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C major fingering is given for those keys, but the exercises could be done with any fingering.

Thank you, PianoStudent88. I was looking at their site with the black notes for the three group and white notes for the four group and just wondered how they covered these keys.

Lets all do videos of us doing scales!

As I stated in my previous post, I don't believe that any human can play hands together at MM=140 with four notes to a beat.

OK, I know some can, but it is hard to fathom. I would love to see this!

Hi all- just a couple of methods I find really useful in scale practice:
1. Arpeggio patterns play arpeggios 1-3-5-3, 2-4-6-4 etc.Very good for ensuring you know your scales and the chord qualities of different keys- i.e. major key chord ii always minor etc.

2.For speed practice this pattern up and down the scale- 123132 times 5. 231213. 312321. etc. you can do this with larger note groups focusing on the part of the scale you have most difficulty. Make sure you use the thumb as if you are continuing the scale. Contrary to popular opinion the thumb doesn't really go under as this immobilises the hand.
Hope this is useful!

I cant, but I really like doing scales..so it would be cool to share. Im planning on starting to share videos anyway. Maybe in the summer.

I really like the layout of the Palmer book. I think the visual connection is really helpful sometimes when learning theory etc. I might recommend it to my colleague who is a complete beginner.
Thanks!

I finally ordered scales bootcamp!!! It came in the mail yesterday. I have never played C major two octaves before (my teacher has me do one octave only). It is surprisingly tough. I have a lesson today, I will see what my teacher thinks about the book (she would likely approve ANYTHING that would get me to work on my scales more systematically!!!).

Hi, bumping up this old thread to ask how everyone who bought this book got along ?

After about 4 months of learning scales my health deteriorated and I was stuck in bed. It was a year later that I reached the point where sitting up and playing for 20 mins at a time became realistic again. So I considered it a fresh start as time away from piano was longer than first attempt at learning, lol.

I had previously learnt 7 scales and had used the goals in the book. However I found that upon returning to the instrument, I could play the scales fast, but not slow. If playing in contrary motion especially, I had no idea what notes I was playing and where my fingers were. So I had retained muscle memory which was good, but no brain alignment whatsoever.

I think I made a silly mistake by racing through the goals, and playing the scales far far too fast for a beginner the first time. I am glad I had made my ticks with a fine pencil so I could erase and start again. I still love the clear finger diagram approach when learning a scale, but I am ignoring the tempo goals for now. I am taking heed of advice elsewhere on this site to do slow initial practice without over-repetition in one sitting. Five times not fifty, lol.

So now I am six weeks into learning journey.
Currently practising :
D, A, E, B, Eb , five times in a row , full length of keyboard.
major scales :similar and contrary combined, 3rds and sixths similar motion,
3 and 4 note broken chords ascending and descending,
Arpeggios in root , I and II inversions.

I just got my Scales Boot Camp book and I am starting on C Major. As a complete newbie I am amazed at how difficult it is (for me) to play both hands, going up or down together. It takes some serious thought!

Am I scale disabled?

When one REALLY knows a scale are the fingers moving automatically or is the brain thinking the whole thing through all the time? And this is just the easiest of the easy scales. I can't imagine how hard some of the others are.

I don't remember this difficulty when I had lessons as a child. Maybe I never got to the stage of playing both hands together, or maybe I have just wiped the distressing memories from my memory banks.

Any suggestions, help or encouragement will be much appreciated,

dagdvm

If hands together is too hard, play hands separately.

In Bootcamp, I am finding the keyboard pictures with numbers pretty helpful right now because when left to my own devices, I keep playing a Bb in the D major scale. *eye roll*

Since my daughter is still asleep.... my partner is still partying the night away... and the birds are singing.... i have filled my time by purchasi g scales bootcamp. Need some structure in that part of my journey :-) may take a while to get here... and postage was nearly as much as the book!

