 Hi everyone, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. Welcome to another one of our videos. If you are an existing subscriber of our channel, thanks for that by the way. And if you are watching this video for the first time, welcome aboard. What we are going to try and do in this lesson is to explore all the conventional ways of playing scales and then I am going to add a little bit of twist to it or for me it's actually quite normal because I've not learned piano in a traditional way you know with the standard syllabi offered by you know various sources. So I've just sort of ended up doing scales and scales, scale exercise a lot later than chords. My chord playing ended up being quite good but the scale playing was quite poor because I hadn't learned it in a classical or a conventional sense. But over the years I have also started developing that and as it turns out some of my approaches to playing scales some of them are very traditional but not taught these days for some reason and some of them I think are quite interesting. Some people say it's not really western you know originated from another country or something. I'm not too sure of the history but what I can say is this there will be a lot of scale drills in this lesson a lot of scale exercises and the way we've divided our lesson would be first learn the scales in parallel motion then learn them in contrary motion then do a combo of all that and then do what we call a similar motion which you're going to see very shortly and in this lesson we are going to do it on two scales with variety. We'll do it on the major scale as well as the harmonic minor and due to lack of time I'm going to hand pick one major and one harmonic minor the major is A major and the harmonic minor is E harmonic minor. Okay why well I just thought I'll choose two really nice scales spice it up a bit and most of the lessons out there will do it on C or some familiar scale and I don't like that argument of only doing C because what happens with C major is your fingers align in a very different way than scales with black notes so it's always good to mix it up you know for all you know you may find a major easier than C major which at least I do you know playing this particular exercise okay so A major it's all written down in my hand written notes on patreon you'll also get the notations of each of these topics so A major three sharps C sharp there F sharp G sharp A and the E harmonic minor a harmonic minor just in a nutshell is like a minor scale how do we form it flat three not that so flat three and normal and flat six with a normal seven so flat three G C flat six D sharp which is normal seven okay so A major E harmonic now exercise number one is just the good old parallel motion where we are just going to take one octave of these two scales and I'm just going to tell you the fingering a few aspects of how I played the way I follow timing how I keep time how I don't slip my hand and some healthy posture tips to play this stuff a major this is how we played in the right hand we play three notes so the moment you finish this note try to tuck your thumb under the middle finger that can be very helpful to prepare you for the ascending journey ABC sharp D E F sharp G sharp A always sing whether you're whatever you're doing singing is a very crucial thing to do ABC sharp D E sharp G sharp A you could sing the names of the notes you could sing the swaras or you could just do Nana Nana just hum it somehow okay now coming to the descending exact same way as you went ascending just in the reverse so play five with these consecutive fingers pinky ring middle index thumb cross your middle finger. So middle and the moment you cross the middle, it latches back to the thumb. One more time, right hand. Coming to our left hand, which we are then going to put together with the right hand. Left hand you could think of it in simple words as a mirror image of the right hand. So the left hand is just going the way the right hand went this way, which we will see later actually in contrary motion. So left 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 3, 2, 1. Okay, with middle I am calling this as 3, this is 1, this is 5. If you want to change it, it's your decision. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 3, 4, 5. Without the numbers, just remember play 5, cross the middle. Come back to the thumb, descending, cross the thumb. It's all about if you want more space, if you want to expand, you have to cross the thumb. That will see. A good exercise to do on the piano is just that. You know, just use your thumb and extend. This itself is a good practice and then when you come back, move over the thumb. You don't have to necessarily play anything. You know, just get used to this. The thumb tucks under and it propels the hand forward. So right hand, cross that after the 3, cross over that. Left hand, 5, cross the 3rd. And when you are crossing, try to avoid too much of elbow movement. That's a bit annoying. It will confuse your hands and body. And our first goal is to do this with two hands. This is what we call as parallel motion, which is pretty much the same thing, ditto in two hands. You have some fun here and there. Stuff like that. Don't just end with just the scale. You are doing the scale to create music. Use the same fingering what you are gaining from this exercise is finger control when to cross etc. But you can use that concept for melodies which you could compose or existing songs. Coming to the e-harmonic minor. Let's see how that goes. Exact same finger job in the right hand. Play 3, cross. There's only one challenge, little tricky challenge with the harmonic being because the 6th is flat and it creates a bigger gap between the 6th and the major 7th. So just you have to just be aware of that visually and feel that well on the piano. And for both of these scales I've drawn the worms, what I call as piano worms which show you the shape of the scale. You know white, white, black, white, white, black, black, white for a major. White for e-harmonic minor it will be white, black, white, white, white, black slightly stretched out white. So learning these what I call as piano worms will be very helpful. So right hand e-harmonic minor, left hand e-harmonic minor, pretty much the same. Play 5, cross your middle, there we have it. Just watch out