Piano fingering for any score

How to add fingering to a piano score

1. Export your score as MusicXML (.musicxml, .xml or compressed .mxl). In MuseScore it is File, Export, then MusicXML; Finale, Sibelius and Dorico have the same export. See the MuseScore export guide.
2. Drop the file into the tool above, or pick a piece from our library.
3. Read the score with a finger number on every note of both hands. Switch to Key notes only to see just the fingers an editor would print.
4. Download the fingered MusicXML, change any finger you disagree with in your notation app, and print it.

MusicXML is the open format notation apps use to exchange scores, maintained by the W3C Music Notation Community Group. Fingers are written as standard fingering elements, so they open in any notation app.

How the fingering is chosen

The generator reads each hand and treats notes that start together as one event, so a chord is fingered as a whole. For each event it lists every way to place the fingers in order, thumb to little finger, within a comfortable span. It then picks the best sequence for the whole hand at once rather than note by note (a Viterbi search), so a finger chosen now leaves the hand ready for the notes that follow.

Its preferences were learned from the fingers editors printed in 859 pieces of our public library:

• which finger pairs editors use for each interval and key color, and how tempo, runs and the range of the passage change that
• where the hand shifts, and how tempo and rests make a shift easier
• common hand positions, such as the thumb on middle C, on C, G or F
• how far apart the fingers of a chord can be

Three simple rules sit on top: keep the hand in place when the music allows it, pass the thumb only under fingers 3 and 4, and avoid the thumb on black keys. Wide chords use the outer fingers, and from a seventh up they use 1 and 5. Identical bars get identical fingering. Fingers already printed in your score are fixed points, and the generator plans every other note around them.

Statistical fingering models of this kind are studied in Nakamura, Saito and Yoshii, Statistical Learning and Estimation of Piano Fingering (2019). MasterPiano's previous generator was a port of the open source pianoplayer project.

How accurate it is

We tested the generator on 471 pieces it never saw during training. For each hand we hid every finger the editor had printed and checked whether the generator chose the same one. The previous generator is shown for comparison.

Exact match with the editor's printed finger, on 27,967 printed fingers. Levels are MasterPiano's 1 to 100 difficulty scale; grades are approximate ABRSM equivalents. Benchmark run October 2, 2026.

• Editors print fingers where the choice is not obvious, so the test measures the hardest notes in each piece.
• When half of the printed fingers are kept, as when your score already has some fingering, the match on the other half rises to 90.0% for levels 1 to 20 and 75.4% for all levels.
• Identical bars are fingered differently 8% of the time, against 17% for the previous generator.
• An exact match is a strict test. Editors do not always agree with each other, and a different finger is not always a wrong one.

Data: 1,446 public pieces with editor fingering, as of October 1, 2026. Pieces were split by id: 859 trained the generator and 587 were held out. 799 hands from 471 held-out pieces were scored; hands with fewer than 4 printed fingers or more than 600 notes were skipped.

Known limits

• Harder pieces: from about Grade 3 up, about 6 in 10 printed fingers match. Treat the result as a first draft and check it.
• Beginner left-hand positions: editors disagree whether the thumb sits on middle C or on the highest note, and the generator sometimes picks the other one.
• F major scales: the right thumb can land on B flat, and the left hand going down can cross 2 over 1.
• Chords narrower than a fifth: the generator prefers middle fingers, such as 3 and 2 on a third, where editors are split. Three-note chords can come out 5-3-2 instead of 5-3-1.
• Repeated notes: it sometimes changes finger on a repeated key, even in slow music.
• A chord finger printed on the wrong note: the generator plans around the note it belongs to, but your file keeps the digit where it was printed.
• No hand size setting: the fingering does not adapt to small or large hands.
• Input: MusicXML only, so PDF, photos and MIDI files do not work. The first two staves, or the first two parts, are read as the right and left hand. Grace notes and tied notes get no finger.

Piano finger numbers

Each finger has a number, the same in both hands. The thumb is always 1, so the left hand counts from the right: a left-hand five-finger position from C to G is played 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

How to finger piano music

These are the habits the generator learned from editors, and a good place to start on your own scores.

• Find the hand position first. Many passages sit under five fingers, one finger per key; move the hand only when the music leaves that range.
• In scales and runs, pass the thumb under 3 or 4, and bring 3 or 4 over the thumb on the way back.
• Keep the thumb off black keys in fast passages.
• Use the same fingering every time a passage repeats, so your hand learns one version.
• On wide chords, use the outer fingers: 1 and 5 are the most common choice for an octave or a sixth.
• Write in only the fingers you need: the first note, after a rest or a jump, and where the thumb crosses. Key notes only shows exactly that.

Scales have their own standard fingerings; our piano scales guide lists them for both hands.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• Piano scalesScale fingerings for both hands, with the thumb crossings written out.
• How to read sheet musicClefs, notes, rhythms and key signatures for beginners.
• Piano sheet music for beginnersOver 1,000 easy pieces to finger and play first.
• Learn piano chordsMajor, minor and seventh chords, from first shapes to inversions.
• Free piano sheet musicThe whole library, sorted by composer and level.
• Sight reading practiceRead new music every day at your level.