 Hi guys this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this tutorial we are going to tackle the three arguably the toughest three scales which we think are tough on the piano and figure out how we can navigate through them and maybe they are not so tough after all okay. So the three tough scales which most people think are tough are the scales with a lot of black notes. So what what do you mean by a lot of black notes? A lot of black notes can only be five black notes because there are only seven white notes on the piano and five black notes. So when we say a lot of black notes we specifically mean five of them namely C sharp also known as D flat, D sharp also known as E flat, F sharp also known as G flat, G sharp also known as A flat and A sharp also known as B flat. So these five black notes will be existent in a sum total of three major scales, three natural minor scales as well and also the modes, the Dorian modes, the Phrygian, the Mixolydian and so on. So in this lesson we'll just cover the major scales and their respective or relative or cousin minor scales. So what are those scales? If you look at the circle of fifths, C is at 12 known or 12 o'clock and if you go all the way far away from C what do you get? You're going to get F sharp at 6 o'clock. So generally speaking F sharp major is considered the most tricky for piano players because there are a lot of sharps to read in a key signature and that I agree is tricky because you're going to read F sharp, G sharp, A sharp, then C sharp, D sharp and you have to deal with another sharp namely E sharp which is actually F. So one might argue why on earth do we even call it E sharp? Why can't we just say F? So music theory dictates that you have to call it F and then you may think okay F sharp major is tricky. Why can't I just respell it as G flat major? Now what does music theory have to tell us about that? Well it's the same concern or the same problem. G flat will have G flat, A flat, B flat and we can't call this B. We call it C flat. So what is the logic there? We should not repeat any alphabet and we shouldn't miss out any one of our favorite seven alphabets of music. So G flat, A flat, B flat, B. You have a B and a B flat. So that's considered wrong in theory. So we have to respell it as G flat, A flat, B flat, B which is actually now to be called as C flat. Now there is some advantage to this. I'm going to tell you this very shortly. So stick around. So G flat, A flat, B flat, B or C flat officially, D flat, E flat, F are only white note and then G flat, G flat, F, E flat, D flat, B. That's also white note but we have to refer to it as C flat, B flat, A flat, G flat. So F sharp and G flat major scales are rather tricky. And what are the other generally considered tricky scales among piano learners? It would be the neighbors of F sharp in the circle of fifths or the next farthest away from C which is at 12. So that would be your B major. So if you go clockwise from C, C, G, D, A, E, B, B major also has five black notes, all the five available black notes. We respell them or we call them as sharps rather. C sharp, D sharp, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp and that's generally a rule while naming scales. When we write the key signature in sheet music or staff notation, we write it either with sharps or with flats. So B major would be a sharp scale. Some of them call it C flat major. I have never used C flat major in my life and I don't think you ever will too. So I prefer B major, B, C sharp, D sharp, E, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp, B. Five sharps or five black notes. And the other scale if you move counterclockwise from C in the circle of fifths, you're going to get C, F, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat. That would be five o'clock away from C. C, F, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat. Now some might call this a C sharp major but my issue with C sharp is it's going to have seven sharps. Now you already had to deal with an extra sharp for F sharp, which is nothing but an E sharp or if you called it G flat, it's nothing but a C flat. So C sharp major is definitely not for me. I would prefer to call it D flat because it has whatever flats are in existence are actually black notes. So the general way at least I have progressed on the piano, a sort of ear trained or a real world musician so to speak is I've learned it on the go. So people will say C sharp, C sharp but D flat major seems a lot easier to read because the flats that you see in the sheet music or in the staff notation are all black notes. So that's generally what's my mindset. Try to simplify it as best as possible. So what are the tricky scales again? Well if they are not tricky for you, we are just going to call it tricky for the purpose of this video. The tricky scales are F sharp also spelled out as G flat in flats. B, I'm going to call it as a sharp scale for today's lesson and then D flat major, I'm going to call it as a flat scale for today's lesson. Even though D flat could be C sharp with seven sharps which is ridiculous I think and B is C flat which has seven flats which is even more ridiculous if you ask me. So you can ignore that and just say F sharp G flat, the tricky one, B five sharps and then D flat five flats. So before we get started in navigating through this and making it a bit easy for us to learn and play, it'll be awesome if you can consider hitting