fingering selection

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!

I get lots of emails and search traffic from people trying to find the answer to questions about woodwinds and “similar” fingerings: Do they use the same or similar fingerings? Which instruments are the most similar? Can I use fingerings from _____ instrument on _____ instrument?

I’ve addressed before why these questions might be coming from misconceptions about woodwind doubling, and why the answers might not be as useful as one might think. But beyond that, some of those questions are difficult to answer in a straightforward way.

Do any of the major modern Western woodwind instrument families use identical fingerings (such as saxophones using the same fingerings as oboes, or clarinets using the same fingerings as bassoons)? No.

Do instruments within those families use identical fingerings? Kind of. For example, the members of the concert flute family (piccolo, flute, alto and bass flutes, and others), use fingerings that are at least very similar. But some use slightly-varied fingerings to improve pitch, tone, or response of certain notes: for example, piccolo players often use a modified fingering for the third-octave A-flat, which they wouldn’t use on a lower-pitched flute. And the keys that appear on flutes aren’t set in stone—some might have a special C-sharp trill key, or a low B key, that other flutes lack. And clever flute makers can add anything else they dream up that customers will pay for.

Do any of the woodwind families have similar enough fingerings that you can play them without significant additional effort to learn how? No, not if you want to play them well.

But really, which ones are the most similar? It’s not as simple as counting up the number of “matching” fingerings between two instruments. You could argue that the written note D below the treble clef staff is “similar” for flute, oboe, and saxophone. D uses the three middle fingers of each hand on each of these instruments. But the flute also requires pressing a left-hand thumb key, while the others don’t. And the oboe has more than one key for the right ring finger, and I suppose it’s up to you whether the correct one for this note feels the “same” to you as the other two instruments. On clarinet, this written note uses a very different fingering, but the note written an octave higher has similarities to the flute/oboe/saxophone note. And the bassoon doesn’t have a D fingered in a closely similar way, but its low G uses a similar fingering that falls into roughly analogous scale fingering patterns.

(While brainstorming this post, I briefly considered trying to create some kind of chart showing which fingerings were the “same” or “similar” across the woodwind families. I quickly abandoned the idea because the necessary exceptions, explanations, and context would have complicated it beyond any usefulness.)

Like asking if two languages are similar, asking if two instruments’ fingerings are similar begs an answer that is incomplete, misleading, and ultimately not useful. If your intention is to apply that answer to playing or teaching woodwind instruments, your success will depend on instead approaching each instrument on its own terms.