Piano Video Lesson: How to Finger Octaves

Welcome to livingpianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin. The question today is how to finger octaves. Octaves have a very simple fingering solution the vast majority of the time. Unless you have very large hands, the simple solution is use one and five on white keys and one and four on black keys. Now, this is great, obviously, for legato octaves, but it also divides the load of the hand when playing rapid octaves from the wrist. Now, I'm going to use for an example, one of the final octave section from the mammoth Tchaikovsky B-flat Minor Piano Concerto. You know them.

So that's the final octave section, that magnificent concerto. So you notice that I'm using fourth finger on the black keys, and it divides the load a bit on the hands. Now, there's another technique I want to show you that is really vital. I talked about in previous videos how the wrists accomplish octaves, but the arms have an essential role, I made reference to this, of getting over the keys. And you want to think of going in and out of the keyboard for black keys to accomplish those without having to reach with your fingers so much. So, for example, at the beginning of the octave section, you start over the white keys, then you go, not only with your fingers here, but move your arm in and out.

Now, I'm exaggerating, but it makes it so much easier by using the arm forward and backwards for black keys and white keys so you don't have to use so much finger strength to hit those black keys. This is a great technique for you. In conjunction with using fourth finger on black keys, get over the black keys by moving your hands closer to the fallboard for black keys and towards you for the white keys.

Those are the tips for octaves today. I've got a lot of octave videos you may have noticed, and you can enjoy all of them here at livingpianos.com, here on YouTube as well. And we welcome your comments. Thank you for subscribing. Hit that bell if you like the videos. I will see you next time. Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. I managed to squeak it by.

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