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tonebase Piano Course

Major and Minor Scales

Taught by renowned pianist

Juliana Han

Join Juliana Han in this 5-lesson series as she demonstrates the fingering and choroegraphy for playing all 24 major and minor scales at the keyboard. Han eliminates the need for rote memorization and guesswork, basing her lessons instead on key principles that underpin the standard scale fingerings.

  • checkmark icon
    Difficulty: 
    intermediate
  • checkmark icon
    Duration: 
    1
     hours
     hour
All courses on tonebase include subtitles in English and Spanish

Course Syllabus

Principles of Scale Fingering

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.

Chopin' Scales

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.

C Major Pattern Scales

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.

F Scales

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.

Other Black Key Scales

In Lesson 5 of the Major and Minor Scales series, Other Black Key Scales, Juliana Han explores a trio of scales: Aâ™­, Eâ™­, and Bâ™­ (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.

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Juliana Han
meet YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Juliana Han

Juilliard- and Harvard-educated Juliana Han is a pianist and pedagogue of diverse gifts, effortlessly connecting with audiences and students paired with careers in law and biochemistry.

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Juliana Han
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