Concept
In music, fingering, or on stringed instruments sometimes also called stopping, is the choice of which fingers and hand positions to use when playing certain musical instruments. Fingering typically changes throughout a piece; the challenge of choosing good fingering for a piece is to make the hand movements as comfortable as possible without changing hand position too often. A fingering can be the result of the working process of the composer, who puts it into the manuscript, an editor, who adds it into the printed score, or the performer, who puts his or her own fingering in the score or in performance. Fingering...also stopping...(1) A system of symbols (usually Arabic numbers) for the fingers of the hand (or some subset of them) used to associate specific notes with specific fingers....(2)Control of finger movements and position to achieve physiological efficiency, acoustical accuracy [frequency and amplitude] (or effect) and musical articulation. A substitute fingering is an alternative to the indicated fingering, not to be confused with finger substitution. Depending on the instrument, not all the fingers may be used. For example, saxophonists do not use the right thumb and string instruments (usually) only use the fingers and not the thumbs. Fingering applies to the rotary and piston valves employed on many brass instruments. The trombone, a fully chromatic brass instrument without valves, employs equivalent numbered notation for slide positions rather than fingering. In notation for keyboard instruments, numbers are used to relate to the fingers themselves, not the hand position on the keyboard. In modern scores, the fingers are numbered from 1 to 5 on each hand: the thumb is 1, the index finger is 2, the middle finger is 3, the ring finger is 4 and the little finger is 5. Earlier usage varied by region. In Britain in the 19th century, the thumb was shown by a cross (+) and the fingers were numbered from 1 to 4. This was known as "English fingering" while the other way (from 1 to 5) was known as "Continental fingering.