Hello all!
So, I've been playing the piano for a little over a month now and I have a couple of questions regarding technique that I would like to have clarified so I don't end up with a bunch of bad habits which will take forever to fix later (already tried that with guitar ).
-When playing for instance a F#m where you have two black keys and a white in the middle, where on the white key should you press down? Up between the black keys or lower down towards the edge of the white key? Now I do the latter way because I tend to hit the black keys otherwise, but some guy I watched on youtube used the other way so which one is it?
-At another site with free piano lessons they recommended that you should use the fingering 1,2,3,1,2,3,4,5 playing a major scale with your LH. Should I always do this, because I had some trouble with at least F major where the thumb would play a black key if following this? Are these fingerings for scales really that important or can you just play whatever feels comfortable at that time?
-I read somewhere that you should avoid using your thumb and pinky on the black keys. True or false?

please!
//Muffinz

Hi Muffinz,
the fingering for scales can vary, depending on the key.
Books such as "The Basic book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences" from Alfred's Basic Piano Library give a comprehensive overview. There are more books like this and you can look up any scale in any key.



This fingering you mentioned goes for the downward scale played with the LH. If you start with your thumb (#1) on the F, going down, your thumb strikes again on C, landing your second finger comfortably on the black key. If you want to play upwards you start with the pinky (#5) on F and play the black key with the second finger.
There are scales with more black keys, some of which are usually started with other fingers than 1 or 5 to avoid awkward distortions.

If you have 1 and 5 on black keys, a finger playing between them should be in the black key area also--otherwise you're contorting the hand and creating strain.

1. You do frequently need to play up on the white keys between the black keys. Depending on the size or length of your fingers, this can be more or less of a challenge in avoiding accidentally pressing an adjacent black key, but you can't always avoid the spaces between the black keys in many pieces.

2. There are different fingerings for some scales; they don't always use 12312345. You should learn the standard scale fingerings for practice purposes, but those fingerings don't always apply when playing actual pieces. In playing real music, thumbs and pinkies are all over the black keys.

Okay, yeah it all makes sense, thank you very much!
And Euphonatrix, I did mean right hand I'm just so used to "left hand" being lead and melodies and "right hand" having to do with rhythm from guitar playing so it got a bit messed up..