How to Play Piano Scales?

1. What Are The Piano Scales?
2. Why Should I Practice Piano Scales?
3. Major vs Minor Scales
4. How To Learn Piano Scales: Tips for Beginners
5. Tricks for Learning Piano Scales

Learning to play any musical instrument, be it a violin, a harp, a guitar or a piano, is necessarily accompanied by learning gamma. Scales are the basis of the pianist's executive skill. This is a typical component of piano texture, the mastery of which ultimately gives you great creative freedom on the stage.

How to start learning gamma, how to develop practical skills and avoid mistakes, you will learn in this article.

What Are The Piano Scales?

Gamma is a sound row of any length that moves up or down. In other words, these are sounds that last from a certain note to its repetition. The degrees of the piano scale is always at a certain distance from each other, which is a whole tone or half а tone. The scale can be ascending and descending, depending on whether the pitch (tonality) increases or decreases.

The fingers numbering for playing.

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The pitch is measured by the transition between the two white keys. But the semitone is the transition from the white key to the black one. Therefore, each time you switch from one key to another, you should count half a tone higher or lower. It turns out that for good playing, it is necessary to measure the distance between the notes.

There are about 30 common scales, but in general, they are divided into minor and major ones. Depending on the fingering, or finger placement order, the scales are divided into three groups:

It is a sophisticated and complex science that requires synchronization of movements, correct posture, concentration, memory, logic, and calculation. It is not without reason that J.Hofmann called the scale a «musical multiplication table». That is why it is better to find a professional teacher and take the first steps with him or her. UpskillsTutor is the most visited tutoring platform, where you can quickly select a good tutor according to your criteria.

Why Should I Practice Piano Scales?

Let us understand why to train the piano scales, if we can do without them. So, what is the influence of gamma on a musician's skills? 

• The scale along with musical diatonic frets not only helps to understand how music works but also help to improve the skill of a musician as a whole.
• Thanks to learning of scales, you can discover much more about the musical characteristics and technical capabilities of your instrument, and get acquainted with many musical formulas of playing.
• Knowledge of the structure and components of the gamut opens access to free improvisation in any tonality.
• Also, the scales especially help to develop the dexterity of the hands and fingers of a musician. The performance includes some technical movements, such as crossing fingers above and below each other.
• All scales are accompanied by explanations, diagrams, a set of notes and intervals, which helps to transfer the scale to any tonality.
• The gamut will facilitate your learning tonalities, chords, help you to refine improvisation, note orientation, and song creation.

Therefore, the gamut becomes an ideal platform for the practicing of technical skills. They are also great for training the comprehensibility of notes, increasing speed and providing a distinct sound.

Major vs Minor Scales

As you might have guessed, minor scales sound more despairing and moderately slow, provoking a melancholic mood. And major ones sound pathetic, more cheerful, reassuring. Their main difference lies in the 3rd note – tercia. Minor scales use minor tercia, which is usually one note lower than the major gamma.

Let us check out their structure and see both scales on the keyboard.

An example of a major scale: A–B–C#–D–E–F#–G#–(A).

A sample of a natural minor scale in which differences are clearly visible (A–B–C–D–E–F–G–(A)). 

And here is the distinction on the example of chords: 

• AC Major: C–E–G;

• AC Minor: C–Eb–G. 

In the minor chord “flatting” of the tercia occurs, it sounds like a “flat”.

How To Learn Piano Scales: Tips for Beginners

To begin with, you should be well acquainted with the concept of tonality, frets, the plan for the construction of tonality, the principle of the relation of tonality and, of course, make efforts on learning notes on piano.

When starting to study scales, beginners need, first of all, to learn to distinguish between major and minor scales, to understand that they can be played from any sound, to be able to pick them up by ear. The solfeggio course provides a lot of support in this case.

We present to you a clear scheme of steps.

1. Practice the scale C major, then move on to all other minor and major gamut. It is the first and simplest of all, and it is played only on white piano keys.
2. Achieve meaningful fingering.
3. Playing at a slow pace, auditory control, touches.

Remember the two main rules regarding fingering logic:

1. Do not use the first and fifth fingers on the black keys;
2. Within the same position (that is, without enclosing and transposing) your fingers should follow one after another without skipping.

Tricks for Learning Piano Scales

To finally understand all scales for piano, pay attention to the following exercises.

• Turning his/her hand upside down, a student slowly and smoothly leads his/her first finger to the fifth one and back. Emphasize that the first and third or the first and fourth fingers need to be connected as if in a ring. This exercise is aimed at mastering the technique of laying and transposing fingers. First of all, to train the performance of the legato through the fifth finger.
• Play scales of 15-20 minutes every day. Do this with any fingering: 1-2, 1-3, and other variants.
• Highlight in the scale only those sounds during the performance of which the enclosing of a finger occurs. 
• To fix the fingering in the muscular and brain memory, it is helpful to play the gamma by "clusters", that is, by positions.
• When the left hand lags behind the right hand at a rapid pace, it is useful to play the piano with the right hand and the fortе with the left hand.

After all, a private piano teacher is the most effective way. And this is why:

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