The Piano Beginner Guide To Which Scales To Learn

You want to practice piano scales but you're  unsure which one to prioritize or learn first. Should I perhaps start with all the white keys?  Is it that I should learn all the majors first? Or should I learn some majors and some minors, and  of so which ones do I pick? This is a question I get a lot from our subscribers and my current live  students. Today in this video I want to introduce to you a program that lots of people around the  world are actually using to learn their scales and it's ba

sed on the music exam board ABRSM. You may  or may not have heard about this, but there are music exam boards around the world that they all  basically do the same thing. Which is, uh, they conduct these music exams where you go and you  have to perform three or four pieces uh from a set menu repertoire list you perform those pieces as  fluently as you can. And alongside that you also play through a bunch of scales that they ask. For  these scales and arpeggios that they'll ask for are also from

a set menu of scales and arpeggio  that you will practice and hone and try to get them as perfect as you can before you sit for  the exam. This is a great resource for us piano players who let's say want to start practicing  scales but you're not sure where to start. there are actually a lot of these exam boards that have  already done the hard work they're great teachers great examiners who've already kind of scaffold  it what do you do in grade one what do you do in grade two three four so on

and so forth roughly  speaking these exam boards have about 8 to 10 grades in total each grade roughly correlates to  you know the years of piano playing so let's look at now grade one which is roughly equivalent  to someone's first year of playing now let's see what scales and AR pedos we need from this  grade so firstly we have some of our similar motions okay as you can see there we need  c major one octave hands together if we now move on to the next line we have some scales  G major and F

major but these just need to be done hand separately okay so right hand  on its own or left hand on its own but here we need two octaves so for example in this  exam they might request something like the G major right hand [Music] and maybe now  we have our F major with the left [Music] hand as you can see not only do we have Majors  we also have a couple of minors as well we have things like the a minor and the D Minor now  in the ab RSM board there El elect to that you can decide if it's natur

al or harmonic or  melodic minor just for the sake of this video I'm going to quickly just play some harmonic  miners for you for example a harmonic minor two octaves okay let's move on so next up we  have some contrary motions and what are contrary motions they're basically  contrasting in directions so unlike similar motions they now contrasting in directions okay so in this one you would actually start  both your thumbs on the same C most people start on middle C and just Venture outwards  it

's a mirror image of each other 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 awesome let's move on now to some Arend  in grade one we need G major and a minor and these are still hand separately just one  octave very easy they just look something like this so in G major it would literally just be  g b d and then you play the tonic at the top and come down let's say we now try our left  hand for a minor it would look something like this and the goal for all your scales basically  is to try to play them obviously without mistak

es and as fluently as possible my recommendation  is to learn these scales from a scale book that shows you the exact fingerings for each of  these scales or aegio lots of piano teachers like me like students to learn scales and  arpegios not because we're Psychopaths or meanies but because of how relevant  they are to the real pieces you see out there did you see that that was a scale  right there that's just just one example from many scales and arpegios are part of lots  and lots of pieces es

pecially classical pieces doing this kind of pre-training in scales and  AR pedios is very very helpful for playing later pieces because as you come to see these  scales and arpegios patterns are everywhere in music [Music] that little piece I just played had lots  of small little arpegios patterns and me doing my arpeggio training helps me to understand how  to place my hands in a more efficient way to play those notes all right let's now move on to  grade two and later in grade three now in gr

ade 2 and three I'm not going to go as in-depth  as I did in grade one but I just wanted to show you an overview and please use this as a  starting point to do more research and practice these scales later so let's look at grade two on  the screen now you might like to take a bit of a screenshot for for these but you can also  find uh this document on the ab RSM website I'm going to put that link in the description  box below and one of the big differences I can see in grade 2 and this is roughl

y equivalent  to the let's say the second year of playing is that we now have most l two octave scales okay  so let's say in our G major and F major that we learned in the previous grade one we now  need to do two octaves and hands together as well let's jump down now to the arpegios  okay so arpegios is also two octaves so let's say but these are still hand separately  okay so let's just have a look at let's say the G minor okay this G minor here I'm  going to demonstrate is for [Music] you so

