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I remember I was asked to play C major scale and arpeggio for a piano exam at Berklee and I had some inaccuracies. One of the teachers said to me, "You thought this would be the easiest scale you didn't have to practice, did you?" I was like screw you, that was genuinely the one I practiced the most. It was like 9 years ago, I can still remember what the color of his shirt was and which room it was in.
This is only really true for piano though. For ocarina, which I play, c is easiest. I was wondering what he was gonna say that made the braid statement true, and it's that it was an incomplete statement only applicable to pianists.
Chopin used to teach his students the b major scale as the first one. if you think about it it's genius because it's easy in both the categories you listed
I discovered this about a year into self-teaching the piano. I did a lot of my learning by ear, and inadvertently discovered intervals and their relationships by noodling around with playing melodies I already memorized in different keys. Literally just picking a new starting point for the melody, and seeing if I could work out how to play it by ear. I noticed that the "distance" between the notes was the same, and even though I was playing entirely different notes, it still sounded similar? I didn't know there was a name for this relationship between notes, but it fascinated me and I tried noodling around with it even more. I ended up transposing a bunch of melodies into all sorts of different keys. I was extremely surprised when I found that, for the most part, I was able to keep the exact same fingering. Some things needed me to stretch a wee bit further than others, but for the most part, it was virtually identical to what I had learned originally.
I haven’t gotten to that part of the video yet, but this isn’t actually true. Db Major, Eb Major, F Major, Gb major, Ab Major, and Bb major all have different fingerings, just to name a few.
@@Furnischer in terms of the relation of whole steps and half steps, totally. But, if you were to try to play every scale with the typical c major fingering (12312345 on RH, 54321321 on LH), you’re gonna run into some uncomfortable hand positions.
This applies to piano technique beyond scales; leaps and jumps are also far easier on the black keys because you are less likely to clip notes on either side and the hand doesn't need to be rotated as far around to play them. There's a reason why composers like Liszt wrote a lot of their virtuoso pieces in keys with a lot of black notes.
Yeah jumps with white keys are really hard. I played Wilde Jagd a couple months ago and there's a notorious passage towards the end where the right hand jumps up and down by 3 octaves. Half of it is actually fairly easy coz it's just black keys but the other half that's on white is SUPER tricky to do cleanly
i have always thought the same... though i still use c major a lot because it's easier to see the accidentals that i can use. p.s. i've heard from somewhere that chopin taught his students the b major scale first, because it fits the fingers like a glove, very interesting i'd say
I heard someone say that B major is the scale piano students start with in Russia, and considering the huge amount of incredible composers that Russia has offered it might not be that bad!
B major was the first scale I mastered! I learned C major first, obviously, but I got really good at B major before any other scale. It really does fit the fingers like a glove.
oh yeah, to me the most difficult thing about learning keys is to build up the accidental / chromatic intuition and muscle memory on each, there are some keys that I can use all 12 notes in one phrase and sound good, and there are some keys i can barely use the 4# blues note
Very good point, thank you for bringing this up. C major is the most technically demanding scale for sure. In the Taubman Approach, we start with B major for the same reasons you point out - it fits the natural shape of the hand. When we finally get to C major, instead of curling the fingers excessively (which makes it difficult to play fast), we use the so called "in and out motion" (which you also mention) which means moving slightly towards and away from the black keys to adjust for the length of each finger. It takes practice, but the end result is that the C major scale feels as comfortable to play as the B major. If you want to know more Robert Durso has free videos about this on TH-cam.
These reasons were pointed out by Chopin almost 200 years ago. He made his student start by these scales because he considered that the shape of human hand was oriented to play on black keys. It is not coincidence that one of his hardest etudes is the one on C major (op 10 no 1)
That side view of C maj vs Db maj is a perfect illustration. It’s like the difference between the standard QWERTY keyboard vs the Dvorak keyboard layout - you can see and hear how much less you have to move your fingers with Dvorak. I bet if you played those two scales with the power off that the Db scale would sound quieter. 👂
I started to learn piano on my own a few years ago and I remember that, after just a look at some of the major scales patterns, I started to figure out all the other shapes and some of those came out surprisingly natural (es. F# major, B major). We guitar players have it definitely easier because we use symmetrical shapes that fit all the scales, but chords in altered keys are a pain to play in certain parts of the neck (ex. the chords in the key of C# on 1st position).
Same thing applies to mallet percussion instruments too. It’s hard to know what notes we are playing or if we’re playing the right notes if we do runs in C major. As opposed to E major (best scale ever for these instruments) we play 2 black notes followed by 2 white notes and repeated. Much easier to follow in that instance
Another way to see that there's only one scale fingering is as follows. All the scales of the seven modes of C can be played with 123 1234, except for Lydian which is 1234 123, but that's just inverting the two groups, and so it's essentially still 123 1234. We know each mode of C has a relative Ionian mode, which is the major key containing the same notes as that mode of C, e.g. C Dorian has the relative Ionian of Bb major. This tells us 7 out of all the 12 major scales can be played with 123 1234 fingering: C, Bb, F, G, Eb, Ab, and Db. Since the B major scale is also played with 123 1234 fingering, we can apply the same argument to see that this fingering works as well for B, E, A, F#, and D. Together, those are all the 12 major scales.
