 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson, I wanted to just share with you how I practice my scales, whether it's major or minor or pretty much anything. The main goal which I have when I practice these things is just figure out what you're trying to do with the scale, okay? So a lot of people think that this exercise is the end all of the whole process of knowing a scale like E major or E flat major. That if you actually ask me, is a linear way of playing the scale that is just going up and going down. Maybe you haven't covered other aspects like skipping some notes, maybe going in thirds which is also a serious game on the piano as well as the guitar, any instrument really. If you skip notes, it's a lot trickier. So this lesson focuses on linear playing and inevitably we all have to go through that, right? We all have to play the scale up and down and that's how we learn it and that's how we are taught it. But I just wanted to look to share with you how I end up practicing my scales and being from India we have a lot of scales. If you think about it in karnatic music, you have so many ragas and we have 72 parent or what we call as mela karta ragas. So those are, that's a lot to learn, right? So if you have to practice these so many scales, you have to really figure it out first linearly, that's ascending and descending, right? Arohan and Avaroan as we say in India, right? So the first thing I'm going to look at is the general problem of people who practice scales which used to be me, which may be some of you watching this or maybe some of you haven't yet done it would hopefully gain something out of this. So if you take the C major scale for instance, that's eight notes but you may argue a scale has only seven notes, that's true. A scale has only seven notes but to create that completion, we add the final C or the octave but that doesn't make a scale to have eight notes. That's just the repetition of the Sa or the root. We just repeated it. So we kind of now have an eight note set, right? Now what do you do when you come down? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and most students will end up going you need to start from the top. So now the problem here is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and then you repeat it again by repeating the note either on the top or repeating the root at the bottom. Now if you ask me that prevents the flow. So what a student ends up doing probably without knowing it is just kind of fly and just take a gap, you know, but in this exercise I just want to introduce you to my way of practicing scales which I think will remove that gap or remove that repetition of the octave and thereby making it a lot more musical and getting you to think and you're definitely going to enjoy this and I hope you enjoy this even more than the traditional scale approach, which is which doesn't really have any timing goal or timing requirement. Generally, well, you could do that, but yeah, generally it doesn't have it. And I have done a lot of lessons on our YouTube channel on how to practice the major scale, how to practice the minor scale. You can head over to the playlist where I would definitely encourage you to watch all my lessons on that where we skip notes, we even go linearly. We divide it and some of those lessons were a bit on the older side where we just shot with very basic equipment. We'll probably do another go with those videos as well at some point. Anyway, so let's get cracking with our exercise then. This exercise is going to be very simple. It's just going to be the scale up and down, adding a note and trying to create a very creative sound because you don't want to just go through the motions of going up, going down and not having enjoyed it. So I hope you will enjoy it. And the left hand is going to also come to the party at the end of the lesson by playing some interesting chords, some rhythm patterns, which I think are very go to and what I say, bankable. That means you need to invest it, store it and it grows on you. You can use it for pretty much anything. OK, before we get cracking, it'll be great if you can subscribe to our channel, hit that bell for regular notifications and do consider following us on Patreon for these lesson notes and pretty much all the other hand written notes. A recommendation on Patreon for Indian subscribers would be to consider our one year plan because there is some kind of regulations going on where you cannot do a monthly cycle. So if you'd like to do the yearly plan, consider that all if you could consider a yearly Patreon plan, you also get a very good discount there. So head over there and check it out. Enough of that. Let's get started. So for the lesson, as you may all know, I don't do C major and I tend to maybe I don't like it or maybe I'm not good at it. I don't know. I just don't take C major. So I'm going to introduce you to an interesting way of practicing skills. Whenever you practice them, work