what's different here okay  so this time instead of kind of like ending on that pinky you would now  turn do a bit of a thumb tuck use your thumb to like start another octave  start another octave and then come down by the way as you are attempting  these scales anything that says hand separately once You' practiced this  for let's say a week or two and you start to gain some Mastery in it please  challenge Yourself by playing them hands together it's really good training let's  backtrack a litt

le bit uh in grade two we have something called the chromatic  scale chromatic scale is [Music] this okay as you can see chromatic scale is where  you will literally start on a note and you pling every single note on the keyboard so in  chromatic scale for right hand most of the time it's going to be 1 3 1 3 1 3 and every time you  have an extra white note in between the black and the white key you would use your number two so  for example if you start on let's say d 1 3 1 we have a problem here

okay the next note is not a  black key so we'll just use two very simply and resume at 13 13 and here again two we've reached  our octave point and we come back down the same fingering lots of people make the mistake of  using a different finger ring lots of people do this for example 1 3 and then one here and  they end up having to use two here here which causes a very weird turn between the two  and three like this so try not to do that whatever fingers you use going up make sure  you're usin

g the same fingers going back and in chromatic scales we never want to turn because  later we're going to need to play these chromatic scales pretty quickly as you advance in [Music]  piano and there's no time to to do a weird turn so make sure it's always 13 13 13 if there's a  white note in between the white and black notes you can use two and make sure you come down the  same way as well lots of students ask me why are these specific scales picked for these grades  is there any kind of logic

or system to them based on my own scale knowledge and by the way  I can play really all scales all 12 major minor Keys all arpegios all kinds of inversions these  scales are selected based on what I see are kind of two reasons number one is that these scales  don't have too many sharps or flats at the start so in grade one and two and three you know like  for example G major has one F let's say F major has one B flat so one black note out of a c of  white notes not terribly hard to learn another

reason these scales are picked are also because  of the relative Majors or minors for example G major it's also common for them I can  see in grade two that they included E minor E minor is the relative minor of  G major if you don't already know this go and look at um the circle of fifths  okay you'll see that G major and E minor they have the same key signature they have  one F so this is also the reason absm has decided that E minor should also be learned  because it has the same key signatu

re as G major that was the e natural minor I just played  let's have a look now at grade three as we can see there are more numbers okay so we definitely  have more to prepare for this is for someone roughly speaking in their third year playing  okay and by the way year 1 year 2 or year three this is also highly dependent on how much you  practice I have students that would literally get to grade three in the first year you know  if they work hard enough Some people prefer to take their time it'

s more of a hobby for them  so please go at your own pace so something that's jumping out at me right now uh let's  say comparing grade three to grade 2 is that now we have some Majors that are starting  on a black note so B flat major and E flat major this one will be unfamiliar to some of our  subscribers here I find that a lot of people tend to know the Mages from the white keys but  as you can see in grayr we're starting to start on the black key as well one question I often  get asked about

these scales are how fast do I play them I'm going to put on the screen  up here you can see as well there are some speed markings speed guidelines for these  exams okay so in grade one roughly speaking you play at about 60 beats per minute  and this is based on eigh note scales so as long as you can play at that speed with  control and without mistakes it means you know you're pretty successful for that grade one  level as you can see grade two it UPS it to 66 BPM and in grade three it's 80 BP

M so in these  exams there is a requirement to play these scales a little bit faster as you grow in your piano  Journey we have come to the end of this video I hope this has been helpful lots of students  ask me what scales do I start with first this is a great little syllabus great little kind  of program for you to start to work through these scales eventually the goal is to play all  of them I often like to get my students to kind of like test me cuz I literally can play all  12 major minor a

ll kinds of redos all kinds of inversions dominant sevens diminished sevens  we want to learn all these because not only do they help us in technique but they also help  us with music theory right so when I learn let's say B major go by practicing the B major scale  I'm more conscious about the five Sharps it has and so when I learn a piece in B major scale  it's like I'm I'm more equipped it's like I've already prepped to learn that piece because I I  know the the intricacies of it which is tha

t it has five Sharps let me know in the comments  which scale you're currently working on and what kind of other videos you want to see  on this channel catch you in the next piano tutorial [Music]