When I started teaching myself to play piano at age 12 I always learned songs in C major because I thought it was the easiest to play, and any music with black notes was harder, not realizing I was learning the hardest key to play in, and 47 years later now that I know I’m glad I did
I'm a classically-trained pianist and clarinetist. While I began learning on the piano and have basically been playing all my life, it's the clarinet I took up and spent the most time studying and learning. So while I did hear in college music theory the C major scale is the hardest one, I don't think I ever actually got an explanation of it. And I never received the revelation about the fingerings with each scale. I just figured it was something you just had to memorize. But I would say on clarinet, C major really is the easiest scale to play, or at least one of the easiest. The only difficulty is the octave break between A and B and playing it smoothly without losing your tone.
Concert Eb, concert F, concert Ab, and clarion concert Bb are all much easier to play than concert C. None require register changes and none require fingers on both hands to be moved at the same time. Chalameau concert C requires a register jump from chalameau A to clarion B and a shift from either right or left clarion B to left or right clarion C# respectively. In clarion register it's easier, but still requires a jump from clarion B to altissimo C#. There are many other scales I'd consider to be easier than concert C, but the listed are by far the easiest on clarinet.
@@mazeradeville2911 I said the C major scale, which *is* concert Bb. Concert C is the D major scale on clarinet. But I'm not sure what you're talking about, because concert Bb, aka C major scale, does require a register change.
@@clintonwilcox4690 "Clarion Bb" means concert Bb that starts in the clarion register. There is no register change since all the pitches in concert Bb exist in the clarion register.
@@mazeradeville2911 Okay, so I'm guessing you're just here to show off your knowledge of obscure terms instead of really trying to contribute to the conversation, but obviously the C major scale can be played without a register change. A reasonable person would have understood that I was only talking about a register change if you start on the lowest C you can play instead of the next highest one. But I guess being a contrarian has become a hobby of a lot of people.
@@clintonwilcox4690 Clarion is not an obscure term. Any clarinet player who has an education past that of a middle schooler should at least know about the chalameau and clarion register as well as their names. They may not learn of the altissimo register until high school, but learning how to access the clarion register is a first year skill. Otherwise what do you call it? "concert Bb that starts on the C where you don't press the register key?" Calling it chalameau or clarion concert Bb is way easier. Plus, many bands, including the ones I play in, have their clarinet section play the clarion concert Bb scale as their warmup both because clarion C is a much better tuning note than chalameau C and because moving air faster to voice the upper half of the clarion register makes for better acclamation to an actual performance environment.
I say this to my private percussion students all the time! Because there's no place to "check in" with the shape, it's challenging because it's all about managing the distance ce your mallets travel.
Charles, I took lessons from a classical pianist who taught me all the scales with the same fingering as the C major scale. After almost 25 years playing like this, I saw a video of you last year and I noticed that you were doing things differently. I talked to several pianist friends and noticed that I was the only one to play scales that way, all with the same format. I was in shock.
It's actually a very beneficial way to practise all the scales, because it helps you out in those moments when only a weird fingering is feasible. That said, teacher definitely should've also taught you the standard ways! Those help a lot with intuition when playing in different keys.
@@nomannic1 I'm entirely self-taught and I learned all the scales starting from 1 (thumb). Crossing the thumb over to Gb just comes naturally. It just never occurred to me that I was allowed to start scales with a different finger - haha
I have followed finger numbers before, and NEVER REALIZED that the thumb cross over was on a white key after a black key for that reason. IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE and feels SO MUCH MORE NATURAL NOW!
Thank you for this video, I don't feel so stupid now. I've been struggling with the F# minor scale, to the point where there's been a low-key psychological block (no pun intended); this same block can be applied to the B minor scale in my case. I've managed to clear away half of that block, and you just cleared away the other half. I start practice every day with Hanon, Exercise no. 39, solely for the purposes of developing the musculature needed for playing. By the time I get to F# minor, given the speed goal I have, I'm literally at the point of muscle exhaustion (muscle failure is possible, by the way, ask me how I know), and my hands don't respond as well at that point. For those unfamiliar with Hanon, the suggested goal for scales in the book is 120 bpm (sixteenth notes); my personal goal at this point is 100 bpm, and my current speed is 88 bpm (I'm getting there!). After 19 scales (let's not forget the minor ones), I'm understandably a little fatigued. But it starts with C major, and it's best to get the most difficult scale out of the way first.
I had a parallel conversation about this core topic with my pastor when prepping for this past Sunday’s music. C Major/ A minor is the scale/ mode that reminds me I need to practice more as there is no physical border that allows you to rely purely on muscle memory/ touch to play it cleanly in the heat of the moment.
I recommend using Keysight to give a lovely visual overlay of the keys you're pressing at any given moment. You don't need to show the note stream, just putting the key overlay over the top of your physical piano can give a better indication of what keys you're pressing on the overhead shot.
This video just put together things my body just understood but I didn’t actually see it in my brain. One of the most eye opening videos I’ve ever seen. Thanks for the content!
