Piano Video Lesson: Which Should You Learn First: Scales or Arpeggios?

You're watching LivingPianos.com and I'm Robert Estrin with Which Should You Learn First, Scales or Arpeggios? You know I've got a lot of videos on working on scales and arpeggios which you can find in the description.

This is a very brief primer on what each of these is.

And one of them, scales, is a series of whole steps and half steps.

All whole steps except between the 3rd and 4th and 7th and 8th notes. There are only 8 notes in a major scale and the first and last note are the same. And I'm sure you're familiar with major scales.

As a C major scale, between the 3rd and 4th notes there's no black keys because that's the way the piano keyboard is built and between B and C. Arpeggios are simply broken chords.

But when you really master all major and minor scales and arpeggios, it enables you to have fluidity in music and it makes learning music easier and it helps your technique enormously to have all your scales right under your fingertips.

And arpeggios.

So which one should you learn how to do first? And it's not so simple. So let me break it down for you.

At the very beginning you want to start with scales. Why? Well, both scales and arpeggios involve the crossing of fingers and crossing of thumbs. And since your hands are reversed, what the left hand does going up, the right hand does going down. And what the right hand does going up, the left hand does going down. Let me show you very simply. If you're playing a major scale, you're going to run out of fingers, right? So you cross under the thumb.

On and on up the scale. Notice how the thumb prepares early.

Practicing scales slowly is key to developing the speed and fluency. We'll get to that in a minute. I just want to show you the left hand has 3rd and 4th finger crossings going up.

And coming down it's reversed. The right hand has the 3rd and 4th finger crossings.

And left hand has the thumb crossings.

So why would you start with scales rather than arpeggios? There's so many more notes in a scale, you'd think that maybe arpeggios would be a little bit easier. But the reason is the crossing of the fingers, particularly the thumb, is so far with arpeggios compared to scales. Watch with the C major scale.

The 3rd and 4th fingers are right next to each other. The keys are right next to each other.

Whereas an arpeggio...

Look how far that is from G to C.

So indeed starting with scales is the way to go. However, you don't necessarily want to just work on all your scales and then first start arpeggios. I think perhaps a good way to go is learn all the major scales and then start introducing arpeggios as you continue on to your minor scales.

That way you start to get the sense of what arpeggios are like. Now, I mentioned the use of the metronome. You notice it's right here. Scales are a good starting point. Might be 60. You really ideally want to get your scales at 4 notes to the beat at 72. But you start very slowly at 1 note to the beat.

And I can come down as well. Notice the power that's coming just from the fingers. Now, you might be tempted to do this.

You get a lot of power by leaving the arms. But the reason why that doesn't work is if you try to go fast doing that, you'll never be able to gain speed. So that's why when playing slowly, let all the power come from the fingers. And make the fingers distinct from one another. So the fingers that are previously played are out of the way.

It's the release of those fingers that's so important.

So after you've gone 1 note to the beat, then you go 2 notes to the beat.

Look at my left hand thumb.

All is under except when it's playing.

That's what enables a speed. So you can go 4 notes to the beat, lightening up and staying closer to the keys.

And you should do that many times so you get comfortable. And I would suggest after you get the C major scale, go in the order of the sharps to G major, up a fifth, then D major, then A major.

And go through all the sharp scales. Then go through the flat scales. Learn all the major scales. Then introduce arpeggios. And you can alternate. If arpeggios are coming okay for you, go through a few and then you can start doing your minor scales concurrently.

Eventually you want to learn all the major scales and minor scales at 72 4 notes to the beat. All the arpeggios at 60. It's harder to play the arpeggios quite as quickly. So you'll always be a little bit slower. Once you have all your scales and arpeggios, are you done? No. That's just the beginning. Because then you go back and you try to get them all a little bit faster.

And each time you go through all the scales and arpeggios, you can take weeks or months to do that. There's no rush. Pick one each day and make it interesting for yourself. Eventually you'll know all of them and you'll be able to increase the speed little by little. Ideally getting up to 120 4 notes to the beat for arpeggios, 144 4 notes to the beat for scales. If you've got that, you've got a good foundation of technique on the piano. But just learning scales, if you can learn all of them, fantastic.

It makes reading music easier, learning music easier and you'll have more technique not just for scales running up and down but all finger work. Because you will have the abstraction of this technique of scales and arpeggios literally at your fingertips. So even if you don't learn all of them, don't worry about learning all of them. Just take one a week. Eventually you will learn all of them. There's no rush. Just make it a part of your daily practice. 5 or 10 minutes a day will go a long way over the course of a year if you practice on a regular basis. I hope this is helpful for you. Once again, check the description because I've got lots of videos on scales and arpeggios for those of you who are more advanced and want to go deeper into the subject.

Again, Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, your online piano store. Thanks again for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/which-should-you-learn-first-scales-or-arpeggios/

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