Introducing the Fingering diagram builder

ByBret Pimentel

I’m pleased to present something I’ve been working on, on and off, for a while now. I’m pretty excited about it, and I hope you will check it out and let me know what you think.

This project developed from my own need to quickly and easily create fingering diagrams for the woodwind instruments that I play and teach. Frequently I find myself scribbling saxophone altissimo fingerings onto a scrap of paper during a private lesson, cutting-and-pasting at the photocopier to put together simplified charts for a woodwind methods class, or penciling cryptic markings into musical scores to remind myself which pinky finger to use.

And so, I’m pleased to introduce the Fingering diagram builder. I hope you’ll take it for a spin.

[One caveat: it currently doesn’t work in any version of Internet Explorer, due to IE’s lack of support for SVG graphics. If you’re an IE user, I hope you’ll consider downloading an excellent, free alternative browser and give the Fingering diagram builder a try anyway.]

Here’s a taste of what the Fingering diagram builder can do.

I created and downloaded this array of some of my favorite F-sharp fingerings in under two minutes (really). Click to see them larger.

flute oboe clarinet
bassoon saxophone recorder

These six instruments are immediately available, but I hope to add a few more soon. Hit me up with your requests.

Some of the instruments have cool options if you mess around with the “Keywork” toolbar. Here are a few of the most obvious examples:

The oboe chart has English horn keys, too. The clarinet chart can do bass clarinet. And the saxophone chart can accomodate a baritone’s low A (or even a soprano with a high G).

The “Options” toolbar lets you resize or customize the look of the diagrams:

Change the line thickness. Use colors to show trills or optional keys.

The downloaded images are in .PNG format, which means they are compatible with virtually all current word processing, graphics, and music notation software. Plus the file sizes are small, so they can be easily dropped into an email or blog post. (You may have seen some early versions of these fingering diagrams appearing in my own blog over the past year or more.)

I’m interested in your feedback, so let me know if you run into any problems, or if you have an idea how the Fingering diagram builder can be more useful. Leave a comment below, or send me email.

And, be sure to subscribe to the feed so you won’t miss upcoming articles with tips and tricks on using the Fingering diagram builder.

Similar Posts

  • Three Fingering Diagram Builder tutorials

    ByBret Pimentel

    Back in the olden days (2002), I wrote a paper for a college class on Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s simultaneous playing of clarinet and saxophone on “Creole Love Call” from the 1967 album The Inflated Tear. (When I started up this blog, the paper retroactively became a blog post.) In my paper, I included two fingering charts—one for right-handed clarinet, one for left-handed saxophone—that I thought looked pretty good and only took me a few hours to make. Ah, how young I was.

    Right-handed clarinet fingering chart. Click for larger.
    Left-handed saxophone fingering chart.

    Clearly, the time has come to update these sad old charts, and the Fingering Diagram Builder makes it fast, easy, and, dare I say it?—fun. I’ll show you how it’s done, using three particularly cool features (if I do say so myself) of the FDB. We will take a look at the FDB’s custom styles, custom keywork presets, and Dropbox integration.

    Custom styles

    For now, my plan is just to create enough diagrams to replace the ones in these old fingering charts—just the fingerings I figure Kirk must have used. But I don’t think Rahsaan would want me limiting myself to just those fingerings in the future. I’d better set up this project in such a way that I can come back later with new one-handed fingerings I’ve discovered, and add them to the charts with a minimum of fuss.

    The problem is that, what with the FDB’s highly customizable diagrams, I may not remember tomorrow whether the ones I made today have lines that are “medium” or “thick” or “heavy,” or whether I sized them “small” or “tiny,” or whether I was saving the diagrams as .PNG files for onscreen use or .TIF files for better printed results. The FDB does, of course, remember my current settings between sessions all on its own, but I like to work on several projects at once (Rahsaan would approve, I think) and I’ll use the FDB’s “custom styles”  to keep each project’s configuraton a click away. Here’s how:

    1. First I will set up things just the way I want them. Currently, settings that can be saved as part of a custom style are: diagram size, line thickness, color, file naming procedure (let the FDB name them automatically, or specify each filename myself), file format, save-to location (my computer or my Dropbox), and, if I’m using Dropbox, which folder to save the files in.
    2. Once everything is just right, I’ll click over to the “Custom styles” tab in the FDB’s menu to review my choices, and select which ones I want to save.

