Starting a scale book series, Scale Skills by Keith Snell

Pallas I love having a supportive environment in which to talk about famously tricky subjects, and I'm getting a lot out of this topic.

Me too!

RFox I do apologise for any unintended hurt.

No hurt happened. I actually find your original post informational and your subsequently reply clear and helpful.

hebele Another beginner perspective here. After hearing about scales practice, I've bought the Alfred book and started to figure out two octaves, hands together scales. I found them strangely enjoyable. I was doing scales (and Hanon) in my breaks etc. Without a metronome. With my self-thought technique. Getting faster and faster. And... I got pain in my hands .

I too find scales and arpeggios practice not boring and often enjoyable. The reason, I think, is it allows me to focus on figuring out finger touch, movement, and tweaking those motions for better efficiency and relaxation.

I do use metronome. I find both slow tempo and faster tempo serves their respective and unique purpose. Also, strangely, I find hands separate still needs to be practiced even after I can play hands together well.

navindra if it's truly trivial, I'll just breeze through it until I get to my difficulty level.

that's a smart way to look at it. Also, if there's some aspect you've missed, this should give you a chance to acquire it.

BTW does anyone do chromatic scale practice? When I first heard about chromatic scale, I did not quite get its usefulness. Then one day I came across this video by Paul Barton talking about using the 3-4-5 finger chromatic scale to exercise the weak fingers. That seems to make a lot of sense.

ranjit wrote

While I agree that principles are the way to go when learning to play scales and can result in quicker memorization, there are multiple possible scale fingerings and the reason why we have standard fingerings is largely because of convention and not because they are the logically most efficient way to play them. That is, someone not exposed to standard fingerings will not necessarily come up with them independently.

There are essentially seven alternatives once we accept the premise that there are seven tones in a scale, the 4th finger is only used once per octave so work out where that one goes (or can go) and you're good to go.
It only takes seven tries to find out which versions are workable, which are not, which are best and which are reasonable alternatives. Once the principle has been learnt you can always work out a scale fingering in a few seconds. Chopin's idea is that the long fingers go on the short keys and vice versa. In this way the 4th finger, RH, "belongs" on Bb and in the LH it belongs on F#. This is the easiest way of passing the thumb under the fourth, the trickiest part of each scale.
Liszt advocated, as an exercise, scale playing with C Major fingering for ALL keys. My teacher gave me the principles and assigned working out the fingering as homework but I wasn't a beginner.
If you were to work out and practise all seven variations each day I think you’d quickly settle on a preference.

ranjit wrote

See bernhard's comment here. He suggests playing F major LH scales 3214321: https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php/topic,2619.msg22756.html#msg22756

Well of course he does! It puts the 4th finger on the only black key in the scale in each hand. That's the essence of the scale fingering principle introduced by Chopin instead of the standard, which I believe goes back to CPE Bach's Versuch.

ranjit wrote

Likewise, why wouldn't you play a C major scale 12341234? After all, it's likely quicker that way.

In practise it should indeed be one of the seven versions to try. The reason for using 4 on the seventh (RH) or second (LH) is that the scale can finish using the fifth finger at the outer ends for those that like to do that. Some teachers advocate scale practise without using the 5th finger at all. There is no reason not to use all seven variations for C Major since there are no black keys.

ranjit wrote

You could also play a C chromatic scale 123412345123

While other fingerings are possible (and that might be explored at some stage) there are three main fingerings for chromatics (rising from E in RH, descending from C in LH): French (123 13 13 123 13), English (123 1234 123 13) and Liszt's, which you've given, (123 1234 12345 1).
The reasons for them are that more thumb crossings give greater clarity and fewer give greater speed. When these have been learned they can be applied easily starting on any key. Is there really a need for writing all these out for someone ready to start on chromatic scales?

I have a lot to answer to, please forgive my double post.

ShiroKuro wrote

This is interesting (the idea that scales aren't for beginners), I wonder how many teachers would agree with you.

