Motivation - Why?

Understanding and practicing scales is essential for musical comprehension. It’s basically the springboard into the first somewhat more complex chapter of music theory. On the practical side, practicing scales lays the foundation for the so-called thumb-under technique, a crucial skill for fluidly playing longer note sequences.

There are excellent articles online that cover this topic, so we won’t write another one here. Instead, we’ve curated and linked to some handpicked articles and videos below, which we find particularly clear and recommendable.

Still, we’ll address two important questions here that are often glossed over in tutorials.

Should Beginners Engage with Scales?

Short answer: The theoretical part should at least be skimmed and listened to (it takes no more than half an hour), while the practical part only becomes relevant once you can already play some pieces fluently.

A bit more detail:

Every piece of music is written in a specific key, and scales form the foundation of keys. Scales determine the tonal center of a key and which notes harmonize well together. This helps you understand how a piece is structured and how to express it better.

Therefore, it’s important to understand how scales are constructed (half steps and whole steps), that there are different types of scales: major scales and three types of minor scales (natural, harmonic, melodic). Furthermore, it’s crucial to understand that certain note patterns in a scale (e.g., triads) sound particularly good and are found in nearly every piece as chords or note sequences. Once you’ve grasped this theoretical knowledge, you’ll be well-prepared even as a beginner.

Should Beginners Practice Scales on the Piano?

This question is a bit harder to answer. Aside from the important thumb-under technique, which can be effectively practiced through scales, there’s a greater risk that practicing scales will be seen as boring and done half-heartedly, possibly causing the player to quit playing altogether. Therefore, we recommend that early beginners avoid this; it’s more important to play pieces and keep the fun factor high.

Once you can play a few pieces somewhat fluently, we recommend using scales as a sort of warm-up exercise for the fingers: no more than 10 minutes, practicing a different scale in each session (only scales with no more than five sharps or flats). Additionally, practicing triads is advantageous, as they appear in almost every piece.

Tutorials and Other References

Theoretical Basics

If you want to deepen your understanding of the construction of scales and their theoretical background (and you should!), we recommend the following resources:

Hier ist ein super tolles 15 Minuten Video, was Dir die Grundlagen über sog. Dur-Tonleiter auf recht interessante Weise vermittelt - hier lernst du etwas über Halbton- und Ganztonschritte

Die Dur-Tonleiter - Harmonielehre (Teil 1) von Torsten Eil

Genauso sehenswert - ein Video mit einer leicht anderen Veranschaulichung - hier werden auch noch die Molltonleitern erwähnt:

TONLEITERN | Klavier lernen | Theorie-Basics [6]

Empfehlenswert: Kurz und knapp nochmal die parallele Molltonart (natürlich, harmonisch und melodisch) zum Nachlesen. https://www.lehrklaenge.de/PHP/Tonarten/Molltonarten.php

Practicing Scales

Das folgende Video ist ein guter Einstieg und bietet vor allem erstmal eine grobe Übersicht und dann weiterführende Links zu anderen sehr guten Videos (z.B. die richtigen Fingersätze etc.)

So übst du Tonleitern am besten – effizient und gewinnbringend!