You may have ten fingers but it would be in your best interest not to use all of them at least not as it relates to learning your musical keys. Now that we’ve covered the advantage of numbers over notes, what’s the best way to learn scales on the piano? Unlike notes, the numbers are the same in all 12 Major keys.īy knowing the structure of the chord it can be easily transposed to any other key by simply transposing those same numbers.

The traditional way to view any given chord is to look at it in terms of notes.īut as a chord playing musician the same chord can be viewed in terms of numbers which in turn reveal the structure of the chord. This makes them sound interesting as well as fun and useful. Even though there are several different kinds of keys of music, we’re going to be looking at Major keys of music.Īn easy way to think of a key of music is to refer to them as a menu of seven different notes in which you draw from to play melodies and chords. I’ll refer to scales and keys of music interchangeably. You’re not likely to get an enthusiastic response. Just tell a traditional piano student to go practice their scales. But words have the tendency to conjure up images and feelings. This may seem like nothing more than semantics. I prefer not to call scales by their traditional name but instead prefer to call them a key of music.

Without going overboard into too much detail, you’re developing your finger dexterity and learning to smoothly (legato) play notes as is required by many classical piano pieces. But many of us ask ourselves: what is the purpose of this exercise? Most of us that took traditional piano lessons have memories of repetitiously playing our scales on both hands moving through several octaves of the keyboard.

It makes sense because you can ascend and descend a scale just as you would a ladder. To answer the next the question that always comes up: Why are they called scales? The word scale comes from the Latin word la scala which means ladder.

D flat major scale piano tutorial