      As you can see, I’ve set the diagrams to be small, heavy-lined, colored in gray, .PNG-formatted, and saved to Dropbox in a folder called “kirkismyhero.” I have un-checked the box for “File naming,” since I don’t want the FDB to remember that for my purposes on this project—I’ll just go ahead and use whichever system I’m already using that day.
    3. I’ll type in a name (“kirk project”) for my custom style, and click the “Save current settings” button (or press Enter).

      I’m done—that’s all there is to it. In the future, whenever I want to create more diagrams like the ones I’m making today, I can just go to the “Custom styles” tab and click on “kirk project.”

    Read More “Three Fingering Diagram Builder tutorials”

  • Update: Woodwind doubling in Broadway musicals

    ByBret Pimentel

    A few years back, I started compiling a little list of Broadway-style shows and their woodwind books—the printed parts the woodwind players use in the orchestra pits. It has since grown wildly out of control to over 900 shows and has firmly cemented itself as the most popular thing on this website. Many of my visitors—from top Broadway musicians to community theater weekend warriors—contribute to the list by sending in information from the trenches.

    Over the last few months, I’ve hosted two versions of the list, and solicited feedback about the newer version versus the classic edition. Thanks to all of you who took the time to test drive the new version and submit some comments.

    The feedback showed an overwhelming preference for the new version, which as of today is replacing the old one. It adds some extra functionality, most notably a search bar, and will also load faster for most users. It includes links to search for soundtrack albums for each show on iTunes and Amazon—I hope that this will be a convenience for some users and not an undue hassle to others; it provides a revenue stream which, while pitifully tiny, nevertheless helps to keep this website going.

    Thanks once more for your support of the Woodwind doubling in Broadway musicals list. I hope you will continue to make use of it and of other woodwind stuff here at bretpimentel.com.

  • 2013 in review

    ByBret Pimentel

    Here is a recap of some of my favorite stuff from the blog from 2013. Because hey, I’m on vacation too.

    Thanks for your ongoing support. Best wishes to you and your reeds for 2014.

  • New sound clips: Faculty woodwinds recital, Aug. 27, 2013

    ByBret Pimentel

    It’s time again for the annual post-mortem on my on-campus faculty recital. This year’s program was all Telemann, which was fun. Since some of my most formative years as a musician happened back when I was primarily a saxophonist, I still feel a little out of my depth with Baroque style, and preparations for this recital turned into a great opportunity to study, listen to recordings, and work on my ornamentation skills. (I found Victor Rangel-Ribeiro’s Baroque Music: A Practical Guide for the Performer to be invaluable, and it even has a chapter specifically on Telemann.)

    I’m fairly pleased with how the A-minor oboe sonata turned out. My intonation has improved in leaps and bounds since I got some excellent reed advice at the John Mack Oboe Camp a summer ago (what a difference a change in tie length can make!). I did struggle a little bit on stage with the Mississippi Delta August humidity making its way into my octave vents, which you can hear in places in the following clip.

    I have also been working on my double-tonguing on the oboe, and while it’s not perfect yet, I think it turned out quite well here. The fact that I wanted to use it on this piece probably belies some issues with my Baroque interpretation: it might have been more authentic either to slow down or to slur more, but I liked the effect and felt good about at least partially mastering the technique.

    And, of course, it is great fun to play with harpsichord and cello. As we sadly do not have a full string faculty here at Delta State, I had to convince a cellist to come in from out of town. It’s scary to meet and rehearse with someone for the first time on the day of the recital, but the recommendations I had gotten for her turned out to be solid, and she played like a total pro.