Interesting video, but now I'm wondering whether the conclusion also holds up when going beyond playing linear scales - most melodies feature quite a bit of jumps, arpeggios, leaps, and so on. Or just playing chords, in general? For example, an Abm7 chord (mostly black keys) compared to a Dm7 chord (only white keys). Or a simple IM7 - iim7 - iiim7 chord movement (CM7 - Dm7 - Em7 compared to GbM7 - Abm7 - Bbm7). Might be an interesting idea for a future video, maybe? Which keys are easiest/hardest from a chord/accompaniment perspective? Keep up the good work!
So scales are like modes, only with names like E Ring-fingerian, G Indexian, etc (I've probably gotten those wrong lol but you get the idea), and with different names for each hand. Fascinating!
I remember seeing a few videos about the Janko keyboard, a special type of piano keyboard designed so that every major scale plays exactly the same! The notes of every whole step are right next to each other horizontally, and the semitones between those whole steps are one row in front of or behind the row that the other notes are on. I've never had the chance to play a Janko keyboard, but I imagine that learning how would be pretty fun!
Great video Charles! I play guitar - and I've always noticed that playing a little piano or keyboards would make my hands hurt a little bit -- I always chalked it up to my guitar-player DNA -- now I see the real reason why -- because I always screw around with D Dorian or A minor
Wow, that is the best news I've heard in my two months of piano practice! (Yes, two months). Wow--now I don't have to be "afraid" of sharps and flats. Thanks so much! By the way, I'm a Cornell Graduate (class of 1980).
Hi Charles, I heard that when Chopin (yes - that one) was a piano teacher, he always taught the scale of B major because that was the easiest to play and the students arrived faster at a point where they could hear themselves actually succeeding.
As an absolute begginer using piano mostly for composing, one thing I really dislike about the black keys is how thin they are. I can't play fast and hit them accurately. I'm sure this can be helped with with proper hand position, but I'm not a pianist.
For the C major scale I just realized the fingers are to be crossed where there are no black keys between white keys: 3 white key cluster for 3 first fingers, followed by a 4 white key cluster for 4 first fingers, and then the cycle repeats.
I started piano at 3 and half years old, and my teacher, a Sainte-Croix nun, told me repeatedly to position my hands as if I was holding an apple. This is how I kept playing the keys until now (I'm 66) and I've been told by pro musicians - I'm not, far from it - that my keyboard touch is remarkable (in a positive way, of course) as it can be soft and melodic. So to see great players do amazing things on the keyboard whilst maintaining a flat hand posture just does not compute in my brain. Anyhow, great channel content.
It occurs to me watching the distortions of your hand as you do the C, that that could be another good reason to use it for beginners. (which I am by the way, lol) It got me used to sometimes having to wiggle my hand around the keyboard. By the time I'd mastered C my hands were already like "ok yeah it's gonna be a lil uncomfy sometimes."
This is a very individual thing, as we don't all have the same sized hands and fingers. For those with larger fingers and hands, then they may find your tips more helpful, but for those with more slender and longer fingers, they might not have the same issues at all. It's always good to allow for differentiation when teaching.
Way back in the 80s in college when I had to learn scales I too said it was the hardest, because it's easier to kind of lose track where you are. With f major for example, you've got that b flat black key you have to hit, which gives you a reference point. All white keys makes you have to pay perticular attention of where you are.
This was very much like the realization I came to with scales and modes on the guitar. The shape is always the same, you just start at different points.
In grad school I heard a cellist make the same argument. As a piano teacher now, I strongly agree. However, I like teaching the C Major scale first because, once you learn it, all the others are comparatively easy.
I still think F# major can rival C just because of the different separations (it's way less comfortable than its circle-of-fifths neighbors B and C#, for instance) but yeah
As a Keyboard/Piano player myself, I agree. Personally, I feel like the more you go down the sharps and flats on the circle of fifths, the easier it is to memorize the finger pattern in both hands.
As someone who has played the piano for most of my whole life, yet not ever really delved heavily into music theory and whatnot, I always find videos like this fascinating, because I'm always like "oh, THIS is why the Db scale feels more comfortable than the C major scale." Like, it's something I've intuitively known for years, but seeing it actually explicitly explained is super cool.
This is also true and even more exaggerated on vibraphone and marimba. I start to go cross-eyed when trying to do fast runs in C major, but doing runs in B is a breeze
The first scale I taught my kid was C major but he insisted I teach him all the sharps so within a few weeks I had him playing B major instead. He was three. Amazing how much they can actually learn at that age.
I learned piano backwards. learned the scales that used all the black keys before I learned any others. Its always a pain finding music thats in those scales im comfortable with.
I grew up on programming midi, and the uneven distribution of keys still throws me off, even when playing all white keys. I hear, feel and see evenly distributed semitones in 12EDO tuning, it feels so wrong to me that transposing a shape changes it according to something that gets really arbitrary and removed from the music I'm actually playing. I'm not a performer, so it's nice to base things on C Major modes when playing something you'll touch up and transpose with programming, at least to get the initial ideas out. I'm aware how dangerous an audiation reader would be, since it would probably inevitably work over a range. Hell, maybe it already exists in secret. But, assuming we get the technology anyway, there is this: Imagine a device that can ''read your mind'', purely the audiation. If that extends to timbre and it sounds clean, music would get CRAZY. I'm curious what kinda noise and stuff it'd pick up, imagine actually hearing what audiation is like for others. Hell, maybe we're actually gonna have to go around with tin foil hats at some point, picture that future. Maybe then AI can join in to possibly refine the sounds picked up from our brains, perhaps to models we can tune ourselves, with whatever weird instruments and synth patches etc. we've got. This could solve the age old problem of hearing something in your head and just not being able to nail the sounds, it's just next to impossible sometimes. So many people are all doom & gloom about the coming technological advancements in music, and while there are small and huge problems alike, it's gonna bring some incredible new horizons. Even fully AI generated music, some of it is gonna blow our minds. It's just not the same as hearing a real person's expression, but trust me, it's gonna be something else.
