Chapter 1: Introduction
A few days ago, I gave my kids a lecture in the car, proving that out of the major and harmonic minor scales, B♭ major has the most irregular fingering. I found my own lecture so riveting that I decided to write it down. So now, I will teach you my method to understanding/generating the major and minor piano scale fingerings. We'll start with major and harmonic minors, and the last chapter will cover natural and melodic minors. We shall have charts and colors and it will be a gay old time.
Before we begin, a bit of housekeeping. First, if you don't know how to form scales, try my Oom-Pah post. I also have three posts on jazz theory, if you're insatiable.
Second, I am of the opinion that we must learn hands together patterns. In my teaching experience, students would rather practice hands separately for some time, blindly throw the hands together, and hope that some combination of muscle memory and their favorite religion will see to the rest. Because our brains love symmetry, our natural preferences will be obliterating our hands separate practice in a hurry. In other words, the way nearly everyone learns piano scale fingerings is a pretty good way not to learn them. Each of my children, for example, has been practicing not learning scales for over 6 years, and they have succeeded.
Last, I am of the belief that we do not need to memorize every finger for every note of every scale. We only need to learn the fingerings or concepts that leave us no choices. My Rubik's Cube posts are based on this line of thinking - if certain structures force certain things to happen, there is absolutely no reason to memorize or even keep track of them. I will be telling you everything you need to know, and if you can remember which scale belongs to which category, you should be able to figure out the rest.
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Chapter 2: Terms
These terms were originally inspired by the book, "N. Jane Tan's Scales, Chords, & Cadences." The top row of these charts show right hand fingerings, and the bottom row shows the left. They're all very easy, except for the BRIDGE .
Claws
Hooves
Duck Feet
Note to self: I will never again figure out how to center a chart within a chart. The inserted chart must be formatted as "top centered" under "table properties" outside of blogger before copying and pasting.
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Chapter 3: THE BRIDGE SCALES
My guess is that everybody reading this post will know the fingering of the C major scale, so we'll start there. Befitting to my reputation of being generous, I'll include two octaves. This is an ascending C major scale.
The first step is to put in our 3's .
Next, let's take a look at our CLAWS .
This one is the hardest - the BRIDGE . Bridges can "bridge" us from one octave to the next, and they need a bit more practice than the rest.
Every pattern except for the BRIDGE is excellent for block practice. Remember, practicing 2 octaves gives you only one iteration of the BRIDGE , so you're robbing yourself of opportunity. Jump to 3 or 4 octaves the very moment you summon the bravery. If you like practicing 3 octaves, consider a triplet rhythm so that your beats line up. (I actually like following the beat when it doesn't line up, too.)
All together, the standard BRIDGE pattern looks like this:
Working through the 12 major and 12 harmonic minor scales, this BRIDGE scale pattern accounts for 10 of the 24.
They are: C, c, G, g, D, d, A, a, E, and e.
There are also 3 additional 3 BRIDGE scales, which start on 3's and look like this. Notice that in this case, bridges do not bridge us across the octave.
They are: A♭, c♯, and g♯.
A note to close the chapter. On September 23rd of 2018, I suddenly realized that c♯harmonic scale and the g♯ harmonic scale feel exactly the same. I recently asked my 10-year-old daughter to find the two scales that feel exactly the same, and she answered G major and a harmonic minor. Although the pair c♯ harmonic minor and g♯ harmonic minor feel more the same to me due to the fact that they sound more the same, technically, she's also correct.
That reminds me of something funny George said last week. "...and that's what I love so much about you. You're really not like everybody else; there are only one and a half of you in the world."
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Chapter 4: THE WAVE SCALES
Notice that the BRIDGE SCALES work for almost all of the white keys. The truth is that we also meant for them to work for the 4 keys B, b, F, f as well, but alas, those lay some black keys out under our thumbs, and we avoid that because moving our hands in towards the fallboard when not necessary is not efficient.
We call these the WAVE SCALES because we put our W's on the groups of 3 black keys and our V's on the groups of 2 black keys.
Let's take a look at B major, which has the same fingering as b minor.
F is a little less intuitive, but it relies on the exact same principles. I'll demonstrate in f minor because it has more black notes to ground us into the WAVE pattern, but it shares the same fingering as F major.
Notice that with WAVE SCALES , we set up by following groups of black notes with our long fingers, regardless of our starting notes. WAVE SCALES can start on any finger, unlike the 10 BRIDGE scales or the 3 3 BRIDGE scales. While WAVE SCALES are based on a pattern that could work with every single one of these 24 scales, the BRIDGE and 3 BRIDGE scales have a cookie cutter solution over the shifting terrain below.
The WAVE SCALES are: B, b, F, f, D♭, G♭, b♭, e♭
Remember that you may not be starting at the beginning of this chart!
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Chapter 5: THE HOOF SCALES
The hoof fingering divides the four long fingers into halves like hooves. Or like this.
So if WAVE SCALES can work for all the scales, why don't we use them for everything? Well, a lot of the time, as with the BRIDGE and 3 BRIDGE scales, something else is more comfortable. The easiest possible cross under is from a black key to a white key, so any time we get that chance, we'll take it.
Notice that the 2 HOOF scales have no groupings of 3.
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Chapter 6: THE DUCKFOOT SCALE
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Chapter 7: Natural & Melodic Minor Scales
Congratulations! You already know all of your major and harmonic minor fingerings!
For 9 of the 12 keys, the harmonic minor fingerings are the same fingerings for the natural and melodic minor scales. But that's not true for these 3.
These scales also happen to be the ones in which the CLAWS become exceptionally lobster-like in the harmonic form, since they stretch from white key over adjacent white key to the next white key as they pass over that augmented second.
Because melodic minor changes when descending, the following charts show the first octave ascending and the second descending.
f♯ natural minor
f♯ harmonic minor
f♯ melodic minor
c♯ natural minor
c♯ harmonic minor
c♯ melodic minor
g♯ natural minor
g♯ harmonic minor
g♯ melodic minor
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Chapter 8: Review
BRIDGE SCALES : C, c, G, g, D, e, A, a, E, e
3 BRIDGE SCALES : A♭, c♯, g♯
WAVE SCALES : B, b, F, f, D♭, G♭, b♭, e♭(pick your starting spot!)
HOOF SCALES : E♭
HOOF SCALES : f♯
DUCKFOOT SCALE : B♭
Happy Practicing!
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