Delving into the Harpejji (scales and fingering)
It had been in the back of my mind ever since watching Stevie Wonder tear into one during his Songs in the Key of Life tour back in 2015. The harpejji. This amazing, awe-inspiring instrument that seemed to be a godsend for keyboardists – a stringed instrument with an enormous expressional palette that’s played much like a keyboard instrument, with hands in a piano-like position. Being the genius that he is, Wonder appeared to master this relatively new instrument created by Tim Meeks of Marcodi Musical Products in no time flat. As for me, after finally taking the plunge and purchasing a beautiful G16 harpejji last winter, I found myself floundering after several months. I’d thought that I could approach the instrument intuitively, eschewing the formality that accompanied my piano instruction decades ago, and to some degree, I succeeded. But after months if piddling around and coming up with a few nice motifs and learning a few songs, I realized that I had to approach things in a more systematic way.
A big challenge for me was fingering and how to best approach notes quickly and comfortably. I kept on second guessing myself when viewing tutorials on YouTube, as the techniques they displayed seemed anything but efficient, offering one-octave scales that required sliding into notes and that didn’t allow for multiple octave movements. Even the newly-added charts on the Marcodi website don’t achieve what I’d like to see.
In the midst of my exploration, I happened upon a blog entry by Matthieu Amiguet of Switzerland through the “harpejji hangout” forum, and this cracked the door open for me. It confirmed my suspicions about what I’d been viewing online, and it inspired me to really nail down fingering for the most useful scales. The fingering that Amiguet decided upon for the major scales are exactly what I settled on, and I’ve since (mostly) settled on fingering for minor, harmonic minor, blues and pentatonic scales. For all of the examples below, I’ve written fingering that assumes you’ll continue to go up the scale. You might end up using slightly different fingering once you reach the end of your run.
Here is the fingering for major scales as I originally viewed at Amiguet’s blog.
After some additional exploration, I decided that for natural minor scales I’d use the same fingering as above, but starting on the scale’s 6th note.
For harmonic minor, it’s easy to adjust the right hand to accommodate raising the 7th note. For the left hand, this isn’t as easy. I’ve offered two solutions, the first without a sliding note, which would normally be preferred, the second including a slide. Although the first solution requires a bit of a jump, it actually works pretty well. with a little practice.
For pentatonic scales, the following fingering allows for quicker movements than what you’ll find at some of the online tutorials. It looks a bit awkward at first, but really works well once you get the hang of it. I’ve also included an alternative right-hand version that may come in handy sometimes.
For a variation of the pentatonic scale – the blues scale – once again the right hand fingering is easily achieved, fast and efficient. This is a blast to play using only the first three fingers. For the left hand, the fingering is clunky and hard to manage. I’ve looked for other possibilities and just can’t find one that I like. Fortunately, the times when I would rip through a blues scale on the left hand are few and far between.
That’s what I’ve come up with so far, and it’s helped me navigate the harpejji much better than I was able to before. I’ve still got a long way to go, but thanks to Matthieu Amiguet I’ve been able to at least start cracking the code.
If you’ve got your own preferred fingerings for these scales or others that I haven’t yet address, please consider sharing them with me or adding them on the Harpejji Hangout forum. And if you’re a harpejji player in the Chicago area, I’d love to meet you and exchange ideas. Give me a shout.