Violin fingering schemes for different scales

Question

I had a 10 year gap in my violin play and I'm still having trouble remembering the correct fingering (specifically for 4 and more sharps/flats).

Where can I find some fingering charts/schemes available on-line, or do I have to dedicate some to create them for all/most of the scales?

Answer 1

Mel Bay's Chart is pretty good. Violin online dot com has some useful charts too: chromatic for basic positions and diatonic for up to 7th position. It also features nice fingerboard diagram and photos.

The diagram below basically puts Mel Bay's 'movable finger patterns' into a circle of fifths. All the 1's in it mean the tonic of (any) major scale, and it is meant to be read from top to bottom; therefore in the descriptions below, 'next box' usually means 'the box below'.

Going going from any box to the next box means going up a perfect fifth or down a perfect fourth, and going to the previous box means down a perfect fifth or up a perfect fourth or (that's like going between 1st and 3rd or 4th positions). Going to the next-next box goes up a major 2nd (that's like going from the 3rd to the 4th position), and going to the previous-previous box goes down a major 2nd (that's like going from the 3rd to the 2nd position). Going to the box in the same row in the other column means going tritone; therefore, going to other-column-then-next means up a semitone and going to other-column-then-previous means down a semitone. Going to the previous-previous-previous box goes up a minor 3rd and going to the next-next-next-next box goes up a major third (that's like going next-next twice, i.e. up major second twice). As usual, going the other way the same number of times flips the musical interval from ascending to descending or vice versa. Use similar logic to deal with other positions.

Answer 2

Carl Flesch - Scale System – if you can handle it. Just pick what you can out of it, and don't kill yourself in the process!