The second violins missed the D sharp again. It seems like every time you hit that note, it’s out of tune. You go to the piano and play the note for them. They play it back, still out of tune. You spend the next few minutes making them listen to the note, sing it, then play it back, even having them play it one at a time until everyone has the note in tune. You breathe a sigh of relief that the note is finally fixed and play through the section again with the whole orchestra. To your deep dismay, the second violins play the D sharp wrong again. What are you doing wrong?
If this scenario sounds familiar, you’re not alone. I’ve had the same experience, and I’ve talked to a lot of teachers who express the same frustrations. In the hypothetical situation I just described, the teacher was doing so many things right. Identifying the note that needs to be fixed, giving students a reference pitch to match, singing it, testing students individually, those are all great strategies. The teacher missed one important concept: no note happens in isolation.
Context is everything. Getting the D sharp in tune isn’t just a matter of matching pitch; it’s a matter of being able to play the D sharp in tune in the middle of all the notes around it. Each finger connects to every other finger on the hand which connects to the wrist and arm and so forth. When dealing with out-of-tune notes, you have to deal with them in the context that they happen. That’s where finger patterns come in.
What are finger patterns?
Within tonal music, there are set patterns of whole steps and half steps that get used repeatedly. Teaching students to play these patterns on each string helps them to play more consistently in tune because they have trained the whole hand shape instead of trying to pick out individual notes on a fretless fingerboard.
While you can find a variety of approaches and naming systems for teaching finger patterns, my favorite system comes from Barbara Barber’s book Fingerboard Geography. She uses colors to identify the most common finger patterns, and the book comes with diagrams showing each of the finger patterns for every instrument. The book also includes a lot of exercises you could use to teach and practice the finger patterns.
Barber has additional patterns and colors in her book, but I only teach the four basic patterns to my students. In my experience, that has been enough to train the hand shape. Students can then adjust fairly easily when new finger patterns come up in their music.
Teaching Finger Patterns in Heterogeneous Classes
The biggest objection to teaching finger patterns in orchestra that I’ve run across is that finger patterns are based off of violin fingerings. This is true. Violin and violas are able to reach more notes, so the finger patterns work best on those instruments. You have to modify the patterns for lower strings, either by having them play notes on two different strings or by shifting. Barber does a good job of addressing that issue in her book and shows options for modifying the finger patterns for the lower strings.
Even though the patterns don’t fit perfectly with cello and bass fingerings, those students still benefit from learning and practicing them. I start by having the cellos and basses cross strings. Once they are comfortable shifting, I have them practice the patterns with shifts.
Finger Pattern Exercises
Follow the Leader
The exercise: Choose a finger pattern and a string that you are going to use. You can either tell the students which finger pattern and string or you can let them figure it out. Play a short, four count melody and then have the students play it back. Repeat the same melody if students don’t get it right. Repeat the process with a new melody. As they get better at figuring out the melodies, make the melodies longer and change the finger patterns and strings you use. You can also have students in the class come up with a melodic idea for the rest of the class to repeat. Give them guidelines on which string and finger pattern to use to begin with.
Why I like it: This exercise practices so many skills and has so many benefits. It helps students train their ears because they don’t have written music to rely on. It gives them a lot of practice with the different finger patterns without feeling like drills. If you do it without telling them what finger pattern to use, they have to apply the concept to actual playing and figure out the finger pattern on their own – great practice for when they have to learn a piece of music. It also is a great way to introduce improvisation.
Finger Pattern Marches
The exercise: Choose a finger pattern and string(s) to focus on. Play up and down the string(s) using different pitch patterns (if you know piano, think Hanon for strings). Fingerboard Geography has a lot of these kinds of exercises.
Why I like it: Playing repeated pitch patterns up and down the string helps students find the correct hand shape and keep it steady. Because notes are repeated multiple times, students have the opportunity to make adjustments to their finger placement if they hear that something doesn’t sound right. Finger marches also put the finger patterns into new contexts that are more applicable to actual music.
Finger Pattern Scales
The exercise: Choose a key. (It may be the key of a piece that you are learning.) Instead of starting and ending on tonic as you would normally do with a scale, have the students figure out the key signature of that key and what finger patterns you would use for each string. Start on the lowest string and play the finger patterns for the key on each string of the instrument.
Why I like it: It’s common practice to play a scale in the key of a piece you’re learning, but if we always start and end on the tonic of the scale, the students may never get practice with some notes on their instrument that they’ll have to play in the piece. For example, if you have the class play an E major scale and the violins start on 1st finger E on the D string, they will never get to practice the D sharp right below that E, and that’s a tricky note that will most likely be out of tune when they run across it in a piece.