 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. A very important thing as we do on almost all instruments, but probably way way more important on the piano is scale practice because every scale has 12 keys if you think about it. So if you take a major scale and if you say, I want to practice the major scale, well to truly practice it, you need to do whatever your practice is. It could be a lick, it could be just the scale going up and down, in both hands, A sending, D sending or whatever, or it could be some kind of a pattern. But if ever you do it on C major, G major, A or whatever, there's always 12 keys to do for every scale. So it could look or it could seem as though this is a mountain to climb because 12 scales is a lot. You already put in so much of effort into that first scale and you're sweating it out mentally and physically so to speak. So what do you do? Do you give up? Do you say, oh, my practice is over? Or should I bother moving on? Do I have the energy to even move on? Well, the first thing I'd like to tell you is the journey is not a linear struggle. It's an exponential, I wouldn't say exponential struggle, but it gets exponentially easier over time. It's a curve like this basically. It goes like this, it's a law, it's very, very tricky in the beginning stages. It might take you a few days to get it on the first scale, but then you may have made it to the second scale. You find, oh, the second scale has become much easier. The third scale, the fourth scale, and then wow, it took you probably the same amount of time to do the last six scales than it took you to do the first scale. Or it may take you about 10% of that time if you practice. Trust me, this is generally the ecosystem. So what I'm going to do in this lesson is just break down scale, practice and give you a strategy to hopefully play your scales and do your exercises on all the 12 keys without too much of stress. Because using a bit of maths, you can just integrate a few things, make it easy and train your brain to get it done. And this is definitely what works for me whenever I practice a lick or a melody or a tune. I always recommend you to do whatever it is that is given to you on all 12 keys, not just your comfortable scales. So before we get started, it'll be awesome if you can consider hitting that subscribe button and there's a bell icon somewhere there. Hit that for regular notifications. Let's get cracking. So first of all, the basic scales in music are major and minor. So let's say you want to start something. Maybe you start on the scale which you're not so familiar with. You know, because you have to play with your mind a little bit. So I would say, let's take a minor. So let's start with C minor. Observe that and you're doing a little drill. Let's say you're practicing thirds or maybe trios of three. This is on C minor, which is the natural minor for now. You've done your work or you're doing your work on C minor and you want to move forward. Now something hits you and says, how many minor scales are there? 12 of them. How many major scales are there? 12 more of them. That's 24 scales. That seems more than a mountain to climb. So here are a few strategies. So the first thing you do is look at C minor. We learn the relative scales. So every major scale is also a natural minor scale in terms of the notes. In terms of the intervals, no, but at least the notes of C minor, the pattern of what you play would remain the same as its relative major or its cousin major scale. So how do you get the major scale from C minor? You can move up a minor third. So a minor third up C minor would be E flat. So E flat major and C minor have the same notes. They share the same key signature. So if you practice something on C minor, all you have to do is start the same exercise on E flat major. Let's say you're doing thirds on C minor. Doing it also in the left hand. You just start on E flat. The notes are pretty much the same. So all the challenges you had to take over C minor, I have to avoid that E. I have to avoid the F sharp. I have to avoid the B or the A. You've already trained yourself on C minor and you can execute that training on even the E flat major scale, which would be its related major. So C minor, E flat major, pretty much the same. In fact, the fingering, especially when you move around, will be pretty much the same. However, if you do the scale fingering, the fingering will be different, you know, or the E flat. It would be different because of the linear movement. You're encountering white and black notes irregularly or differently rather. So in some cases, you have to alter the fingering, but the shapes of the notes are not being altered. So you learn C minor. You kind of have learned E flat major or if ever you learn E flat major, then you have kind of learned C minor, isn't it? So that's one way to go about this process. Now, the next thing you'd like to do is are these scales, C minor and E flat major, are they similar to other scales? Now, if you look at C minor, a nice strategy would be to look at the circle of fifths. C is somewhere in the circle of fifths. Well, it's not somewhere. It's at 12 o'clock if you draw it in a clock shape. So it's there. And you ask yourself, what are the neighbors of C? The clockwise neighbor of C would be G. The counterclockwise neighbor of C would be F. So there you have it. The similar scales or the most similar scales would be G minor and F minor. I'm talking minor because we started our lesson with C minor scale. So C minor has these three flats in them, right? E flat, A flat, B flat. Now, what is its similar scale? Its similar scale would be both G minor, the clockwise neighbor and F minor, the counterclockwise neighbor. So if you take G minor, it pretty much has the same notes except for the different note which C minor had. So C minor had that A flat while a G minor has an A. So you'll find that one note which kind of replaces each other. So you're doing C minor. The G minor and the F minor would be pretty much the same. Or if I were to convert this to major scale terminology, you have E flat major. E flat major is very similar to its own neighbors. What are E flat major's neighbors? B flat, which would be the clock neighbor. E flat, B flat, like that. And the counterclockwise neighbor of E flat would be A flat, right? So let's compare and contrast these three scales. E flat major, three flats, B flat major, two flats. So where is the difference? The difference is again in that B flat has A natural while E flat has an A flat. And that's printed in the signature, key signature. B flat, only two flats. Okay. And if you take A flat, A flat would have an additional flat. That's this guy, okay? D flat. So E flat has a D, A flat has a D flat. So if you're practicing, let's say you're practicing something to do with fingering. For all you know, these might have very similar fingerings. So practice on E flat, pretty much whatever you do on B flat and A flat would be very similar. And if you think about it, it's just one note different. So if I were to practice on E flat major, I kind of have also no C minor. And the neighbors of E flat major happen to be A flat, the counter neighbor and B flat, the