Pitch Relationships
Senior 1 · Music
Pitch Relationships
Lesson 5 of 5
25 min
Reading about tones, semitones and intervals is one thing; hearing them under your own fingers is another. A keyboard lets you play a melody with one hand and support it with the other, while you sing the sol-fa. Many church and school musicians in Rwanda began exactly like this, with five fingers on five keys.
Keyboard music numbers the fingers of both hands the same way: the thumb is 1, then 2, 3, 4, up to the little finger, 5. In a five-finger position, each finger rests on its own key, five neighbouring white keys, and stays there.
Notice that the two hands are mirror images. The right-hand thumb plays middle C, but in the left hand it is the little finger that plays C.
Put your right thumb on middle C. Play C D E F G F E D C with fingers 1 2 3 4 5 4 3 2 1, slowly and evenly, and sing d r m f s f m r d as you play. Then play this traditional melody, which uses only notes of the five-finger position:
Worked example
In bar 4 the right hand moves from E up to G. Which fingers play them, and what interval is it? E is finger 3 and G is finger 5, skipping F. E F G is three letters, and E–F–F♯–G is 3 semitones, so the leap is a minor 3rd (sol-fa m–s).
Put your left little finger on the C below middle C, in the second space of the bass staff. Play the exercise below; the fingering runs 5 4 3 2 1 as the notes rise and 1 2 3 4 5 as they fall.
Sing it on sol-fa too. These notes are an octave below middle C, so they are written with commas: d, r, m, f, s,.
Start with parallel motion: both hands in their five-finger positions play C D E F G together, an octave apart. The right hand uses fingers 1 2 3 4 5 and the left hand 5 4 3 2 1, so the finger numbers are different even though the note names match. Go slowly until the two hands land exactly together.
Then add a simple left-hand part to the melody. In each bar the left hand holds one semibreve, C or G, for four beats:
For bars 5 to 8 the left hand holds C, C, G and C. The G in bar 3 sits under the melody's D, a perfect 5th above G; the C under the melody's E makes a major 3rd plus an octave. You are already playing harmonic intervals.
Tip
Thumbs are 1 on both hands. Right hand on middle C: C D E F G = 1 2 3 4 5. Left hand on the C below: C D E F G = 5 4 3 2 1. Practise hands separately and slowly before you put them together.
Try each question first, then check the worked solution underneath.
In the right-hand five-finger position on middle C, which finger plays F?
Solution: Finger 4 (C 1, D 2, E 3, F 4).
In the left-hand five-finger position on the C below middle C, which finger plays E?
Solution: Finger 3. From C: 5 on C, 4 on D, 3 on E.
Both hands play G in their five-finger positions. Which fingers are used?
Solution: Right hand finger 5 (on the G above middle C); left hand finger 1, the thumb (on the G below middle C).
Which interval do you play with right-hand fingers 1 and 5 together?
Solution: C and G: a perfect 5th (7 semitones), sol-fa d–s.
Write the sol-fa of bars 5 to 8 of the melody.
Solution: m r d r | m m m m | r r m r | d.
Remember
Sources and credits
The lesson text, the bass clef, the keyboard and notation diagrams, the left-hand exercise, the practice routine and the practice were written by Ganzaa.
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