for that extra jump which is an augmented second interval. Both hands again, parallel. A very, very important point which I have to say when you play these scales especially as a beginner is your fingers may slip. So if you take back to A major, you know your hand may, I see students just having no control over the ring, you know and the weaker fingers. So to avoid that you need to play it with some accents. Try to play it with some volume variations between the notes. Highlight some notes more than the others especially the ones which target the weaker fingers, something like this. Or any, any assortment of notes. Basically think of like a drum groove going on in the background. So the fingers will adapt based on the drum groove and thus get stronger and thus gain more control. So gaining more control is about finger strength. Yes but it's also about the mental strength to be able to deal with each note and know each note going through your mind in a rather quick manner. Because ascending and descending scales tend to, people you need to play them a bit faster. So that's how I like to play it with that, with that jump with that bump up in the volume. So just feel that drum groove sounds a bit funny but it can really get the job done. You can play it longer and longer and just go on. Even with faster speeds you're always in control over the. Then you do the e-harmonic the same way with that aggressive accent approach, very rock like. So I tend to always like to imagine like a ghost drummer next to me and just imagine what that person would do on the kit and just play with that atmosphere and it somehow brings the piano to sound a lot nicer. So that was about parallel motion. We've looked at parallel motion, the fingering, the dynamics, the posture and what not of the two scales under consideration. A major and E harmonic minor. I've chosen it for variety. Now let's move forward to a bunch of other ways of playing scales and adapting to them. Let's look at contrary motion. So with contrary motion when one hand goes up the other hand goes down. So it's as simple as that. But fingering wise it's not too different than what we talked in parallel motion. You just have to do the descending version of the left hand while the right hand does the ascending version. But your mind has to be a bit clever to actually remember different notes. It's not the same notes. You know and the crossing point however will be the same because now you're creating a mirror. This is like the left hand and right hand now play like a mirror image of each other. So in a sense contrary motion is not so tough because it's the same fingers compared to parallel motion where the fingers are not the same. So contrary will go that way. Watch out that G sharp. You don't want to miss that. That's contrary. So right hand goes up, left hand goes down and when the right hand goes down the left hand goes up. Let's do that slowly on A. Same fingering as what we looked at. That doesn't change. Just the order. This goes down that goes up. Hence the word contrary. Right hand down, left hand up, left hand down, right hand up, right hand down, left hand up. Build it with those same accents. I figured why not combine both the motions together. You can combine parallel with contrary. So the pattern I have for you is parallel, contrary, contrary, parallel. Remember that. I hope I didn't confuse you. Parallel, contrary, contrary, parallel. That means start with parallel. Let the right hand now from the ring finger don't play the pinky. Continue with the thumb and go one more octave that way. So 2, 3, 4, 5. Now right hand goes up. Left hand now starts going contrary to the right hand. So now enough. Now descend the right hand and we are ascending the left hand. Contrary. Now descend both hands and the job is done. Let's do that again. It's a rather unique way. I just like practicing scales like this and gives me more confidence especially before a practice session or before a recording or a show. Again, so I'll call it out. Parallel motion same. Contrary. Right hand goes up. Left hand goes down. Now right hand goes down. Left hand goes up. Both hands now seem to go in parallel motion. That's why it sounds the same. Contrary, the notes are going to be different. Right? Contrary, different. Parallel, same. Again, slowly. Same parallel. Contrary. Right hand goes up 2 octaves. Now we descend the right hand. Descend both together. Little bit speed. One more time. It's a lot of fun once you get it. It's even more fun once we get it on the e-harmonic minor. Let me show you that as well. So e-harmonic minor. Parallel. Contrary. Sounds beautiful when you do that. Very Bach-like because it's counterpoint if you think about it. That second melody is counter the first one. That's how a lot of the classical music from the earlier generations were written. Very important to practice this. Contrary. So now what's the drill? Parallel. Contrary. Contrary. The other way. Parallel. Ending on the root. One more time. I like it a bit lower as well. Fingers stay pretty much the same. When you go between octaves, try to cross your ring there. The whole thing. Cross the ring there. Then it neatly ends. The ring is always playing the 7th degree. Just one more time. Play with that rock approach keeping a drummer in mind. Absolute chaos. That's how we like it on the piano. Remember. So parallel motion done. Contrary motion done. Now we've combined parallel and contrary with this jumbled up way of going about things. Now I'd like to leave you in this lesson with two motions. What we call a similar motion. So what happens with similar motion? The hands go in the relative direction the same. So the right hand's going up. Left hand also go up. But they will play different notes. Or in similar motion in this case they will start an interval this way or that way. This way meaning higher or lower. So if you take the A scale. Let's say you're playing A major normal in the left. How I've told you earlier. But in the right hand you're not going to start on A. You're going to skip up. And the interval I have for you in this video is the C sharp which will be the 3rd. So you start on the 3rd. And 3rds sound beautiful. Anyway they form chords. So it's a very important thing to practice similar motion in 3rds. So with 3rds you go. What's happening there? You started with C sharp