    I was determined to finally perform some recorder repertoire on this recital. My initial thought was to do the Telemann recorder suite, but since I already had the basso continuo lined up, I did some more research and discovered the delightful sonata in F major. The humidity had a fairly significant effect on this instrument, too, especially with me perhaps over-practicing on it in the weeks prior to the recital, so my tone and stability aren’t what I would have liked them to be. Too many cracked notes and response issues in the extreme upper and lower registers. Still, bucket list item checked off.

    One definite doubling blunder: I went from oboe to recorder on stage, and wasn’t fully in recorder mode when I started the first movement. The recorder’s breath requirements are much lower than the oboe’s, and so I started off the movement with a rather ugly cracked note (not included in this clip…). But I am quite happy with how the slow movement turned out; here it is in its entirety: Read More “New sound clips: Faculty woodwinds recital, Aug. 27, 2013”

  • Fingering Diagram Builder, version 0.8

    ByBret Pimentel

    I’m pleased to announce a new release of the Fingering Diagram Builder.

    One thing I wanted to do in this release is give something back to the very generous and sexy people who have been kind enough to use the PayPal donation link to show their support over the years, so I’ve added some special exclusive features for donors. Most of those features are geared toward those doing large or involved projects, such as for publication.

    To be clear, none of the old features have been put behind a paywall, and with this release and future releases I’ll keep working on improvements for the free users, too. And you can get the donors-only features with a one-time donation of literally any amount of your choice. (If you’ve donated before, you can try the “Are you a previous donor?” link to activate your special features, but you might have to email me so I can fix it for you manually, especially if your donation was a few years ago.)

    Anyway, here’s what’s new:

    • Some weird/cool new key sets like Kingma-system flutes, the Redgate oboe, and the Contraforte. I’m flying a little blind on those since I don’t exactly have those instruments laying around, so if you’re an expert let me know what tweaks are needed.
    • Downloads in .gif format (in addition to the previously-available .png and .tif). For some purposes .gifs won’t look as nice as .pngs, but the file sizes are very compact, which is useful in some situations. And for donors, you can also download in .svg format, which gives you basically unlimited scalability with no loss of image quality. .Png and .svg downloads also now get lossless compression, which you can turn off if for some reason you want to.
    • Diagrams can be rotated 90° in either direction. Donors can also mirror them, which I think is a strange idea but lots of people have requested it.
    • Image backgrounds can be white (like before), or now also transparent.
    • Some more flexibility for donors: finer control of image size and line thickness, and an editable color palette. Donors also have some new options for how images are cropped.
    • You can still, as before, let the FDB automatically provide unique filenames for your downloaded images or name each one manually. But now you can also type placeholders: %i to auto-insert the name of the current instrument, %k for the key set, and %c for an auto-incrementing counter. It’s hard to explain, but try it out and I think you’ll see it’s pretty easy and useful.
    • In addition to downloading images to your device or uploading to Dropbox, you can also post them to Imgur. That gives you quick-and-easy shareability of images on all the social media sites, and you don’t need to create an account or anything.
    • People have been rightfully baffled for years by the powerful but undocumented “Keywork details” thing. That hasn’t gone away, but many of the instruments now have a more user-friendly interface for turning certain keys on or off. I hope to add to and refine these interfaces in response to the continuing frustrated emails. It has also become abundantly clear that, while I’ve tried to make everything as intuitive as possible, it’s time for a help page.
    • The FDB can, if you like, remember the fingering you were working on in a previous session. (This feature is turned off by default.) I don’t expect that many people need multiple visits to the FDB to complete one fingering diagram, but it’s handy if, say, you accidentally navigate away.
    • Once again, a thorough visual refresh and lots of little interface tweaks.
    • This one is boring but important: basically a ground-up rebuild of the FDB’s guts, using smarter coding than I knew how to do nearly nine years ago when I first released it. (For the code-savvy, I’ve replaced my spaghetti jQuery code with slightly-less-pasta-like Vue.js code.) That will hopefully help keep it running reliably and maintainably on modern web browsers for the better part of another decade.

