Your Guide To Perfect Scale Fingerings (ft. Francisco Chaves) — tonebase Tips
Francisco is back this week with more great tips for mastering scales! If you missed his last post “Making Scales Fun!”, you’ll definitely want to loop back and check that out. In this follow-up post, he demonstrates the many possibilities for fingering scales and how they change based on the musical context.
Since, the general topic of scales is one already covered in many tonebase videos from artists such as Ali Arango, Vladimir Gorbach, Matt Palmer, and more, I am going to contribute further to this discussion by approaching the relationship between musical intention (expressivity) and fingering. After reading this, your approach to fingering should be quite different and you will start to think more like a professional guitarist.
Let’s say you are working on a new piece and you come across the following scale. A simple C Major scale in a 4/4 bar:
Now, a logical question would be, “What’s the optimal fingering?”
The answer is not so straightforward as it might seem. The first question we need to answer is the dynamic. What is the dynamic indicated in the score? This is important because different dynamics require different fingerings.
For example, a fingering based on the Campanella Effect can sound super effective if we want to give the impression of “floating,” “easy-ness,” or “dream-like music.”
Scales played like this don’t usually “sound like scales” and they have a very musical effect to them, compared to the “normal fingering” (check below) which is usually more effective in loud passages that ask for a lot of vigor and strength.
However, even taking that type of fingering into account, we can use pretty much the same fingers and hand pattern, but start playing it on the 6th string, instead of the fifth as below:
Playing scales in a higher position and lower string makes them sound more “muddy.” The bass strings usually do not sound as bright as the treble strings, so the result is usually not optimal if you want or scales to sound “super clear and bright”.
Now, I know what are you already thinking... What about the use of SLURS?
As you will see, creating an appropriate fingering for a scale has many factors. Some logical questions would be, “Should I use slurs? If so, when?”
In general, slurs — “hammer-ons” and “pull-offs” — usually do three things:
- Increase your speed
- Make the music sound softer
- Create (intended or not intended) accents
If we take again our “normal fingering,” below is what it could look like, with extreme slurring, for maximum speed:
This fingering creates sub-divisions of “2+3+3” and “1+3+3+2.” The fact that the last note (C) is not articulated — even though it’s on the first beat of the next bar — makes it sound completely a-rhythmical and doesn’t follow the rhythm of the bar. Also, the second beat (G) is not articulated, which again, destroys the natural 4/4 feeling.
Here is a fingering that closely follows the rhythm and articulation of the bar:
This fingering is slower than the previous one. It even has two shifts of positions which is not optimal for rapid playing but it preserves the regularity of accents. It sounds more controlled and “on the beat” (rhythmical).
As you can see, there is so much to talk about in just a simple C Major scale. In this post, I did not even approach right-hand technique — whether you should you play “im” “pim”, “pmi”, “ami” for instance. For more on this, check out tonebase’s videos on scales!
This post was meant to cast a light on how the left hand fingering influences the musical intention of a particular scale. So, next time, do not look for the “best scale” fingering. Instead, examine the musical context and make your decisions based on that!
About Francisco Chaves — http://fassislau.wixsite.com/franciscochaves
Francisco Chaves is a guitarist, composer, teacher, sound designer and producer based in Germany. He was born in Castro Verde, a tiny village in the south of Portugal and started there to study classical guitar. Later, he also found a second passion for composing with his first harmony lessons.
He completed simultaneously two bachelor degrees (Classical guitar and Composition) in the University of Évora (Portugal) under the guidance of Dejan Ivanovic (guitar), Pedro Amaral (composition) and Christopher Bochmann (composition), having received the “Scholar Prize”, for finishing both degrees with the highest grade. After that, he finished his master degree in Classical Guitar and graduated “cum laude” in the “Maastricht Conservatorium” (Netherlands) in the class of Carlo Marchione.
Currently, he teaches in several music schools in Germany. Besides that, he also teaches by Skype and works as a freelance musician, giving concerts around Europe and composing music for orchestras, ensembles and soloists. He also devotes his time composing music and making sound effects for video games and films.
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