Seventh chord arpeggios are an often-neglected area of technique, but richly rewarding. In Lesson 5 of Juliana Han's Chords & Arpeggios series, you'll learn how to internalize the fluid, integrated gestures of finger, wrist, and arm that enable a rippling seventh chord arpeggio in any key, chord quality, or inversion.

The study of the brain has developed significantly in the past few decades, and learnings from neuroscience have informed more and more fields, including music. Juliana Han looks at how brain research can inform piano pedagogy, offering insights for beginning students to use in overcoming common challenges faced at the keyboard.

In order to play the piano at any level, one must acquire the skill to perform multiple tasks at the same time. But exactly how pianists earn this ability is misunderstood.

In his lesson, Juliana Han dispels what she calls the "multitasking myth" – the notion that we can focus on two or more activities at the same time. Studies have shown that, in fact, when it appears that we're focusing on two tasks at once, we're either shifting rapidly between them, or one task has become automated. Han shows how to apply this knowledge to the piano, with examples from training pieces by Bach and Bartók.

There's a funny fact about our hands that underlies many beginner challenges at the keyboard – namely, that they are mirror images of the other. Our hands cannot be superimposed, one over the other, so that the fingers correspond.

In this lesson, Juliana Han shows how this natural property of human hands, known as "chirality" in the scientific literature, is important for developing pianists to understand. Taking the deceptively difficult C major scale in parallel motion as an example, Han demonstrates strategies for overcoming the obstacles posed by our chiral hands.

Visual Field Issues

Beginner pianists can be divided into two groups: "lookers" and "readers." The first group keeps their eyes locked on their fingers and the keyboard, watching every motion. The second group keeps their eyes glued to the score, dependent on the notation to cue their finger activity.

In this lesson, Juliana Han offers strategies to both groups of pianists to develop the skill they are neglecting. For "lookers," Han has tips for feeling the spacing of intervals on the keyboard and learning to play without looking. For "readers," she offers tips for memorizing and becoming less dependent on the score.

Scale fingering can be daunting: with 24 major and minor scales to worry about (plus the different forms of minor), it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all the different fingerings. Never fear: Juliana Han is here! In this 5-lesson series, Han eliminates the need for rote memorization and guesswork in scale fingering, instead sharing key principles that underpin standard scale fingerings.

In Lesson 2 of the Major and Minor Scales series, “Chopin” Scales, Juliana Han starts with the seemingly exotic keys of B, F♯, and C♯. Chopin also taught these keys first: they illustrate the key principle of "clumping," where the long fingers rest easily on black keys.

In Lesson 3 of the Major and Minor Scales series, C Major Pattern Scales, Juliana Han explores the simple but powerful observation that 10 of the 24 scales use the same fingering pattern as C major. This reveals another of Han's key principles: scales are built from pairs of big groups (1234) and small groups (123) of fingers.

In Lesson 4 of the Major and Minor Scales series, F Major Scales, Juliana Han explores F major and its parallel minor, F minor. This scale gets its own lesson because it has a unique feature: its big (1234) and small (123) groups are synchronized between the hands.

In Lesson 5 of the Major and Minor Scales series, Other Black Key Scales, Juliana Han explores a trio of scales: A♭, E♭, and B♭ (and their parallel minors). These scales have irregular big group (1234) and small group (123) patterns: each of them starts and ends in the middle of a group.