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Woodwind instruments including the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone all have more than one fingering for some notes. Why is that, and do you need to learn them all? Instead, could you just learn the one main fingering for every note and get really good at using it?
Here are some things to think about:
- There’s not always one “main” fingering. For example, the clarinet has its “pinky finger” notes that have left-hand or right-hand options, and you need to know both equally well to play above the beginner level. The flute has “1 and 1” and “thumb” fingerings for B-flat that are both common and standard. The oboe has two or three standard fingerings for F. The bassoon’s thumb and pinky options for F-sharp and A-flat and the saxophone’s “side” and “bis” B-flats are also arguably equally important.
- Using an alternate fingering can sometimes help avoid awkward movements. One example is flip-flopping (one finger lifting up while another presses down) with F to F-sharp on saxophone or in the clarinet’s middle register. Another is sliding (moving a finger from one key to another) like going from D on the oboe to F with the right-hand F key. Sometimes these awkward movements are unavoidable, but good woodwind players avoid them whenever possible.
- Alternate fingerings don’t always sound or respond the same. Some do, such as the clarinet’s pinky finger notes, because the pinky keys open and close the same holes. But some alternate fingerings might be a little louder or softer, sharper or flatter, more or less resistant, or brighter or darker in tone. Excellent woodwind players use these differences in artistic ways.
So alternate fingerings are important and useful. But do you need all of them?
There can be a lot of alternate fingerings. Advanced bassoonists sometimes refer to a book of fingerings that is over 300 pages long! (There are books for other instruments, too.) Sometimes there can be dozens of fingerings for a single note.
If you’re currently learning an instrument and using a method book (individual or band method) that has a fingering chart, you could check to see which notes have more than one fingering. It might be a worthwhile challenge to learn all those fingerings, and see if the book gives any hints about when to use which ones.
If you’re a more advanced student, the music you’re working on might present challenges when fingering patterns get awkward. Take on the challenge of researching lesser-known alternate fingerings that might help. (Sometimes a fingering has both advantages and disadvantages that you have to weigh carefully.) Start collecting useful fingering charts, or compile your own.
If you have my sights set on playing professionally, then you will need to know lots of alternate fingerings, have good resources to consult when you need more options, and know exactly how each fingering sounds, responds, and tunes on your instrument.
Good luck!
Hi Bret, I could not agree more with you on this topic. As an Alexander Technique teacher (and saxophonist), this “micromanaging” tendency with the fingers often interferes with coordination. From a functional point of view, efficiency is not always found in “economy of movement” (i.e., limiting the movement of the fingers), so much as in “economy of effort” (allowing things to move in cooperation with our human design, with a mininum of misdirected effort/tension). Unfortunately, most of the woodwind players who have come to me for help with focal hand dystonia have spent a good deal of time in their practice trying to “hold the fingers close”. There are neurological reasons why this is counterproductive, and for some, potentially harmful. If you’re interested in the science of it, I recommend Gabriele Wulf’s (she’s a kinesiologist and researcher) groundbreaking book, “Attention and Motor Skill Learning”, where she explains (and supplies ample research data) why micromanaging fine motor skills is usually not the best approach. Thanks, as always for you thoughtful, very helpful posts.
As a former clarinet player, I remember that trying to keep the fingers too close to the keys (especially as a beginner in order to look more ‘professional’…) resulted in a possible quicker ‘winging’ of notes, but it resulted in a lack of precision and ‘impact timing’ especially when improvising.
However, having switched to an EWI 4000/5000 many years ago, I found something interesting: in the meantime I hardly lift my fingers more than a few mm, but have a very precise feel as for timing and accuracy, and at times can play at speeds unimaginable on the clarinet, like in Db or B over 3 or even 4 octaves (but still grooving/swinging!).
But: when playing more complex/multiple fingerings possible on the EWI, I still find my fingers lifting much higher and positioning themselves almost automatically into what feels like the ‘optimal’ height.
As the Romans used to say: Ne quid nimis (‘[do] nothing in excess’)…