The Simple Fingering Trick That Changed Everything
For most of my piano playing and teaching life, I’ve helped students learn and memorise piano scale fingerings by creating what I think of as a mind map.
We’d map out the scale in a few different ways:
• A visual pattern of black vs white notes
• A breakdown of which fingers go where
• Sometimes even a little “story” attached to the shape or feel of the scale
It worked — especially for students with different learning styles or those who are neurodiverse and thrive on pattern recognition. But I’ll be honest… it always felt a bit complicated. Effective, yes, but fiddly.
📖 The Old Book That Changed My Thinking
The other day, I was flipping through some very old piano technical work books for lesson inspiration when I spotted something curious.
Above each printed scale, the only fingering instruction was something like:
“Right hand: 4 on B”
“Left hand: 4 on D”
That was it. No full fingering diagrams, no elaborate patterns — just one note and one finger number.
My first thought was: That can’t be all there is to it… can it?
💡 The Lightbulb Moment
Then it hit me.
In every octave of a scale, your fourth finger only plays once.
If you know exactly which note that fourth finger lands on, and you follow the natural 1-2-3 pattern for the other fingers, you’ve just unlocked the fingering for the entire scale.
That’s it. That’s the secret.
🤯 Why This Blew My Mind
I’ve been playing and teaching the piano for decades. I’ve taught scale fingerings thousands of times. And yet… I had never boiled it down to something so simple.
All week I’ve been sharing this with my students. The reaction?
• Eyes wide
• Minds blown
• Fingering suddenly clicking in minutes instead of weeks
🙌 If This Is Old News to You…
If you’ve known this forever, fantastic — I’m honestly thrilled for you.
But for me, this was a revelation. It’s already making teaching scale fingerings quicker, simpler, and much less intimidating for my students.
So I had to share it here — because maybe, just maybe, there’s another teacher or player out there who needs to hear it.
Try it:
Next time you learn a new scale, skip the complex charts. Just find your “4” and let everything else fall into place. You might be surprised at how freeing it feels.