, an attempt to graphically represent various MIDI controllers. There’s a PDF with all of them available, maybe you want to add them to your tool as well :)
Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Vector export is a possibility for future releases, as is expansion into additional keywork systems (such as various European clarinets). Conversion between keywork systems is unlikely because the FDB contains no fingering logic—it doesn’t “know” fingerings for specific notes.
This is great! The middle school band director in has a suggestion. What would put this over the top would be to have a way students could have entire fillable fingering chart and not just one note. I could assign this and have them fill it in, download the pdf and send back to me for a grade.
Hi, I am a very new (but fairly elderly) Alto student and one learning resource I would really appreciate in my starting phase would be a scale chart with fingering. Your superb fingering diagram builder gives all the tools required but my snails pace manipulation will make it a lifetimes work to produce. I’m sure you understand what I am describing however I have enclosed a link to an image of what I am trying to find. This type of chart would help those of us who have little music experience to get a firm grip on scales and although I and others would outgrow it as our familiarity with the Sax increased it would turbocharge our first few months, thank you, Don Buchanan https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2Fac%2F53%2F55%2Fac5355dfe5fce0cbe37eb4f699da7e99.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F6403624455358586%2F&tbnid=dPiJ6dblGzExxM&vet=12ahUKEwizlPHxhcDuAhW5R30KHR8IDy0QMygAegUIARDBAQ..i&docid=JMMsVZvfo3UxPM&w=1024&h=768&q=is%20there%20a%20chart%20showing%20scales%20with%20fingering%20for%20sax&ved=2ahUKEwizlPHxhcDuAhW5R30KHR8IDy0QMygAegUIARDBAQ
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 is a great idea and it’s all put together very nicely! Good job, Bret!
This looks like a great utility, Bret. I look forward to using it when I am no longer tethered to IE at my work computer.
Thanks, Tim. I regret that it doesn’t work with IE. I’ve worked a few different angles to try to solve this, but haven’t been able to come up with a solid solution. I wrestled with the issue of whether to release this to the public while it still has the IE problem.
The upcoming version 9 of IE is expected to have SVG support. I’ve experimented a little with the beta release, but in these early stages there still appear to be significant glitches—hopefully these will be ironed out at some point.
This is great and very easy to work with. I would like to request the option for contrabassoon as a set of keys for bassoon in addition to standard and student. This does entail adding another key option as some contrabassoons do have low A keys even though the one I’m currently playing on does not.
Thanks, Richard. Contrabassoon is definitely part of the plan. I didn’t get it done for this initial release because there’s some variation in keywork and I wanted to research it a little more thoroughly first. Keep your eyes peeled for it, though!
I’d like to see some option to generate a reverse image. I find it easier in many cases to conceptualize the fingering as if I am looking in a mirror (or through the instrument a la x-ray vision). For the bassoon, it would probably be prudent to allow the thumb quadrants to be reversed independently (if at all) since those keys are directly visible but not in the mirror. More to follow as I have fun playing with this excellent tool…
Hey, Tim, that’s an interesting idea and one that I will think over. I do want the selection of available fingering charts to grow, and it’s certainly a technical possibility to have multiple diagrams available for each instrument, to suit various tastes or needs.
Most excellent sir!
Dear Bret,
This is excellent! Thank you very much for all of your work on this. I will now be able to email my students clear diagrams of bassoon fingering without having to make silly drawings for them every lesson.
Andrew
That’s awesome Bret, thank you very much for building this, can think of a few ways it would be useful for woodwind players.
Very nicely done, Brent. I would ask for only one more feature. Would it be possible to show also the actual holes that are not touched by the fingers but operated by levers via depressing another key?
For example the Bb key hole operated by the Bis key on sax or the Bb hole on top of the left hand of flute that is operated by the thumb or right hand 1 or the right hand above the F key.
There are many non-standard, alternative fingerings used for pitch control or change to timbre that need to notate these keys that are usually not touched.
Thanks, Jerry, that’s an interesting idea. If you (or anyone out there) have a good example of a fingering chart that shows those kinds of techniques, I would be interested in seeing one.