clock neighbor. So I've kind of got those scales also under the belt because they share six out of seven notes in common. That's going to make it much easier, I think. And similarly, your minors get all that more easier. C minor, G minor and F minor are very similar to each other. So with this system, we've kind of got six out of 24 scales done and dusted, not done and dusted, but at least you know that they are very similar to each other. And six out of 24 is 25% of the job done. I think that's a job already well done. So you've ended up kind of achieving six by knowing one or getting the confidence to kind of get all those six. Now, moving forward, you have to think what or you have to ask yourself what kind of person are you? Are you the person who wants it to get more and more easier? Or are you the person who wants another Herculean challenge? And then that Herculean challenge gets easier and easier and easier. So this is where you can kind of do polar opposite scales, as I call them. So if you're working on E flat, you ask yourself, either one of the two things, what is the tritone of E flat? The tritone of E flat is a perfect fifth, minus one. That's A. So A would be the tritone. That is the one you're going to practice now. Now you could either look at polar opposite that way, or if you look at the circle of fifths, if you take a diameter from anywhere in the circle, which has 12 of our musical notes, you'll get the tritone. And if you've done it on E flat, then you've capitalized on that knowledge by doing its neighbor skills, namely B flat and A flat. You're now going to the domain of A. It's a polar opposite. So what happens on the piano is A now becomes a sharp scale. So the fingering is going to be turned almost over its head. It'll be very different. So you'll have to go through that same rigorous grind to practice it on A. A has three sharps, very different texture on the fingers than playing a flat scale. My thumb is always in and about there. I'm always inside. While A, I'm always outside. So there we go. So A major to our luck or advantage once we get A, we'll realize A is very similar to its own neighbors. What are the neighbors of A? Well, the counterclockwise neighbor would be, as it's going that way, you'll have D, G, C, right? So D would be its counter neighbor, anti-clockwise neighbor. And you go clockwise, you'll get E. So E and A and D are these, this trio of scales that you have to practice. So A major has three sharps, F sharp, C sharp and G sharp. D major would have two sharps, namely F sharp and C sharp. And it would have a G while A major has a G sharp. So the G and G sharp, that difference is there. And similarly, when you compare A major to E major, E major has an extra sharp, that one, that's D sharp. A major has E major, has this D sharp in it. So again, the practice becomes a lot more easier. And again, the relative minors of all this holds good. A major's relative minor, F sharp minor. Because if you go to the F sharp minor, by the way, relative minors are also easy in the circle of fifths. You can just go three o'clock from anywhere. So what are F sharp minors' neighbors? You go a fifth up, that would be C sharp. And you go a fifth down, that would be B. So you take F sharp minor, very similar to B minor, very similar to C sharp minor. Okay, right. So we've got hominy scales now. Six were done in the earlier scenario. Now again, we've got six, so that's 12. And now as you move forward, it's going to get even more easier because you've practiced the toughest lot. It got easier because it went out in the circle of fifths way. It went out the same way in the polar opposite scale. And now you just sort of soldier forward. You have very little to go. You're at that point of the exponential curve, as I told you, where it's getting ridiculously easy. You can almost have fun when you play now. You can start creating some music and you feel like your hands are very, they're flowing like butter on the piano. And trust me, it feels like that. It's a great feeling. And the exercise doesn't have to take you just a couple of hours. It can take you a whole week or more. So take your time with it, but practice in this specific way. And when all fails, whenever you're having a doubt, what is the note? How do I find it? Use what I call as piano worms, which kind of shape out these notes pretty well. Also look at the key signature, which tells you specifically whether the scale has sharps or flats. What I mean by that is, it's very logistically important on the piano to call something sharp or flat. I don't know if you know this. So if you take F sharp, the reason they call it F sharp is because F sharp defeats or destroys or annihilates F. So any sharp scale which has an F sharp will not have an F. So if you take D major, F sharp, F sharp destroys F. So that's pretty much why they've coined the terms sharps and the ennemonic equivalents, the flats. So when do you call this F sharp as a G flat? Maybe in the case of a D flat major scale, where the flat G flat will replace or remove the white note or the natural note to its right. So whenever you call something flat, it tends to remove the white note to its right and whenever you call something sharp, it tends to remove the white note to its left. Another example, let's take the simple ones. G major, one sharp, F sharp. So very clearly there is no F. You may think that this is because of alphabet naming. Well, yes, but I think music theory happened because of the piano. I don't think music theory would have happened because of the violin because the violin was invented much before. So were the horn instruments, the wind instruments. The piano needed a lot of mechanical brains and a lot of technology to be created. So they made the theory most likely with the piano. It was piano and theory coming together, notation and so on. So if you take G, it has F sharp, so it doesn't have an F. And then if you take F major, it has a B flat. Do not ever call that A sharp. There's a reason it's called B flat to help you remember to take away your B. B becomes an illegal note. So F major has B flat, it does not have a B. So these are things which can help you improve your scale practice, also be a lot more clear, not hit too many mistakes and so on and so forth. So we've just used some, we've just used the circle of fifths and some simple facts about scales to hopefully make the curve of learning anything you wish to learn on the 12 keys a lot more easier, exponentially easier as I mentioned at the beginning of the video. I hope you made some sense and I hope you find some use with this perspective of looking at scale practice. Right guys, thanks a ton for watching the video. And if you'd like some scale exercises, they are waiting for you in our description. If you, if you were a bit glitchy on the theory concepts like the circle of fifths, we have an entire playlist dedicated to that circle. So it's a very important circle. Check out those lessons as well. And a lot more of these would be on our channel. So make sure to hit that subscribe for regular weekly videos, hit that bell icon for regular notifications, and I will catch you in the next lesson. Cheers. Thanks for watching.