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Crane scales and stepwise fingering


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Attached is a little ditty with thoughts on Crane fingering salient to a couple of other threads. Comments, corrections, etc. welcome.Crane Fingering Considerations.pdf

Kurt--

 

Thanks for posting this! I don't play Crane well enough yet to comment intelligently, but I appreciate your ideas and your systematic approach to the four fingers/five columns issue on the Crane. Did you come up with the concepts on your own?

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Attached is a little ditty with thoughts on Crane fingering salient to a couple of other threads. Comments, corrections, etc. welcome.Crane Fingering Considerations.pdf

Kurt--

 

Thanks for posting this! I don't play Crane well enough yet to comment intelligently, but I appreciate your ideas and your systematic approach to the four fingers/five columns issue on the Crane. Did you come up with the concepts on your own?

 

Thank you. Yes, pretty much.

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  • 7 years later...

Actually I'm not familiar with that tutor but all I can think of to make sense of that statement is that the authors made a first rough approximation for beginners. If the tutor has really stated that the fourth finger is to be used only for the C# and F# in the 5th column, it leaves out very many cases in which the 4th fingers is absolutely needed on the Crane.

 

The issue, as Kurt points out, is to be able to play legato whereever the music requires it. If you jump fingers on every fourth interval, you'll enforce staccato on all those places which doesn't always make sense. For example, in many many English dance tunes in G, you introduce the melody starting on the low G on the RH by the lower D (random examples: Market Rasen Quick Step and Bonan's). Both are in the fourth column directly on top of each other, so unless you stack the 4th and 3rd fingers to play the notes consecutively, you'll play them staccato. Try it, it doesn't sound good. (I know because I made the same mistake until Kurt pointed the problem out to me).

 

Possibly the music covered by the tutor outlaws fourth intervals so the problem doesn't show within the context of the tutor, I wouldn't know. But please - if you are an aspiring Crane player - DO read and follow Kurt's instructions. They are much better and more comprehensive than many a tutor you'll find out there.

 

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