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. It makes sense because you can ascend and descend a scale just as you would a ladder.
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. But many of us ask ourselves: what is the purpose of this exercise?
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.
I prefer not to call scales by their traditional name but instead prefer to call them a key of music. This may seem like nothing more than semantics. But words have the tendency to conjure up images and feelings. Just tell a traditional piano student to go practice their scales. You’re not likely to get an enthusiastic response.
So from this point forward. I’ll refer to scales and keys of music interchangeably. Even though there are several different kinds of keys of music, we’re going to be looking at Major keys of music.
An 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. This makes them sound interesting as well as fun and useful.
Let’s take the key of C Major as an example
Even though our example shows the 7 different notes that comprise the key of C Major, you can find any Major key of music by this whole step/half step formula.
W= Whole Step H=Half Step
The key of F Major…
The key of E flat Major…
The key of G flat Major…
As you can see, there’s a myriad of keys of music that look quite different in appearance because of the different combinations of white and black keys but they all have this whole step/half step pattern in common.
You have 12 Major keys of music and each on of them contain the first seven letters of the alphabet although many of them are in a different order. Some of them have sharps or flats (which land on black keys most of the time). But they all have one more very important thing in common in addition to what I just mentioned.
They all have a numerical order. This is known as the Number System. It’s critical for a chord player on the piano to not only know the notes which are contained within a key, but be able to recall the number of any note at any time.
The Number System of…
C Major
F Major 
B flat Major
Be aware that the Number System can go beyond 7 because of compound intervals, but for simplicity sake we’ll just keep it simple by not going beyond 7 in this article.
Scales are traditionally learned and played using the fingers of both hands in unison up and down several octaves of the keyboard. If you study your scales this way with enough repetition, your hands will definitely learn how to find the notes of any key.
Unfortunately this produces a subconscious ability to play scales but not provide the conscious awareness of the number system. This is critical for a chord piano player. You must know the number sequence of any key of music to build chords and voicings.
The traditional way to view any given chord is to look at it in terms of notes.
But as a chord playing musician the same chord can be viewed in terms of numbers which in turn reveal the structure of the chord. Unlike notes, the numbers are the same in all 12 Major keys.
By knowing the structure of the chord it can be easily transposed to any other key by simply transposing those same numbers.
Now that we’ve covered the advantage of numbers over notes, what’s the best way to learn scales on the piano?
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.
To learn scales on the piano do this: Take 1 (one) finger and count as you ascend the key by counting from 1 through 7 and ending on the 1 (an octave higher).
Then descend the key by counting from 1 back to 1 (an octave lower)
This movement is not allowing your hand to take over your brain to successfully play all of the correct notes in the scale. In other words, you must consciously know the correct notes to play because you only have one finger which allows only a minimum of physical memory to guide your movement.
Don’t get me wrong. There is a time and a reason to play scales with the whole hand but this concept of using one finger to do so serves the purpose of learning the number system for the reasons that I’ve just explained.
You’ll also start to notice that each Major key of music has it’s own unique shape as your progress by learning all 12 of them.
This couldn’t be any simpler of a concept, but don’t underestimate the power of simplicity.
Until next time, Go Play!
Greg Lee
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