that subscribe button, turn on the bell icon for regular notifications and a lot of this tutorial will be visual with my handwritten notes. So you can consider heading over to our Patreon page and for just five dollars a month as a subscription, you'll get access to not only the handwritten notes, MIDI backing and stuff from this lesson, you'll also get it from all the lessons we've been ever doing at least for the past five years or so. Right guys let's get cracking. So F sharp major first let's figure out the fingering and before I get into the fingering the logic of writing this down or to wire this into your brain, a great strategy would be something very visual and ridiculously simple. It's what I call as piano worms, a concept which is very easy for me because I can imagine F sharp major even while I'm brushing my teeth or while I'm going out for a jog or any such thing. Otherwise we need to come to the piano, stare at the piano, write it down, look at the notation and then perhaps get F sharp major and then after all that we look at it and it looks ridiculously tough because of those six sharps and whatnot. So I get the feeling that these so-called tricky scales are tricky because you're reading them in sheet music and in sheet music it tells us that C major is apparently the easiest scale. It may be the easiest scale to read because the key signature has no sharps or flats but that is one medium which exists to learn music. There are a ton of musicians who go through an entire career without staff notation at all. So F sharp major came to me sort of like that. I've never read a song on F sharp major in my life I think but it's very easy to plot out. Check this out. It's black, black, black, white, black, black, white, black and this white is closer to this black than it is closer to this black. So F is closer to F sharp. So let's do that again F sharp, black, G sharp, black, A sharp, black. Now you have a white note B and then you're crossing to the black, black, white, black and when you write this in your piano worm it's going to be dot, dot, dot, come down to the white, up to the black, another black, white and then end. So you remember that worm that's sort of a very visual shape and you can never forget the F sharp major scale this way. So rather than remember the notes of the scale, remember the shape of the scale because ultimately you need to cut to the chase and actually play the scale you know. So learn it visually or just imagine it always use your imagination and you should imagine everything on the piano before you play it. So if I am playing a melody on F sharp major I can already picture it in my head F sharp, G sharp you know. So see there it's it's right there F sharp, G sharp, A sharp, B, that's F sharp, F or E sharp then E flat or D sharp, C sharp. So I'm there and remembering it in a worm like manner also allows you to even skip notes with a lot more control and freedom so to speak. I'm not just hunting for random notes, I know my thirds, I know my fourths, I can get my intervals because the worm is always in my radar. You see that I can play the the drill which is right now thirds just because of that worm I'm able to play it even without the need of looking down at the keyboard. I'm just going purely by the feel of the notes so to speak. Let's do some fifths. That's your tritone. So F sharp major is pretty easy to to remember or any scale for that matter. For that matter C major may be the world's trickiest scale to remember visually because what is it? It's just a straight line of white notes. So let's just dive into playing it, ascending, descending. So right hand start with your index finger and then move along the flow of your fingers and whenever a white follows black this is my golden rule for fingering especially for the black scales or the many sharp scales or many black note scales will be whenever white follows black you cross. What can you possibly cross ascending? Just this little guy, the thumb. What will you cross descending? Something over the little guy which is the thumb. You never cross the thumb under the pinky finger which seems ridiculous to do. I would never want you to do that and on the way down you never want to cross the pinky over the thumb. You might want to cross your ring over the thumb but generally we deal with the crossing with these three fingers. These two cross over the thumb or the cross thumb crosses under these three unless you would like to cross it under these four. So let's deal with that in the right hand. I would prefer to start with either my index or my thumb. I'll show you why. So index and whenever white follows black cross your thumb on the way up. Index, middle, ring, thumb, index, middle. So when the thumb is crossed then you bring back your fingers to normal status quo so to speak. This is how our hand is. So when the thumb crosses, don't keep those fingers the other side. Bring them to the same side. Bring them here. So thumb, thumb and then back. There we go. So thumb. There we go. So thumb. Well, or you can start with your index because whether you start with your thumb or your index your all roads are going to take your thumb or lead to your thumb coming to that B at the fourth degree. So come to think of it. Prefer my thumb instead. So thumb, thumb, descending. Same way you came up. You go down. You just retrace your steps going down, I guess. There we go. And you can achieve this with some serious