which is the 3rd of A. D which is the 3rd of B. E which is the 3rd of C sharp and so on and so forth. Let me help you with the fingering. My suggestion with this similar motion it can get very tricky. So first do the fingering of the thing you don't know. The one you know you will continue to know. So the thing we don't know now is the right hand. So start I guess the best option start with your index. So index, thumb, bring back the index there. Cross. End on middle. Cross. I think you have to cross the ring, ring, index. There I made a mistake there. Let me do that again. Ring, index. So takes time. Think of this as a completely different scale. In fact for your information this is the C sharp Phrygian scale. So you're playing C sharp Phrygian with A Ionian or A major in the left. If you want to be geeky about it that's exactly what's happening. Let's do it together. Together and very slow. Little faster. Sing the new north stuff. A good singing exercise would be to sing everything. So sing the left hand once, then sing the right hand. So if I sing the left, quite tricky. Now sing the right hand which is playing the thirds. Then the bass. Now that's one kind of similar motion. I'm on the A scale still. Now the other way is flip it around. So let the right hand play the traditional one and let the left hand go the thing which we did earlier in the right hand. So get acquainted with the fingering. I would recommend in this instance starting with the middle finger. And our notation is there for you. You can get yourselves a copy. Head over to Patreon. It's a downloadable PDF. You'll also get the MIDI. Try to get yourselves a copy of that for sure. So left hand middle here. Start with middle. Cross the ring. You'll be trapped if you don't cross the ring at that particular point at the fourth note. Once you get comfortable with that, now you go. The right hand playing the same deal. If you find a fingering which is more optimal for you, explore. Consider it right or I wouldn't say these fingerings have to be treated like some kind of a law. As long as it sounds good and it's in lagato, that's all we need to care about. In some cases, if you play with your ring by mistake, you may hit some other random notes. So watch out. That's why these fingerings are suggested. This is what I use. It helps me get along. Minimal elbow glitching or elbow movement. Even though I see people doing that, people don't talk about that enough. I guess it's fine, but I don't recommend that elbow movement because it messes with the mind. I think the mind needs to be relaxed and stable. So a stable hand will imply a stabler mind. So there we go. Again, with that discipline of imagining a ghost drummer next to you. So those are your two similar motion things. We've done first with the normal one in the left and the upper third extensions in the right. Then we've done the same thing in the right, the normal one in the right and the third in the left. Let's now look at the same deal on the e harmonic minor and that concludes the lesson. I think we've done quite a bit in this video. We've done parallel motion, contrary motion, parallel with contrary, then two kinds of similar motions. Let's conclude everything on the e harmonic minor scale and more than anything, this is one of those lessons which I do where one of the rare lessons I do where playing along with me and mastering it immediately may not be possible. This will take time, but I mainly wanted to share with you how I practice the piano. If you give me 10 minutes to practice, I would do these things. I'll mix up scales, major, minor, three sharps, three flats, that's a major e flat. So I'll just mix and match and till this day, this is something which even I do. So I'm actually showing you how I practice, given like 10 minutes or 15 minutes of time. And after I do this, I then get into business. I feel very warmed up and if I have to do a recording or perform a show on stage, I feel like my fingers are ready and at least all of them are waiting to go, a raring to go. So let's conclude with e harmonic minor in the similar approach. So okay, so you go same story in the right. That's the harmonic minor in the right, which we've learned in the normal parallel motion. Now it's similar. You start on the G. So the tricky part here is you may want to start on the ring finger and now ring again, slightly weird. It'll take you some time, I guess. Do it like without thinking too much. I think so that's the third in the left and the third can be in the right hand. So how does that work? That's the normal one play three cross not too difficult actually with the left can focus on your singing. That's the left hand. That's the right hand. So thereby it not only becomes a good piano workout, it also becomes a serious year training workout or a singing exercise as well. I would encourage this for a singer as well, a singer who plays the piano or even a singer who plays the guitar, you could play the scale on the guitar and then sing similar motion upper third with your voice. So you can do this on other instruments. It's just that the piano is a serious beast as I call it. It's able to do these two things in parallel and all that. So that's about the exercise guys. I hope you have all this structured out for you and keep it going. Step one, write down the scale. Step two, try it out in all those other forms parallel. First one hand at a time would help practice it with the right discipline with the right dynamics and then go through the variations parallel, contrary. Then the parallel, contrary toggle combo thing and then the two similar motions with thirds. That's what I have for you in this video. I hope you found the lesson useful. Do consider supporting us on our Patreon channel where you'll get all this hand written stuff in the notes and the notation for the for all these variations on both the scales it's notated and waiting for you. If you'd like to have a structured environment to learn the piano or any instrument do visit nathanielschool.com. You can find some of our courses, live courses as well as video courses and that's about it. If you haven't subscribed you have to do so right now and thanks for watching the video. Hit that bell if you haven't already. Leave us a comment with something you'd like to learn in the future and what you thought about this lesson. Cheers.