After seeing this video I'm even more convinced that calculus is far easier than playing a musical instrument, especially a piano, guitar, trombone, violine, marimba, trumpet... I still have some bits of hope that playing drums may really not be that unnecessarily complicated, but maybe I have yet to see a similar video on drums.
This is why some of Liszt's hardest and most virtuosic pieces are written in a minor. A minor has no flats (relative of C major) and therefore is so much harder so master than say a virtuosic piece in D flat or F sharp.
CMajor scale is pretty easy. Just remember to [switch] on the 3rd and 4th fingers. , 1-2-[3-1]-2-3-4-5 or 1-2-3-1-2-3-[4-1]-2-3-1-2-3-4-5 Fingering for other scales is more complicated. Sure, some are easier, but some are also harder. Think of F major, your 4th finger has to land on Bflat, nothing else will work. That messes it all up. Now what? Ideally you want your 5th finger to land on F at the top. But your 1st finger is now on C. That means your 4th finger lands on F at the top. If you were playing a piece, that would be fine. But it's clunky for a scale where you want to land on F with 5.
I've wondered, if only C were white but each of the other white keys was given a different color (the 6 colors of the spectrum) would this make the keyboard easier to navigate?
I always thought the the finger pattern for the "harder scales" comes naturally once you learned the pattern for the cmaj scale and others that starts on the first finger. Without even thinking about it.
So, if all the fingerings for the majors scales are the same excusing different starting points, does switching to minor or more esoteric scales (say hungarian minor) change the fingering? And if it does, is the fingering consistent for the scale across every key like it is for the Major scale?
It's similarly the hardest to play (properly) on melodic percussion because there are no clear reference points for your muscle memory to use to hit the right note in the right spot, and it's just awkward.
C major has always felt really awkward going up but not so much going down for me D major feels opposite in that respect, and the awkwardness in both cases is the 7th and octave
Snag the free scale chart here! cornellmusicacademy.com/major-scales
"Don't forget to check your spam folder!"
Sounds about right. I know where my email address ends up if I enter it there.
Can you please make a minor scale grouping/fingering chart?
Thanks for the chart!! Do you also have a left hand fingering chart? Big fan of the channel!!
"There is only one fingering"
That's what she said.
Oh no, i better not make tunes in c key then if its the hardest one.
I remember I was asked to play C major scale and arpeggio for a piano exam at Berklee and I had some inaccuracies. One of the teachers said to me, "You thought this would be the easiest scale you didn't have to practice, did you?" I was like screw you, that was genuinely the one I practiced the most. It was like 9 years ago, I can still remember what the color of his shirt was and which room it was in.
Did you do well overall tho?
@@TheUnderscore_ I don't remember, I have to find my transcript lol. I just remember that I was very annoyed
Yeah what a douchebag of a teacher
People are so judgemental.....
music teachers can be the worst
It’s the hardest to physically play, the easiest to conceptualize. Edit: for piano
This is only really true for piano though. For ocarina, which I play, c is easiest. I was wondering what he was gonna say that made the braid statement true, and it's that it was an incomplete statement only applicable to pianists.
Yeah for sax it's just bring my fingers up and down on the main keys with nothing extra.
@@vinsanity_52 ah hello fellow sax player
Also easiest to read
Chopin used to teach his students the b major scale as the first one. if you think about it it's genius because it's easy in both the categories you listed
That thing about every scale being the same fingering with a different starting point was mind blowing. I can't believe I've never heard of that.
Except for F major?
I discovered this about a year into self-teaching the piano. I did a lot of my learning by ear, and inadvertently discovered intervals and their relationships by noodling around with playing melodies I already memorized in different keys. Literally just picking a new starting point for the melody, and seeing if I could work out how to play it by ear.
I noticed that the "distance" between the notes was the same, and even though I was playing entirely different notes, it still sounded similar? I didn't know there was a name for this relationship between notes, but it fascinated me and I tried noodling around with it even more. I ended up transposing a bunch of melodies into all sorts of different keys.
I was extremely surprised when I found that, for the most part, I was able to keep the exact same fingering. Some things needed me to stretch a wee bit further than others, but for the most part, it was virtually identical to what I had learned originally.
I haven’t gotten to that part of the video yet, but this isn’t actually true. Db Major, Eb Major, F Major, Gb major, Ab Major, and Bb major all have different fingerings, just to name a few.
@@JoshuaBurniece Like the comment said, they may have different *starting points* but it's more or less sort of the same
@@Furnischer in terms of the relation of whole steps and half steps, totally. But, if you were to try to play every scale with the typical c major fingering (12312345 on RH, 54321321 on LH), you’re gonna run into some uncomfortable hand positions.