on the concept of cousin skills, as I call them, right? Now, the way the piano is laid out, if you take the namesake skills in this exercise, I'm going to limit our study to E major and its namesake major scale. What is that? I just call it namesake just because it has the same alphabet name that will be E flat major. So you have E major and E flat major and you will find that they have different fingering, but very similar shapes. In fact, it's like they are polar opposites of each other. If you look at E major, it'll be white note, black note, black note, white, white, black, black, white. If you visualize this using the diagram we have in front of you, which I call as the piano worm, which I think is a cool name, you'll find that it's basically two boats which are sort of turned upside down in the E major domain. While in the E flat major scale, it's black, white, white, black. So that creates like a boat shape and then black, white. You get the same shape there. And then so two boats within the first four notes. So E major upside down boats, E flat major boats, normal boats on the, I mean, not sunk. So this is what you could derive from any scale. Now, why do we emphasize on this? The piano worm is extremely crucial because in the heat of the moment when you're playing the piano, you have to throw away your theory. That's what we all do on all instruments. In the heat of the moment, when you play your instrument, your chosen weapon of choice, you will have to just play. You'll have to deliver, you'll have to execute your skills as per the situation and as per what, which musician you collaborate with and so on. So you really need to be glued to the notes and that slight distinction. Oh, this scale has a black note at the second. That scale has a white note at the third. That small thing just absolutely messes with us as piano players, right? A guitar player doesn't have to go through that because it's string based and thus it's pattern based, but we don't see that the piano is also pattern based, right? And people don't emphasize that a lot, especially the folks who start their journey with the C major scale, which I call a shapeless scale, because there is no pattern. It's just white notes, right? Which is why I always encourage students in my lessons to not go the C major route. You can eventually do C major, but why start with it? Then you're setting a very biased system towards learning the scale. All 12 scales on the piano, even if they are major scales and you may argue, oh, they all sound the same because it's major. I can play like a twinkle, twinkle on E flat versus C. So people argue, why do you need that? Why do you need to learn on so many scales when the melody itself is the same, you know? So, well, you'll have to see, you'll have to play on the piano and you'll realize that each scale gives you a completely different playing surface. Very similar to, let's say, a tennis player like Nadal being brilliant on clay versus a Federer being the genius on grass, you know? It's exactly that concept. So that's how I look at my 12 scales. Maybe I make different kinds of music on E flat and very, very different music on G and other such scales, right? So that was a reason or the hopefully to motivate you to learn all your 12 scales. Very, very important. So for this lesson, we've chosen E major and E flat major. Just a quick recap, E major has a shape and E flat major has the same shape but like a polar opposite, right? It's just turned upside down. So let's first get acquainted with the fingering for both the scales. I'm sure some of you who've been playing the piano probably already know. Let's revise for those of you who haven't, follow along with me. So you go for any white scale, do like a play three. Up to the third or the G and then cross your thumb because you don't have a million fingers. So you just have five. So you have to cross in order to kind of go upward and you have to cross over the thumb in order to go downward. So if I go E major up, what did I do there again? Slowly, one, two, three, cross, don't cross suddenly. Cross in a nice flow with a nice glide. End on the pinky and descend. And then drop your middle, one more time. Also encourage you to sing it either with swaras or na na na na na or do re mi fa so whatever language you prefer. Okay, coming to E flat. With E flat, a general rule of thumb is don't use the thumb at the first note, especially when the notes are black color. Try to avoid it because you want to save the thumb for the upcoming white note. So whenever white follows black, the rule of thumb is use the thumb. So you go E flat, F, G, A flat, B flat. Now again white follows black. I use the thumb again. Go up. Now you come down. That's E flat. Quite easy to play once you just think about the fact that save the thumb for a white note which follows the black note. You can do this for all scales. D flat, almost the same shape, right? A flat, F sharp, B flat. It's almost the