About Fingering Chartly

How every fingering is checked

A wrong fingering chart is worse than no chart at all, because a beginner has no way to know it is wrong. So no fingering appears on this site from memory or from a single source. Each one is taken from, and must agree with, two independent authoritative references:

1. Yamaha’s official fingering charts, published by the world’s largest maker of school band instruments — the clarinet chart, the flute chart, the saxophone chart, the trumpet chart, the trombone chart, the bassoon chart and the tuba chart (Musical Instrument Guide). For the recorder, Yamaha’s official fingering-system guidance confirms the Baroque fork-F definition the chart is built on. For the oboe, Yamaha prints its fingering chart in its oboe owner’s manuals rather than in the Guide; the manual’s published notes confirm the semi-automatic octave-key system and the low B–C link the oboe chart is built on, and the oboe fingerings themselves come from the two specialist references in point 2.
2. A second specialist reference for each family: the Woodwind Fingering Guide for the woodwinds — its clarinet charts, its dedicated bass clarinet charts, its flute and piccolo charts, its saxophone charts, its oboe charts, its bassoon charts and its recorder charts — the NoteAtlas trumpet fingering chart for the brass family, the NoteAtlas trombone slide position chart for the trombone, the NoteAtlas tuba fingering chart for the tuba, the NoteAtlas oboe fingering chart for the oboe, the NoteAtlas recorder fingering chart for the recorder — and for the euphonium and baritone horn, the NoteAtlas euphonium fingering chart and the University of Mississippi's chromatic fingering chart for euphonium and baritone horn — each with further published charts as cross-checks. The bassoon, whose keywork is the most complex on this site, gets a third: the First 5 Notes bassoon fingering chart, which covers exactly the same range and settles the notes where the first two references divide. The French horn’s fingerings come from the NoteAtlas French horn fingering chart and the First 5 Notes French horn fingering chart — the two published charts that give both sides of the double horn, note by note. Yamaha’s French horn manual states the same conventions in words (of a printed pair, the left-hand fingering is the main one, and a range of the double-horn chart is usually played on the B♭ side) and corroborates the side system at text level; its per-note valve states are printed as graphics that cannot be checked note by note, so no individual horn fingering here rests on Yamaha.

On most notes the two sources agree exactly, and the shared fingering is the one shown. On the handful of notes where they present different standard fingerings — E♭4 and B♭5 on clarinet and bass clarinet, the thumb-B♭ lever on flute, the three B♭ fingerings on saxophone, the valve-3 alternates on trumpet, the short seventh-partial positions Yamaha draws for G♭4 and G4 on trombone, the bracketed alternates Yamaha prints for B2, C3 and D3 on tuba, the two-source alternates for D3, F3, G3, C4 and D4 on euphonium, the second basic fingering for B6 on recorder, the four oboe notes (B♭4, C5, B♭5, C6) where the NoteAtlas oboe chart departs from the Woodwind Fingering Guide and a third published chart sides with the Guide, and the bassoon notes where its three references divide (the whisper key’s exact span in the low octave, and E♭3, for which they print three different fingerings — resolved by the majority of the three), and the four B♭-side French horn notes (A♭4, A4, A♭5, A5) where its two charts print different fingerings — the NoteAtlas version is the main fingering, and the First 5 Notes version is recorded on the French horn chart page — the site shows one as the main fingering and the others as alternates, with a note explaining when each is used. Nothing is silently dropped.

What the site does

Every instrument gets a complete fingering chart on one page, a page of its own for every note (with the diagram, the fingering written out in words, the sound of the note, and its concert pitch), and a Fingering Finder tool that sits on every page so an answer is never more than a click away. The piccolo shares the flute’s fingerings, all four saxophones share one set of fingerings, and trumpet, cornet and flugelhorn share one set of valve combinations, so those instruments have their own chart pages built on the shared note sets rather than duplicated note pages. The bass clarinet has its own note set: it shares the Boehm fingerings with the soprano clarinet — as both source charts state — but reaches one note lower, to low E♭, on an extension key the soprano does not have, and its pages give the concert pitch a major ninth below the written note. The trombone’s pages give a slide position and a harmonic (partial) for every note, and the tuba’s pages give a three-valve fingering and a partial for every note — both in bass clef, at concert pitch. The euphonium and baritone horn share one set of note pages in the same way, in bass clef at concert pitch, with the treble-clef written name of every note shown alongside. The recorder’s pages give a hole diagram with half-hole states — the pinched thumb and the double holes are drawn exactly as they are played — for the soprano recorder in Baroque fingering. The oboe’s pages give a key diagram with half-hole states and both octave keys marked, for the conservatoire system — and because the oboe does not transpose, its written and concert pitches are one and the same. The bassoon’s pages give the largest diagram on the site — the left thumb’s nine keys including the flick keys, drawn dashed when they are touched only at the attack, the whisper key, partial coverage of the first hole, and both thumbs’ clusters and both pinky sets — for the Heckel system in bass clef at concert pitch. The French horn’s pages give a valve diagram with the thumb trigger drawn and the side named on a pill under the valves for every note — the F side as the main fingering up to G4, the B♭ side from A♭4 up, and the other side as the alternate on every page — in treble clef, sounding a perfect fifth below the written note. Charts are printable for the classroom wall, and pages are built to load fast on school networks and older tablets.

Every chart is also published as a free printable PDF — the filled chart and a blank worksheet — on the printable fingering charts index, generated from the same data files as the online charts. Twelve fingering guides teach the reading of the charts, the first five notes on the beginner instruments, transposition and classroom use. Five instruments — clarinet, flute, saxophone, oboe and bassoon — also have trill fingering charts, and those pages publish only verified trills: a trill appears there only if holding one note's charted fingering and moving exactly the named element lands exactly on the partner note's charted fingering. Trill fingerings that circulate in single sources, or that need a special fingering of the partner note, are withheld and the pages say so — Yamaha publishes no trill tables, so no trill here rests on Yamaha.

Corrections

Every note page carries a report link. Reports are checked against the source charts and, where the report is right, the page is corrected. Accuracy is the whole point of this site, and corrections are treated as help, not criticism.

Contact

The Contact page explains what to include in a fingering report so it can be checked quickly — or email hello@fingeringchartly.com directly, for corrections, requests for new instruments, or classroom use.