Personally I think the c major scale is actually one of the hardest to start with. Yes there are no accidentals to remember, but playing on all white keys is harder than black keys. I would start with E major.
For me the key to scales is slow, slow, slow. Robert Estrin suggests starting at 60 pm and gradually working up. Bootcamp has it as a goal but I treated it like a one off thing and then raced through the rest of the goals. Personally that gave me good finger memory but no brain alignment.
Now I am aware of where the fingers are , and it helps, especially in contrary motion .E.G in D major I know if the right hand is on the mediant F# then the left hand finger is on the submediant(6th) B, when the right hand finger is on the leading tone C# then the left is on the supertonic E, and vice versa.
I find going slow and visualizing the keyboard in your mind as you play really helps.

I read a recommendation here to start scale practice with black keys. http://www.key-notes.com/piano-scales.html

Any recommendations how many times should I play a scale (just 1 octave at the beginning probably) with the first hand before switching?

C major is one of the hardest scales. The difficulty with scales is not about the reading so sharps and flats don't count. It's about turnng the thumb under smoothly and that's best done then the finger being passed is raised on a black key. Remember this when you're starting G, D and A in LH and comparing fingering with relative minors of these keys (E minor, B minor and F# minor).

B major is the easiest scale (HS) and the one Chopin always taught first. It suits the contour of the hand. E major is one of the easiest HT in either parallel or contrary motion.

Everyone finds HT difficult at first. Most people learn HT far too soon and maintain it over HS far too long. HS is by far the more important and slower is way more important than faster. Start each day's practice with crotchets/quarters and get them to around 60 bpm before moving to quavers/eighths. Do one AND two octaves. It's important to practise the turn at the top and bottom as much as the thumb crossing as it gives the lesser used fingers something to do (maybe not in F major).

Build them up to legato, staccato and non legato, with about four dynamic levels before adding triplets and going to three octaves. It might be worth spending a week or two on each key before adding triplets and/or HT on another cycle.

Add semiquavers/sixteenths on a further cycle and moving to four octaves when you're comfortable with triplets at 60 pbm for quarter notes in five or six dynamic levels.

Start slower when you start joining hands. Keep the fingers together at the turns, top and bottom. Go slow enough that you can consciously control the thumb crossings with the right hand at the right time. Speed and facility will come of their own accord and the better by not being forced.

You do need to think to play a scale well but the thinking gets easier as your fingers only need conscious control at the start of each finger group and the patterns become familiar across the keys.

If scales are difficult you're going too fast.
If scales are easy you're not doing them right.
If scales are boring you're not paying enough attention.

They are not finger exercises. They don't work the fourth and fifth fingers enough (until you get to double thirds). They are more for ear training. When you play one note at a time without accent it's easier to hear any unevenness in time or tone. When you can hear it, you can fix it. The end result is that your fingers play as if they had equal facility and strength when we know that they don't and we can bring this level of control to our pieces.

It's like drawing circles to improve your draughtsmanship. When you draw tumbleweeds it's difficult to see where you've gone wrong.

I would practise one and two octaves at first, see my reply above.

Do as many as it takes to get the last five to ten reps with full accuracy in each hand. Then sleep on it before doing more.

Additional thought: scales are to improve the technique we use in our pieces (touch and dynamic control) not to increase our velocity. If the fastest piece we play is a moderato there's no need to practise scales allegro. Practise a scale as if it comes from the piece you're about to practise.

Brilliant!

By moving to quavers/eights (from quarters), do you mean that if I play at 60bpm one note per beat, I will speed up to playing two notes per beat?

Can you also clarify what it means to add triplets?

Thanks for the post, very helpful!

Yes, first set in crotchets, plum-plum-plum, second in quavers, cherry-cherry-cherry, third in triplets, apricot-apricot-apricot, fourth in semiq's, huckleberry-huckleberry-huckleberry.

Keep the metronome at 60 bpm until you're up to semiq's for four octaves, four notes per second and when you're comfortable with that THEN start increasing the metronome maybe 10% per cycle or so.

Another piece of advice I wish someone had given me, is do not say the finger numbers aloud as you play. Say or sing the note names, otherwise it gets hard to count/practise in different rhythms.