same. And what's cool is with these black note scales and the white note scales you can even go more than an octave. You can go continue and then descend. Okay, maybe more on that in another lesson. Fine. So these are the two scales E major and E flat major. Get used to the shape also what I call as the piano worm and all the worms for all the scales are printed for you. Check it out. The resource on Patreon and also you also should hand write it. I would highly encourage you to do that. Okay, so as I told you earlier, the challenge with this particular exercise is the general scales, exercise which are taught to students is you go and then you kind of just chill out there. Like you've climbed a hill or something and you want to I don't know, just take a selfie or whatever. Why wait there, right? Again, you kind of chill out there. So let's make the exercise a lot more defined. So in short, the first time you go up and down, add on the descending or rather add on the lower seventh. I repeat, the first time you go ascending, descending, you will also add the seventh before the root or before the sa. And the second time you go ascending and descending, you add a note above the octave. First time add a note below the root, second time add a note above the octave. So let me explain this with E major and then I will explain it with E flat major. Okay, so the job is descend. Don't repeat that octave. So go coming down. Okay, so you will end on the knee and then start again. So that knee is also more musical because it latches back to the sa. It's like a magnet. So very musical to my ear and that's how this is how I tend to practice scales. So we go, you have to bring back your index. And it also syncs up mathematically well. It's exactly 16 notes. So if you say this is a 16th note pattern, your entire bar is completed. Maybe support yourself with a nice tonic chord, which is an E major chord in this case, 1, 3, 5. Keep doing that till you're comfortable. Let's try the same procedure on E flat major. It's actually quite easy for the black scale because you can keep your ring finger there. Come back. Okay, so coming back to E major, let's do the ascending and descending first cycle. Remember, what did I say? Add the knee at the seventh before the root. Second cycle you add the nine. So totally creating 16 notes per ascending and descending pattern. If you want to consider them as 16th notes, or you can consider them as eighth notes and then you have two bars of eighth notes. It's as simple as that. So you go... Cycle 2 started. Upper F sharp one more time. Cycle 1. Down to the seventh. Add this up. Ninth. Back to root. Kind of also times itself very well in a 4x4 E flat now. And what musicians also do is they add a lot of dynamics to the performance. So start soft maybe and think like a ladder. You go up the ladder, go a crescendo, get louder, you know. Sometimes your alignment of notes may go busted because you're thinking primarily of dynamics. But that's a good challenge to have and that's a good thing to do. So keep the dynamics. You don't want to do dynamics at the very end of the operation. Like some icing on the cake. You rather make it part of the production. So dynamics. Maybe on E. Now that's about the right hand. That's pretty much what the right hand is going to do throughout the exercise. Let's now add harmonic flavor by adding stuff in the left hand. So with the left hand, I just have three simple chords for you. And for a detailed breakdown of these, we have a couple of videos which are in the description where we talk about the usage of tonic predominant and the dominant chords which can be used for a ton of songs be it classical, nursery rhymes, folk songs, pop songs, rock and roll, blues, whatever. So just to quickly show you, the tonic chord will be the 1-3-5 of the scale which is E-G-Sharp-B. The predominant chord of the scale will be 1-4-6 which I'm just giving you with scale numbers. Yes, I'm not telling you the official chord name. Doesn't matter for now. You can figure that out on your own if you wish. So E-G-Sharp-B. E-A-C-Sharp. That'll be 1-4-6. And lastly, the dominant. Also what I call the classical dominant chord. Find it a lot in classical songs. So you go 7-4-5 for the dominant. 1-3-5 tonic. 