This applies to piano technique beyond scales; leaps and jumps are also far easier on the black keys because you are less likely to clip notes on either side and the hand doesn't need to be rotated as far around to play them. There's a reason why composers like Liszt wrote a lot of their virtuoso pieces in keys with a lot of black notes.
So right. I played Un Sospiro, which is in Db, and it would be nearly impossible in C
Lmao imagine having to play la campanella in A minor
Yeah jumps with white keys are really hard. I played Wilde Jagd a couple months ago and there's a notorious passage towards the end where the right hand jumps up and down by 3 octaves. Half of it is actually fairly easy coz it's just black keys but the other half that's on white is SUPER tricky to do cleanly
The first Transcendental Etude is built around all-white arpeggios and scales. It makes it way harder than it sounds lol
If you're landing on D, G, or A, just aim between the black keys instead of at the bottom end of the key.
i have always thought the same... though i still use c major a lot because it's easier to see the accidentals that i can use.
p.s. i've heard from somewhere that chopin taught his students the b major scale first, because it fits the fingers like a glove, very interesting i'd say
I heard someone say that B major is the scale piano students start with in Russia, and considering the huge amount of incredible composers that Russia has offered it might not be that bad!
B major was the first scale I mastered! I learned C major first, obviously, but I got really good at B major before any other scale. It really does fit the fingers like a glove.
oh yeah, to me the most difficult thing about learning keys is to build up the accidental / chromatic intuition and muscle memory on each, there are some keys that I can use all 12 notes in one phrase and sound good, and there are some keys i can barely use the 4# blues note
Although not for piano specifically, I'm pretty sure my band class taught Bb first as well
@@KingNedya i suppose since brass instruments are tuned to b-flat, that makes sense
Very good point, thank you for bringing this up. C major is the most technically demanding scale for sure. In the Taubman Approach, we start with B major for the same reasons you point out - it fits the natural shape of the hand. When we finally get to C major, instead of curling the fingers excessively (which makes it difficult to play fast), we use the so called "in and out motion" (which you also mention) which means moving slightly towards and away from the black keys to adjust for the length of each finger. It takes practice, but the end result is that the C major scale feels as comfortable to play as the B major. If you want to know more Robert Durso has free videos about this on TH-cam.
You are right, I was naturally shifting my hands to the side but moving it toward the piano is even better
These reasons were pointed out by Chopin almost 200 years ago. He made his student start by these scales because he considered that the shape of human hand was oriented to play on black keys. It is not coincidence that one of his hardest etudes is the one on C major (op 10 no 1)
That side view of C maj vs Db maj is a perfect illustration. It’s like the difference between the standard QWERTY keyboard vs the Dvorak keyboard layout - you can see and hear how much less you have to move your fingers with Dvorak.
I bet if you played those two scales with the power off that the Db scale would sound quieter. 👂
I started to learn piano on my own a few years ago and I remember that, after just a look at some of the major scales patterns, I started to figure out all the other shapes and some of those came out surprisingly natural (es. F# major, B major).
We guitar players have it definitely easier because we use symmetrical shapes that fit all the scales, but chords in altered keys are a pain to play in certain parts of the neck (ex. the chords in the key of C# on 1st position).
Same thing applies to mallet percussion instruments too. It’s hard to know what notes we are playing or if we’re playing the right notes if we do runs in C major. As opposed to E major (best scale ever for these instruments) we play 2 black notes followed by 2 white notes and repeated. Much easier to follow in that instance
Yes! I think C major is significantly more difficult relative to other scales on mallet percussion instruments than on piano.
Another way to see that there's only one scale fingering is as follows. All the scales of the seven modes of C can be played with 123 1234, except for Lydian which is 1234 123, but that's just inverting the two groups, and so it's essentially still 123 1234. We know each mode of C has a relative Ionian mode, which is the major key containing the same notes as that mode of C, e.g. C Dorian has the relative Ionian of Bb major.
This tells us 7 out of all the 12 major scales can be played with 123 1234 fingering: C, Bb, F, G, Eb, Ab, and Db. Since the B major scale is also played with 123 1234 fingering, we can apply the same argument to see that this fingering works as well for B, E, A, F#, and D. Together, those are all the 12 major scales.
Really clever analysis!
When I started teaching myself to play piano at age 12 I always learned songs in C major because I thought it was the easiest to play, and any music with black notes was harder, not realizing I was learning the hardest key to play in, and 47 years later now that I know I’m glad I did
I'm a classically-trained pianist and clarinetist. While I began learning on the piano and have basically been playing all my life, it's the clarinet I took up and spent the most time studying and learning. So while I did hear in college music theory the C major scale is the hardest one, I don't think I ever actually got an explanation of it. And I never received the revelation about the fingerings with each scale. I just figured it was something you just had to memorize. But I would say on clarinet, C major really is the easiest scale to play, or at least one of the easiest. The only difficulty is the octave break between A and B and playing it smoothly without losing your tone.
Concert Eb, concert F, concert Ab, and clarion concert Bb are all much easier to play than concert C. None require register changes and none require fingers on both hands to be moved at the same time. Chalameau concert C requires a register jump from chalameau A to clarion B and a shift from either right or left clarion B to left or right clarion C# respectively. In clarion register it's easier, but still requires a jump from clarion B to altissimo C#. There are many other scales I'd consider to be easier than concert C, but the listed are by far the easiest on clarinet.