speed. It's a very easy scale also. So let's look at F sharp in the left. Pretty much the same rule. I start with my ring finger. Follow the normal order of my fingers of the hand and whenever black follows white on the way up because left hand ascending is kind of like right hand descending. So whenever white follows black or sorry whenever black follows white you cross something over the thumb. Middle finger works and then because black follows white I need to cross the index. It's just a little bit of a cross. Descending and the descending whenever white follows, whenever black follows white and in the descending whenever white follows black you cross your thumb repeating both hands. Okay so F sharp major fingering. You can probably go up two octaves if you desire because the same process going up the scale over one octave. It just copy pastes the fingers and you can go down the octave. You just have to start back to default at the octave point and then you can pretty much continue going up the keyboard so to speak. So playing scales over an octave or two is a good practice. We've done that in two hands so that's about F sharp major. Let's quickly look at the fingering of B major as well as D flat major as promised. Before we talk about the other two scales I'd like to mention a very important fact that whenever we tackle scales there are two factors to consider. There's the grip factor or the slip factor and then there's the flow factor or ease of play factor if you want to call it that. Now the grip factor and the flow factor are sort of inversely proportional to each other. What I mean by that is the scales which give you a lot of grip. For example these three scales that I'm going to cover in this lecture F sharp B and D flat. The scales that give you the most grip seem to be very difficult to flow. So if I want to shred and do a fast run I may want to do that run on a G major scale but it's not impossible on the F sharp major or the B major. It's just going to take you all that more time. So if you're playing things like if you're doing things like that, if you're doing grace notes which require a lot more grip, if you're maybe doing specific chord voicings that that require a lot of clusters between notes where you want a more visual idea. More visual means less slipping or less drifting away from what you're what you're supposed to do. So just keep that in mind. F sharp B and D flat which I'm going to cover now are going to have a lot of grip but they'll not be easy to flow so to speak like a G major or a C major. I'm not saying you can't play them fast. I'm just saying in general they'll not be the easiest to flow when you do things like thirds when you skip and so on and so forth but they give you a lot of grip. So more grip will be less flow perhaps for the most part and also if it slips a lot more it's going to give you flow but it'll lack the grip that you may need. So for some styles of music which is why it's very very important to learn all of your 12 scales. Each of your 12 scales are like different playgrounds. So if you want to be a champion on all courts you need to be like Roger Federer, Rajokovic or Nadal who can win grand slams in all environments or if you want to become a great test cricket batsman like Rahul Dravid, you need to be able to score a hundred in South Africa and Pakistan or in India so to speak. So different conditions, ground conditions will allow you or motivate you to play with a different avatar on each of those particular or respective scales. So now coming to B major. B major again has the same five black notes but visualize the piano worm as what I like to call little boat and big boat turned upside down. So B, C sharp, D sharp, E, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp, B. So that's the little boat and then the big boat. This cluster and this cluster both are obviously turned upside down. If you're a bit uncomfortable with that I'd request you to use another visual representation. Okay so fingering pretty easy. It's like C major if you ask me. You play three, cross your thumb when white follows black and then you have all your five fingers. However if you want to continue on your merry way you cross your thumb again and then roll with it. And if you ask me this is the easiest scale to shred on the piano especially when you do ascending scales because you never make mistakes. There's so much of grip on B major even F sharp and D flat that it's it's you can trust it at a gig you know to play stuff on B B major. You just have to work out the the ecosystem or the visual of the worm which now is easy. I've already told you and that see the notes as well it might help. So left hand B major fingering it's a little bit of an exception because normally in the left hand scales we'll do a pinky start but now that lands our thumb on an awkward in an awkwardly way in on a black note. So to avoid that to make the thumb plonk on a white key you start with your ring finger instead thumb and perhaps cross the ring again. There we go middle here ring here middle ring descending both hands perhaps okay B major very good grip and less slip right. So B major done and dusted let's now move into a five flat scale namely D flat major. So D flat fingering is very similar and just tell yourself we are calling everything as flat so D flat E flat F is a white key G flat A flat B flat C white key D flat okay now the worm da da black black white black black