Starting hand position

Discussion about Playground's supplemental courses.
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dapast18
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed May 13, 2020 4:39 pm

Starting hand position

Post by dapast18 » Sat Jun 27, 2020 11:49 am

Hi-
I am a true beginner, and loving this method of teaching since I can go at my own pace, in my own home, drinking coffee, waiting for the Covid restrictions to ease. My question is, when looking at sheet music for the first time, how do you determine starting hand position? Playground has nicely given finger positions with numbers above the notes, but in the real world, how does one figure out where to place the hands ? I am still in boot camp and only level 16.
Thanks you!

FlatPanda
Posts: 95
Joined: Fri Jan 03, 2020 11:56 am

Re: Starting hand position

Post by FlatPanda » Thu Jul 02, 2020 11:11 am

Hi dapast18

In "real life" sheet music you may have multiple options, all depending on the editor and edition and publisher:
  • "for beginners": usually contain some fingering, at the beginning and at (bigger) hand position changes. You'll just have to fill in the blank as they best fit
  • "for advanced": even for a bit more complex pieces, it may contain no fingering at all. Still, it's mostly obvious (if not even straightforward), as soon as you analysed the music a bit
  • "complex": anything in between :)
The sheets, which you can print from PGS contain "full fingering", meaning that each and every note has the corresponding finger written onto it. As far as my experience goes, PGS is an outlier in this regards. But then, the PGS scores don't contain repetitions, dynamics, pedalling, and articulations (because the software cannot handle these anyways, and they are not really taught in PGS).

Have fun learning and playing!

Edit: here is an example for a beginner's arrangement: the ending of "Wiegenlied" (by Schubert; from Yamaha's "50 Classical Music Masterpieces")
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