1-4-6 sub-dominant or pre-dominant. Back to tonic if you want. Then you end with a dominant chord. Okay, so let's develop the drill. The first ascending, you will play the tonic chord. Descending, sub-dominant. Next ascending back to tonic. Dominant. And end with a tonic. Let's do that again slowly. Tonic. Sub-dominant. Or pre. Going up now to the dominant. One more time. Keep the dynamics. Let's build the same chords for the E-flat scale as well. Tonic, 1-3-5. E-flat, G, B-flat. Then pre will be E-flat, A-flat, C. And then D-A-flat, B-flat will be the dominant chord. Or like a 7th chord if you think about it. So try to get your chords going, get the fingering. I understand little trickier when you play certain chords than the other. I would always recommend before you move on to the right hand try and just see if you're comfortable with the left hand especially the shifting of the chord. For a piano player it's never about playing that chord. it's always about going from there to the next chord. I think that's a challenge even guitar players have. So go major or the first tonic, predominant, back to major, now the scale drill in the right hand, tonic again, dominant, back. So that's E major and E flat major. So just to kind of unofficially conclude with the left hand chords and we might as well look at some patterns. So instead of just holding it, what I like to do first is just do some block chords. Sounds quite nice if you ask me just staccato, staccato, staccato, legato at the fourth beat. Of course with the changing chords, if you can do that accent at the end try, otherwise it's fine. The other thing is you can do like a umpa pattern which I taught in earlier lessons. You go, so just break the chord up. You do the root and then the top one. So what I like about the umpa is you do the um or the base note longer and the rest of the broken chord choppier. So let's try a bit on E flat. So that's some rhythms. Oh, we forgot one more rhythm, the arpeggio. Why would you do anything without the arpeggio? So a great left hand pattern arpeggio would be this one works for pretty much anything. So you take the chord and you go low note, high note, middle note, high note. Also what I call as L, H, M, H and if you can hold the pinky it'll be great and then do the same drill. Arpeggios need a lot of dynamics. Let's try that on E flat. Time on E flat. Sometimes you tend to have some fun but you get the idea. Right guys? So that was about the left hand tonic predominant dominant chords with some interesting patterns. The blocks, the umpa and the arpeggio will be a great start and then you can do other patterns which you might enjoy as well. Right? So in conclusion, I just want to leave you with one thing wherein why do major all the time when you practice skills? So maybe a good weeks effort could be E major, E flat major and then do their relative minors but start with the more popular of the relative minors or the minors in general which is actually our harmonic minor which is the 3 flat and the 6 flat. So in other words you do E major and then do E minor. Then you do E flat major and you do E flat minor. Thereby you know you don't get bored. You always get a different flavor with the minors. Let's see how E minor sounds. Beautiful right? That's the harmonic sound and if you do the same drill with the minor. Right? Another challenging thing with these harmonic is harmonic minors are there's a skip. There's a huge jump here or a three-step jump an augmented second between the sixth and the seventh. So you have to negotiate that especially when you want to climb further. Let's try the same thing with E flat harmonic minor. Slightly easier if you ask me these black notes skills. So you'll have to adjust your chords. The tonic will now be 1 3 flat 5. Subdominant will be 1 4 6 flat. The dominant can stay the same because it's harmonic minor. So that's generally how I practice scales. I will just pick two or three of them or maybe two or three scales which I don't know. Remember you have two words. You have a key and you have a scale. The key is any of the 12 we execute and the scale is the assortment of notes or the permutation of creating seven notes from the super set of 12. Right guys? So this was a scale exercise for you or well pretty much the same thing you may have already started doing if you've got a little bit of piano knowledge but hopefully it gives you a more creative perspective or a more you know logical perspective that you have to do all these scales. Don't think that if you do C major it's fine. You saw today we started on E major and E flat major and we did it by looking at their shapes. The shapes are most important and the piano you cannot survive on the piano by just knowing the shapeless scale which is C major. Right? Again this is Jason here from Nathaniel. If you have any questions regarding the lesson do leave them in the comments. If you have any suggestion for the lessons in the future do leave them in the comments. We are very happy with a lot of your suggestions. It's great. Keep them coming and again don't forget to subscribe to Patreon. There will generally always be a booklet for every single YouTube video we ever do. In some cases there could be backing tracks and so on and so forth and if you're a beginner or if you're a student who wants to learn something more regular with our music school which I am part of the Nathaniel School of Music you could drop us an email. You could also hit the registration form or the link in the description and it'll take you to wherever you need to be taken to. You can also connect with us regarding anything. Right? Cheers guys. Catch you in the next one. Bye.