Generating fingerings for polyphonic piano music with a tabu search algorithm

Abstract

A piano fingering is an indication of which finger is to be used to play each note in a piano composition. Good piano fingerings enable pianists to study, remember and play pieces in an optimal way. In this paper, we propose a tabu search algorithm to find a good piano fingering automatically and in a short amount of time. An innovative feature of the proposed algorithm is that it implements an objective function that takes into account the characteristics of the pianist’s hand and that it can be used for complex polyphonic music.