@@mazeradeville2911 I said the C major scale, which *is* concert Bb. Concert C is the D major scale on clarinet. But I'm not sure what you're talking about, because concert Bb, aka C major scale, does require a register change.
@@clintonwilcox4690 "Clarion Bb" means concert Bb that starts in the clarion register. There is no register change since all the pitches in concert Bb exist in the clarion register.
@@mazeradeville2911 Okay, so I'm guessing you're just here to show off your knowledge of obscure terms instead of really trying to contribute to the conversation, but obviously the C major scale can be played without a register change. A reasonable person would have understood that I was only talking about a register change if you start on the lowest C you can play instead of the next highest one. But I guess being a contrarian has become a hobby of a lot of people.
@@clintonwilcox4690 Clarion is not an obscure term. Any clarinet player who has an education past that of a middle schooler should at least know about the chalameau and clarion register as well as their names. They may not learn of the altissimo register until high school, but learning how to access the clarion register is a first year skill. Otherwise what do you call it? "concert Bb that starts on the C where you don't press the register key?" Calling it chalameau or clarion concert Bb is way easier. Plus, many bands, including the ones I play in, have their clarinet section play the clarion concert Bb scale as their warmup both because clarion C is a much better tuning note than chalameau C and because moving air faster to voice the upper half of the clarion register makes for better acclamation to an actual performance environment.
I say this to my private percussion students all the time! Because there's no place to "check in" with the shape, it's challenging because it's all about managing the distance ce your mallets travel.
This is very true. There is no reference when looking at it either for hand eye coordination. Try the Petrouchka intro lol
Charles, I took lessons from a classical pianist who taught me all the scales with the same fingering as the C major scale. After almost 25 years playing like this, I saw a video of you last year and I noticed that you were doing things differently. I talked to several pianist friends and noticed that I was the only one to play scales that way, all with the same format. I was in shock.
That’s crazy 😮😂
I'm in shock right now
Are you telling me you played Db major starting with your thumb and crossing over to the Gb.... How does that even work....
It's actually a very beneficial way to practise all the scales, because it helps you out in those moments when only a weird fingering is feasible.
That said, teacher definitely should've also taught you the standard ways! Those help a lot with intuition when playing in different keys.
@@nomannic1 I'm entirely self-taught and I learned all the scales starting from 1 (thumb). Crossing the thumb over to Gb just comes naturally. It just never occurred to me that I was allowed to start scales with a different finger - haha
I have followed finger numbers before, and NEVER REALIZED that the thumb cross over was on a white key after a black key for that reason.
IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE and feels SO MUCH MORE NATURAL NOW!
Thank you for this video, I don't feel so stupid now. I've been struggling with the F# minor scale, to the point where there's been a low-key psychological block (no pun intended); this same block can be applied to the B minor scale in my case. I've managed to clear away half of that block, and you just cleared away the other half. I start practice every day with Hanon, Exercise no. 39, solely for the purposes of developing the musculature needed for playing. By the time I get to F# minor, given the speed goal I have, I'm literally at the point of muscle exhaustion (muscle failure is possible, by the way, ask me how I know), and my hands don't respond as well at that point. For those unfamiliar with Hanon, the suggested goal for scales in the book is 120 bpm (sixteenth notes); my personal goal at this point is 100 bpm, and my current speed is 88 bpm (I'm getting there!). After 19 scales (let's not forget the minor ones), I'm understandably a little fatigued. But it starts with C major, and it's best to get the most difficult scale out of the way first.
I had a parallel conversation about this core topic with my pastor when prepping for this past Sunday’s music. C Major/ A minor is the scale/ mode that reminds me I need to practice more as there is no physical border that allows you to rely purely on muscle memory/ touch to play it cleanly in the heat of the moment.
I recommend using Keysight to give a lovely visual overlay of the keys you're pressing at any given moment. You don't need to show the note stream, just putting the key overlay over the top of your physical piano can give a better indication of what keys you're pressing on the overhead shot.
Dude! I've been playing for over 40 years and I never knew that scales start on different fingers. Genius.
This video just put together things my body just understood but I didn’t actually see it in my brain. One of the most eye opening videos I’ve ever seen. Thanks for the content!
Brilliant. Explains why I goof up on C major and can nail all the others! Somehow I use the black keys as markers for my respective fingers.
That just blew my mind. It's kind of like modes but for fingerings. Thanks!
Interesting video, but now I'm wondering whether the conclusion also holds up when going beyond playing linear scales - most melodies feature quite a bit of jumps, arpeggios, leaps, and so on. Or just playing chords, in general?
For example, an Abm7 chord (mostly black keys) compared to a Dm7 chord (only white keys). Or a simple IM7 - iim7 - iiim7 chord movement (CM7 - Dm7 - Em7 compared to GbM7 - Abm7 - Bbm7).
Might be an interesting idea for a future video, maybe? Which keys are easiest/hardest from a chord/accompaniment perspective? Keep up the good work!
this is why I've always wanted to try playing on a piano with the janko keyboard layout
All of my music teachers always taught me that all scales start with finger 1. This makes so much more sense!