    Please do check it out, and send me your bug reports and other feedback.

  • Report: National Flute Association Convention 2011

    ByBret Pimentel

    This year was my first time attending the National Flute Association‘s annual convention, held this year in Charlotte, North Carolina.

    I’ve been to conferences of all the other major woodwind organizations in the US (IDRS, ICA, NASA), and here are some things that I think the NFA did exceptionally well:

    • Organization and planning. From what I could tell, nearly everything ran smoothly and according to plan.
    • Engaging younger players. There were a number of competitions and masterclasses for high school and college students, and a Saturday “Youth Day” for flutists aged 8-13.
    • Engaging non-professional flutists. My sense is that the NFA has a stronger amateur contingent than the other organizations, and that they are working to ensure its future.
    • Appealing to broad musical interests. In my opinion, the NFA is doing a better job than anyone, including NASA, of integrating jazz into their convention in a serious way, and is integrating historical instruments at least as well as the IDRS. Ethnic flutes also got some good representation. Thursday night’s big feature concert was Baroque flute, and Friday’s was world music. Saturday’s concert was more standard concerto fare, but with a strong jazz representation. Kudos to the NFA for acknowledging that there is life beyond conservatory repertoire lists, and to its members for seeming to genuinely embrace and enjoy the varied offerings.

    Like the other major woodwind conferences, the NFA’s is packed with so many events that it’s impossible to get to everything you want to attend. Here are a few personal favorites among the things I saw and heard (in no particular order): Read More “Report: National Flute Association Convention 2011”

21 Comments

    1. Thanks, Tim. I regret that it doesn’t work with IE. I’ve worked a few different angles to try to solve this, but haven’t been able to come up with a solid solution. I wrestled with the issue of whether to release this to the public while it still has the IE problem.

      The upcoming version 9 of IE is expected to have SVG support. I’ve experimented a little with the beta release, but in these early stages there still appear to be significant glitches—hopefully these will be ironed out at some point.

      Reply

  3. This is great and very easy to work with. I would like to request the option for contrabassoon as a set of keys for bassoon in addition to standard and student. This does entail adding another key option as some contrabassoons do have low A keys even though the one I’m currently playing on does not.

    Reply

    1. Thanks, Richard. Contrabassoon is definitely part of the plan. I didn’t get it done for this initial release because there’s some variation in keywork and I wanted to research it a little more thoroughly first. Keep your eyes peeled for it, though!

      Reply

  4. I’d like to see some option to generate a reverse image. I find it easier in many cases to conceptualize the fingering as if I am looking in a mirror (or through the instrument a la x-ray vision). For the bassoon, it would probably be prudent to allow the thumb quadrants to be reversed independently (if at all) since those keys are directly visible but not in the mirror. More to follow as I have fun playing with this excellent tool…

    Reply

    1. Hey, Tim, that’s an interesting idea and one that I will think over. I do want the selection of available fingering charts to grow, and it’s certainly a technical possibility to have multiple diagrams available for each instrument, to suit various tastes or needs.

      Reply

  6. Dear Bret,

    This is excellent! Thank you very much for all of your work on this. I will now be able to email my students clear diagrams of bassoon fingering without having to make silly drawings for them every lesson.

    Andrew

    Reply

  8. Very nicely done, Brent. I would ask for only one more feature. Would it be possible to show also the actual holes that are not touched by the fingers but operated by levers via depressing another key?

    For example the Bb key hole operated by the Bis key on sax or the Bb hole on top of the left hand of flute that is operated by the thumb or right hand 1 or the right hand above the F key.

    There are many non-standard, alternative fingerings used for pitch control or change to timbre that need to notate these keys that are usually not touched.

    Reply

    1. Thanks, Jerry, that’s an interesting idea. If you (or anyone out there) have a good example of a fingering chart that shows those kinds of techniques, I would be interested in seeing one.

      Reply

  9. Hey Bret,

    As always your website continues to astound me with the scope of the content offered!

