I mentioned "fingering" in another thread and I thought I would touch on it here too.

Something I never forgot. One of my best friends in London was an organist that could play just about anything. I really looked up to him. One day I said to him,jokingly, "is there anything you can't do on that keyboard?" His answer was "yes, correct fingering?" He went on to say he never learned how to use the fingers properly and that while he wasn't limited to what he could play, he had to do a lot of it "the hard way."

I was looking at my Chopin book, and noticed the run in one of the pieces was "going down the scale in thirds). The first "third" was fingers 2 and 5, and the next third was 4 and 1. It made me realize that, though I have fast fingers, I don't even have the best fingering myself. I get away with a lot of "runs" because I've been playing so long.

And finally, when I was young, all great musicians looked perfect on that keyboard. As I got older, I began noticing that many of them are self-taught. When I see a player now, I watch the hand movements. If the 4th and 5th fingers go up in the air while using the 1,2,3 fingers, you're not playing correctly. The same holds true for the thumb. If it goes up in the air while you're playing the 4th and 5th fingers....again...bad fingering. All fingers are supposed to be spread out evenly and just slightly above the keyboard during playing. The resting fingers don't move up or down while the active fingers are working.

It is all just interesting to me. Doesn't mean a hill of beans except to see where a lot of players are coming from. Did they teach themselves and that's why they're good? My personal opinion is the very "correct" players tend to play a bit too stuffy while the ones who are self-taught don't think about anything but playing good music!

Just felt like writing something before I went to bed.

Mark