Hey Bret,
As always your website continues to astound me with the scope of the content offered!
I was just checking out your fingering chart builder – looks great! – and had a thought for a possible future update. It would be great to have the option to attach notation for the note you are fingering to the diagram.
For example, build a clarinet E fingering first line and then open the “notation builder” window and attach the staff/clef/note/necessary accidentals for that particular fingering.
Hi Sarah,
That’s an idea that I had toyed with for initial release, but I have abandoned it for now. The trick is that I want the FDB to be useful to people doing unusual fingerings—trills, tremolos, multiphonics, etc., which could mean having to show multiple notes on the staff, and it started to seem too much like writing a full-blown notation program. I’ve still got the idea in the back of my mind, and will continue to consider it for future versions.
Thanks for the suggestion and the kind words!
I am working on a research paper, and this fingering builder is exactly what I need for it! Thank you!
Hi Bret,
Just wanted to let you know how fantastic this tool is! I’m a composer and whenever I use mulitphonics, timbre trill etc. I like to notate the fingerings in the score and parts. This tool makes it’s so much easier both for the composer and the musicians! Thank you so much!
I love that you can use colors to show the trills but would it be possible to have the option to show a trill sign as well/instead? I’ve seen this in a lot of scores and although using colors is great in educational settings (fingering charts and so on) scores are usually printed in black/white. This is just a future suggestion as it’s fairly easy to achieve this by adding a trill sign in Sibelius or Finale, but I would be great to have it in your fantastic tool as well!
Thanks again,
Anders
Thank you. This works a treat and is making the flute score I’m composing much easier to put together. Congratulations!
Hello Bret,
came across your tool via FB. Your tools seems to me a great thing to have, thank you for this!
A suggestion that might be easily to build in as you mention svg already:
How about adding an svg export option to the system? All your export features for now (png/tiff) are pixel-based, i.e. resizing them will result in blurry graphics. With a vector-based format such as svg, it would be possible to generate resizeable (and therefore also properly printable) charts.
svg can easily be converted into eps and pdf format ,something IMHO you do not necessarily have to provide as people can do that by themselves.
Another suggestion would be to look at differences in european and UK fingerings on e.g. clarinettes; might be interesting for people to even be able to convert between. (no idea how easy that’d be though and I like your tendency to provide a simple tool rather than an feature-laden beast).
As a third suggestion, I’d like to point you to my controller booklet, an attempt to graphically represent various MIDI controllers. There’s a PDF with all of them available, maybe you want to add them to your tool as well :)
cheers from Helsinki!
Till
Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Vector export is a possibility for future releases, as is expansion into additional keywork systems (such as various European clarinets). Conversion between keywork systems is unlikely because the FDB contains no fingering logic—it doesn’t “know” fingerings for specific notes.
This is great! The middle school band director in has a suggestion. What would put this over the top would be to have a way students could have entire fillable fingering chart and not just one note. I could assign this and have them fill it in, download the pdf and send back to me for a grade.
Hi, I am a very new (but fairly elderly) Alto student and one learning resource I would really appreciate in my starting phase would be a scale chart with fingering. Your superb fingering diagram builder gives all the tools required but my snails pace manipulation will make it a lifetimes work to produce. I’m sure you understand what I am describing however I have enclosed a link to an image of what I am trying to find. This type of chart would help those of us who have little music experience to get a firm grip on scales and although I and others would outgrow it as our familiarity with the Sax increased it would turbocharge our first few months, thank you, Don Buchanan
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2Fac%2F53%2F55%2Fac5355dfe5fce0cbe37eb4f699da7e99.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F6403624455358586%2F&tbnid=dPiJ6dblGzExxM&vet=12ahUKEwizlPHxhcDuAhW5R30KHR8IDy0QMygAegUIARDBAQ..i&docid=JMMsVZvfo3UxPM&w=1024&h=768&q=is%20there%20a%20chart%20showing%20scales%20with%20fingering%20for%20sax&ved=2ahUKEwizlPHxhcDuAhW5R30KHR8IDy0QMygAegUIARDBAQ