black white black so you have that that shape and then you have the a big a big inverted boat and then another black note you can let us know in the comments if you like piano worms maybe you can tell us the name of each piano worm like I just told you B major is two inverted boat. So if you have your own visual aids please feel free to leave them in the comments. So we've covered the worm of D flat let's look at the fingering for D flat. Generally speaking start with your index that's that's comfortable index middle cross your thumb my golden rule if white follows black on the way up cross and vice versa on the way down now hands fingers go back to normal cross little tricky because you're crossing the thumb under the ring finger not so tricky you can deal with that end with the middle I guess and test test out the principle on two octaves pretty flexible isn't it we'll have the fingering in our and notated for you in our patreon so you could consider checking it out okay that's about the right hand coming to the left hand I usually tend to start with my middle and now cross my ring because I'm anticipating that I need my thumb back on a white key index two hands and while you're at it you might as well conquer their relative minors f sharp major's relative minor is another minor scale or a natural minor scale which has six sharps or if you'd like to call f sharp as g flat major then you'll have to find the natural minor scale which has six flats so f sharp major's relative minor would be either down a third or up a sixth and that would be d sharp minor same similar concept of black note fingering you're essentially starting f sharp on the d sharp now if this were called g flat major then this would start this would now need to be called e flat minor similarly b major's relative minor what did I say move down a third or up a sixth and you get g sharp minor g sharp natural minor it's not harmonic harmonic has a another jump there we'll have another video on the harmonic minor you should definitely check it out in the description so one more scale d flats relative minor would be down a third b flat minor very easy to play as you can see okay and before I sign off I wanted to point out why they why they actually call it like this why does f sharp major end up having six sharps why does b major have five sharps why couldn't it be a couple of flats and mixed with a few sharps so to speak why do sharps and flats hate each other you know so if you take a b major scale and work it out the reason why at least the reason how what I think the reason why they call this guy as c sharp and not d flat I used to think it was because of the alphabet naming rule you know don't repeat any alphabet I used to teach it that way but I still do but I'd like to add a point being the logic is very interesting and airtight you have c sharp so by definition a sharp destroys the white note to its left so because it raises the white note in the first place so c becomes c sharp so what's happening is in the b major scale because you have the c sharp c sharp tells us kind of prompts us and guides us to realize that there is no c so if you had called it d flat then there'll be a little bit of an anomaly or a confusion in the mind that oh I called it d flat so is there a c but with b major you have b c sharp so there's no c you have d sharp so there's no d you have e obviously it's a white note you have f sharp so there's no f g sharp so there's no g a sharp so there's no a and finally b similarly d flat d flat removes d e flat removes e now here's the thing with flats the flat will destroy the white note to its right because the white note becomes flat by going down or to its left on the piano chromatically so a flat destroys the white note to its right and this flat e flat destroys the white note to its right so d flat e flat f g flat a flat b flat c d flat okay so that's the general logic and and hence you can kind of live with the fact that f sharp major f sharp major seventh note we should probably call it e sharp because it is called e sharp actually because e sharp removes its namesake alphabet which is e so you may by mistake play e i do that sometimes so it's a nice way to tell yourself hey there is no e it has to be e sharp e sharp is also f so deal with that it's pretty airtight so similarly we call it g flat because they call this as c flat why c flat because c flat destroys c you don't want to play that by mistake so so in a nutshell we've covered three rather tricky scales in music f sharp major also known as g flat major b major and d flat major with all of the black notes inserted into them few things to remember a few things to make it easier first of all the fingering has been covered for all of these and I've also introduced you perhaps newly to this concept of piano worms where you start with a visual of the scale and then go for it and then tackle the problem the visual is advantageous because you can remember that anywhere you don't need the piano to remember that isn't it and finally we looked at the logic behind the sharps and the flats in the first place why should they be called sharps and flats and so on right guys thanks a ton for watching the lesson and if you enjoyed the content do consider subscribing to our channels you don't miss anything we release videos generally on Wednesdays and Saturdays or at least twice a week so don't forget to 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