    I was just checking out your fingering chart builder – looks great! – and had a thought for a possible future update. It would be great to have the option to attach notation for the note you are fingering to the diagram.

    For example, build a clarinet E fingering first line and then open the “notation builder” window and attach the staff/clef/note/necessary accidentals for that particular fingering.

    Reply

    1. Hi Sarah,

      That’s an idea that I had toyed with for initial release, but I have abandoned it for now. The trick is that I want the FDB to be useful to people doing unusual fingerings—trills, tremolos, multiphonics, etc., which could mean having to show multiple notes on the staff, and it started to seem too much like writing a full-blown notation program. I’ve still got the idea in the back of my mind, and will continue to consider it for future versions.

      Thanks for the suggestion and the kind words!

      Reply

  11. Hi Bret,

    Just wanted to let you know how fantastic this tool is! I’m a composer and whenever I use mulitphonics, timbre trill etc. I like to notate the fingerings in the score and parts. This tool makes it’s so much easier both for the composer and the musicians! Thank you so much!

    I love that you can use colors to show the trills but would it be possible to have the option to show a trill sign as well/instead? I’ve seen this in a lot of scores and although using colors is great in educational settings (fingering charts and so on) scores are usually printed in black/white. This is just a future suggestion as it’s fairly easy to achieve this by adding a trill sign in Sibelius or Finale, but I would be great to have it in your fantastic tool as well!

    Thanks again,

    Anders

    Reply

  13. Hello Bret,

    came across your tool via FB. Your tools seems to me a great thing to have, thank you for this!
    A suggestion that might be easily to build in as you mention svg already:
    How about adding an svg export option to the system? All your export features for now (png/tiff) are pixel-based, i.e. resizing them will result in blurry graphics. With a vector-based format such as svg, it would be possible to generate resizeable (and therefore also properly printable) charts.
    svg can easily be converted into eps and pdf format ,something IMHO you do not necessarily have to provide as people can do that by themselves.

    Another suggestion would be to look at differences in european and UK fingerings on e.g. clarinettes; might be interesting for people to even be able to convert between. (no idea how easy that’d be though and I like your tendency to provide a simple tool rather than an feature-laden beast).

    As a third suggestion, I’d like to point you to my controller booklet, an attempt to graphically represent various MIDI controllers. There’s a PDF with all of them available, maybe you want to add them to your tool as well :)

    cheers from Helsinki!

    Till

    Reply

    1. Thanks for the comments and suggestions. Vector export is a possibility for future releases, as is expansion into additional keywork systems (such as various European clarinets). Conversion between keywork systems is unlikely because the FDB contains no fingering logic—it doesn’t “know” fingerings for specific notes.

      Reply

  14. This is great! The middle school band director in has a suggestion. What would put this over the top would be to have a way students could have entire fillable fingering chart and not just one note. I could assign this and have them fill it in, download the pdf and send back to me for a grade.

    Reply

  15. Hi, I am a very new (but fairly elderly) Alto student and one learning resource I would really appreciate in my starting phase would be a scale chart with fingering. Your superb fingering diagram builder gives all the tools required but my snails pace manipulation will make it a lifetimes work to produce. I’m sure you understand what I am describing however I have enclosed a link to an image of what I am trying to find. This type of chart would help those of us who have little music experience to get a firm grip on scales and although I and others would outgrow it as our familiarity with the Sax increased it would turbocharge our first few months, thank you, Don Buchanan
    https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2Fac%2F53%2F55%2Fac5355dfe5fce0cbe37eb4f699da7e99.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F6403624455358586%2F&tbnid=dPiJ6dblGzExxM&vet=12ahUKEwizlPHxhcDuAhW5R30KHR8IDy0QMygAegUIARDBAQ..i&docid=JMMsVZvfo3UxPM&w=1024&h=768&q=is%20there%20a%20chart%20showing%20scales%20with%20fingering%20for%20sax&ved=2ahUKEwizlPHxhcDuAhW5R30KHR8IDy0QMygAegUIARDBAQ

    Reply

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