I remember this from Piano class, V-W fingerings, for Db, Gb, and B major scales
So scales are like modes, only with names like E Ring-fingerian, G Indexian, etc (I've probably gotten those wrong lol but you get the idea), and with different names for each hand. Fascinating!
I love to use G minor
I'm really glad that I had realized the fact about fingering in scales much earlier than late🙏🙏
I remember seeing a few videos about the Janko keyboard, a special type of piano keyboard designed so that every major scale plays exactly the same! The notes of every whole step are right next to each other horizontally, and the semitones between those whole steps are one row in front of or behind the row that the other notes are on. I've never had the chance to play a Janko keyboard, but I imagine that learning how would be pretty fun!
I find it interesting that the structure that he points out also applies to the notes in between major chords. Pretty cool.
My personal fav is Eb major
Great video Charles! I play guitar - and I've always noticed that playing a little piano or keyboards would make my hands hurt a little bit -- I always chalked it up to my guitar-player DNA -- now I see the real reason why -- because I always screw around with D Dorian or A minor
Wow, that is the best news I've heard in my two months of piano practice! (Yes, two months). Wow--now I don't have to be "afraid" of sharps and flats. Thanks so much! By the way, I'm a Cornell Graduate (class of 1980).
Hi Charles, I heard that when Chopin (yes - that one) was a piano teacher, he always taught the scale of B major because that was the easiest to play and the students arrived faster at a point where they could hear themselves actually succeeding.
As an absolute begginer using piano mostly for composing, one thing I really dislike about the black keys is how thin they are. I can't play fast and hit them accurately. I'm sure this can be helped with with proper hand position, but I'm not a pianist.
For the C major scale I just realized the fingers are to be crossed where there are no black keys between white keys: 3 white key cluster for 3 first fingers, followed by a 4 white key cluster for 4 first fingers, and then the cycle repeats.
I started piano at 3 and half years old, and my teacher, a Sainte-Croix nun, told me repeatedly to position my hands as if I was holding an apple. This is how I kept playing the keys until now (I'm 66) and I've been told by pro musicians - I'm not, far from it - that my keyboard touch is remarkable (in a positive way, of course) as it can be soft and melodic. So to see great players do amazing things on the keyboard whilst maintaining a flat hand posture just does not compute in my brain. Anyhow, great channel content.
It occurs to me watching the distortions of your hand as you do the C, that that could be another good reason to use it for beginners. (which I am by the way, lol) It got me used to sometimes having to wiggle my hand around the keyboard. By the time I'd mastered C my hands were already like "ok yeah it's gonna be a lil uncomfy sometimes."
I wish someone when I started told me white keys only seemed easy cause it's what we were accustomed to as beginners.
This is a very individual thing, as we don't all have the same sized hands and fingers.
For those with larger fingers and hands, then they may find your tips more helpful, but for those with more slender and longer fingers, they might not have the same issues at all.
It's always good to allow for differentiation when teaching.
Hand position also helps alleviate the c major problem, with proper hand position the tips of our fingers are all even
Way back in the 80s in college when I had to learn scales I too said it was the hardest, because it's easier to kind of lose track where you are. With f major for example, you've got that b flat black key you have to hit, which gives you a reference point. All white keys makes you have to pay perticular attention of where you are.
At 2:20 those 5 notes are literally the beggining of Dru Hill's song ''Incomplete''
This was very much like the realization I came to with scales and modes on the guitar. The shape is always the same, you just start at different points.
In grad school I heard a cellist make the same argument. As a piano teacher now, I strongly agree. However, I like teaching the C Major scale first because, once you learn it, all the others are comparatively easy.
I had a toy piano as a kid that had the c key play the d sound so when playing a song i always used the Bb key to reposition them
I still think F# major can rival C just because of the different separations (it's way less comfortable than its circle-of-fifths neighbors B and C#, for instance) but yeah
This is so true. There are no black keys to hit side against to guide me. You can’t feel the scale
This explains a lot as I’m a guitarist who tried to teach himself piano years ago and gave up.
Actually a very interesting topic, thank you!
Awesome vid! Watched it with my bro, his name is Finger and he looked hella anxious throughout the whole explaination
Still learning... Thanks
Been playing the piano for 5 years. You just changed my life, thank you 🙏
As a Keyboard/Piano player myself, I agree.
Personally, I feel like the more you go down the sharps and flats on the circle of fifths, the easier it is to memorize the finger pattern in both hands.
As someone who has played the piano for most of my whole life, yet not ever really delved heavily into music theory and whatnot, I always find videos like this fascinating, because I'm always like "oh, THIS is why the Db scale feels more comfortable than the C major scale." Like, it's something I've intuitively known for years, but seeing it actually explicitly explained is super cool.
This is also true and even more exaggerated on vibraphone and marimba. I start to go cross-eyed when trying to do fast runs in C major, but doing runs in B is a breeze
This is so interesting and useful, Thank you
0:53 hits piano randomly makes beautiful chord.
Sound logic. Thanks for sharing.
I think chopin would start his students off learning b major, dflat major and g flat major since they lined up well with the human hand
This is so true, love your content❤
Where were you 14 years ago with this information when I needed it?!!!
