The third note of our scale is a C and we need to play that note with our 1 st finger (thumb). A pianist climbs up the keyboard smoothly when playing scales, avoiding sudden jumps. There was a reason we started this scale on the 2 nd finger instead of the 1 st. To begin the scale, play the A flat, then the B flat and now we are ready to make our first hand position change. Because of the way the scale is fingered, those are the only two notes you need to be touching. Once you’ve got your 2 nd finger on an A flat, rest your 3 rd finger on the next black key, the B flat. Again, just because your body will be in a more comfortable position, I recommend starting towards the middle of the keyboard. To start in the right hand, put your 2 nd finger on the A flat you wish to start with. It will make your playing much easier and smoother. To make playing easier, a pianist numbers their fingers from thumb to pinky, like so:Ī “fingering” for a scale is the finger patterns used to play it and for this scale, I strongly recommend that you use the fingering I am about to describe. The right hand only uses three! Ninja Turtles, rejoice! This scale is a personal favorite of mine because, after the comparatively difficult F major and E flat major scales that usually precede it, the A flat major scale is much less complicated.Īnd you don’t even need all of your fingers. Let’s now take this knowledge and apply it to our fingers.Ī Flat Major Scale – Right Hand Fingering Our flat notes in this key are B, E, A, and D, and the note directly to the left of all of these is a black key. To make a note flat, you will play the note directly to that note’s left in place of the note itself. What that means for the piano, is that you will be playing more black keys than white keys. Remember, the key of A flat has more flats than it does naturals (notes that are not sharp or flat). To figure out the notes that we will be playing for this scale, start at the root (A flat) and then go up note by note using that major scale formula. All major scales use the same combination of whole steps and half steps shown in that image. Now, let’s see the notes of the scale! If you recall on the notated scale above, the pitches are separated into whole steps and half steps. Pianists orient themselves using the key in the middle, known as Middle C, so the A flat I will be using is the A flat directly to the left of this key. It will, however, be easier to start as close to the middle as possible. To play a lower sounding A flat, find a group of three towards the left of the piano and to play a higher A flat, head towards the right side of the piano. This is true of every group of three black keys on the piano. The A flat is the black key in the middle. To find an A flat, first locate a group of three. In the picture below, I’ve circled the groups of two in blue and the groups of three in red. If you are playing on a piano, you’ll notice that, excluding the one farthest to the left, the black keys are grouped in twos and threes. As we learned earlier, a scale starts on its root, so we will need to locate an A flat. Now that we’ve gone over the notes that make up the A flat major scale, we will learn how to play it on the keyboard.
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