I've been doing it my way since 1999. This got me interested in learning the correct way. It's gonna be hard tho! :D
4:23 *snap* *snap*
I had begun to realize this before watching this but this video has brought it out of my subconscious theory to conscious understanding
your videos inspired me to relearn the piano
Wow, i never realized this when i started to play the piano ❤
The first scale I taught my kid was C major but he insisted I teach him all the sharps so within a few weeks I had him playing B major instead. He was three. Amazing how much they can actually learn at that age.
i would love to see you discuss more movie scores, particularly character themes from the mcu maybe?
I learned piano backwards. learned the scales that used all the black keys before I learned any others. Its always a pain finding music thats in those scales im comfortable with.
I just learnt the intervals (w, w, h. w, w, w, h) and went from there. Then I can play all major and minor scales (within reason).
4:28 Hans Zimmer: “I like to write in D.”
I think the size of your hands and fingers length partly affect it too
Eb minor is also a bit of a task. Eb major is heaven!
I grew up on programming midi, and the uneven distribution of keys still throws me off, even when playing all white keys. I hear, feel and see evenly distributed semitones in 12EDO tuning, it feels so wrong to me that transposing a shape changes it according to something that gets really arbitrary and removed from the music I'm actually playing. I'm not a performer, so it's nice to base things on C Major modes when playing something you'll touch up and transpose with programming, at least to get the initial ideas out.
I'm aware how dangerous an audiation reader would be, since it would probably inevitably work over a range. Hell, maybe it already exists in secret. But, assuming we get the technology anyway, there is this: Imagine a device that can ''read your mind'', purely the audiation. If that extends to timbre and it sounds clean, music would get CRAZY. I'm curious what kinda noise and stuff it'd pick up, imagine actually hearing what audiation is like for others. Hell, maybe we're actually gonna have to go around with tin foil hats at some point, picture that future.
Maybe then AI can join in to possibly refine the sounds picked up from our brains, perhaps to models we can tune ourselves, with whatever weird instruments and synth patches etc. we've got.
This could solve the age old problem of hearing something in your head and just not being able to nail the sounds, it's just next to impossible sometimes.
So many people are all doom & gloom about the coming technological advancements in music, and while there are small and huge problems alike, it's gonna bring some incredible new horizons. Even fully AI generated music, some of it is gonna blow our minds. It's just not the same as hearing a real person's expression, but trust me, it's gonna be something else.
After seeing this video I'm even more convinced that calculus is far easier than playing a musical instrument, especially a piano, guitar, trombone, violine, marimba, trumpet... I still have some bits of hope that playing drums may really not be that unnecessarily complicated, but maybe I have yet to see a similar video on drums.
This is why some of Liszt's hardest and most virtuosic pieces are written in a minor. A minor has no flats (relative of C major) and therefore is so much harder so master than say a virtuosic piece in D flat or F sharp.
Wow! Great video!
Someone: C major is the hardest scale to play physically on piano.
No one: *did a glisando
No one: what did u say?
CMajor scale is pretty easy. Just remember to [switch] on the 3rd and 4th fingers. , 1-2-[3-1]-2-3-4-5 or 1-2-3-1-2-3-[4-1]-2-3-1-2-3-4-5 Fingering for other scales is more complicated. Sure, some are easier, but some are also harder. Think of F major, your 4th finger has to land on Bflat, nothing else will work. That messes it all up. Now what? Ideally you want your 5th finger to land on F at the top. But your 1st finger is now on C. That means your 4th finger lands on F at the top. If you were playing a piece, that would be fine. But it's clunky for a scale where you want to land on F with 5.
Hi 😊 may i know what app/software you are using while you play the piano and it appears on the screen at the same time?thanks so much
I've wondered, if only C were white but each of the other white keys was given a different color (the 6 colors of the spectrum) would this make the keyboard easier to navigate?
Imm soooo amazed that I just thought about this yesterday
This is Chopins theory for beginners to use the black keys.
I always thought the the finger pattern for the "harder scales" comes naturally once you learned the pattern for the cmaj scale and others that starts on the first finger. Without even thinking about it.
My main man Chopin taught scales in the order he for this exact reason
Pipe Organ pedals too - it means there is no black pedal points of reference.
Please do a video on music from the soulsborne games! The music in those games is amazing!
This is the exact video I need, thank you
I find black keys more difficult, because they are simply more narrow.
Wow, thanks for sharing this! Turns out I've made my own life difficult by always starting every scale with my first finger...
you could make a breakdown video on the song hey beautiful by the solids also best known from the TV series How I Met Your Mother theme song?
You should do an analysis of 'Shiny' from Moana, there are some nices uses of b6 b7 progressions!
C is like a straight road easy but Clustered if yk what I mean
So, if all the fingerings for the majors scales are the same excusing different starting points, does switching to minor or more esoteric scales (say hungarian minor) change the fingering? And if it does, is the fingering consistent for the scale across every key like it is for the Major scale?
personally I've always found the e major scale a really nice and easy one to play
It's similarly the hardest to play (properly) on melodic percussion because there are no clear reference points for your muscle memory to use to hit the right note in the right spot, and it's just awkward.
C major has always felt really awkward going up but not so much going down for me
D major feels opposite in that respect, and the awkwardness in both cases is the 7th and octave