When it applies to those that don't have a teacher, more than you might think; I learnt it from hearing or reading so many say the same thing but scales introduced by a teacher are fine if the teacher knows what they're doing, introduces the principles of scale fingering and watches the student play. Problems may arise when students with less than two years or so of piano playing start cranking out scales over two or more octaves several times a day, usually aiming to build speed, instead of putting the time into developing their technique with pieces.
When the piano was introduced as an instrument 'col piano e forte' the dynamic element was seen as an add-on but in practise controlling the dynamics is essentially an obligation. For the beginner it is far more productive and beneficial to introduce dynamic control, phrasing, rhythm, articulation and five-finger exercises. Scales aren't finger exercises (they don't work 4 or 5 enough) and they do not have as much benefit before these other skills have had time to develop and begin to blossom.
When we restrict ourselves to pieces for the first year or two we don't play the same thing every day, we approach each key with varying intervals instead of always from the adjacent key, and we get used to using all our fingers. When we've built a foundational technique scales can be introduced slowly, gradually and carefully, developing the finger groups more as a spring-tined rake than a set of levers.

ShiroKuro wrote

So, back to @RFox 's earlier comment about the fingering listed on the page I uploaded -- I'm not going to argue with anyone about those fingerings (for one thing, I'm not in front of a piano right now). But those are established, accepted fingerings and learning them will be of value.

They aren't the only ones and they aren't Chopin's choice. The ABRSM give Chopin's fingerings as alternatives in their Manual of Scales and Arpeggios. They accept any reasonable fingering in an exam.
I think it's a good idea to use both fingerings until a preference has been found but I also think it's wrong not to introduce Chopin's ergonomic fingering at the same time and give the student a choice.

iternabe What kind of harm can be done practicing scales as beginners, especially without a teacher? If, and how, that can be avoided?

I am not RFox, obivously, but learning to play the piano without proper instruction and good feedback, can lead to all kind of bad habits and even potentially hurt your hands or arms. However, it is hard to imagine that playing scales without a teacher would be more detrimental than playing pieces without a teacher.

iternabe wrote

Besides your point of scales being not the best time spent by beginner for most productivity, would you mind to elaborate on the danger, too? What kind of harm can be done practicing scales as beginners, especially without a teacher? If, and how, that can be avoided?

Sure.
A very small point first of all, Chopin's idea was that we made it sound as though all five fingers were of equal strength but anatomically they are not. More strength is not as big a deal as more control. We need to use more of our arm when playing 4 & 5 than we do for thumb and index fingers. This implies that we must use our ear more when practising, for listening - not pressing the keys .
In any precision motor activity (where speed is a valuable asset) the priority is posture, i.e. freedom from excess tension by keeping the body in skeletal balance as much as possible while effecting movement using the largest muscles that get the job done and using the smallest muscles only when necessary. Excess tension can lead to tendinitis or arthritis as well as creating speed walls or lack of dynamic range.
Once the hammer has been released from the jack it is in free flight but there's a small amount of key travel left. It is in this small amount of key travel that we have to release any tension in our mechanism and prevent excessive key-bedding. A teacher may be able to spot excess tension, seeing it or hearing it, and provide exercises for getting it under control. The 'flying pinkie' and excessive action noise are examples of excess tension.
Place all fingers on the keys, play one finger, relax, allow the key to rise still in contact with the finger, keep the finger on the key while the next finger plays.
The Bruce Lee one-inch punch is a relaxed mechanism until just before the point of contact, full tension on contact (in this case of the whole body) and relaxed again just after the point of contact. This is what we're trying to achieve when we play a key (but only using enough tension for the note required so hands and fingers for light notes, shoulders and back for louder notes).
As with all drills, think about how to play an exercise, play it once, consider how we did then sleep. Repeat the next day. The brain will improve how we next play while we sleep. Play it again without sleeping and we begin to ingrain a beginner's method. As our thinking time reduces and our playing mechanism improves we can begin to add repetition.
The player's mechanism needs to be well rounded before concentrating too much on scale practise that drills the same movement every day. So many beginners use scales for building velocity but they can't transfer that increase to their pieces because the velocity comes more from using adjacent notes than typically occurs in pieces where flexibility of thinking is involved, playing one thing while preparing mentally for a pattern change.
Practise not for speed but dynamic control and articulation. Speed will come once the brain has acquired the technical control. Very fast scales are not true legato. They use what's known as jeu perlé. There's a very slight gap between each key press, long enough between adjacent fingers to match "passing the thumb under the fourth" (which in very fast playing is actually moving the hand along) and still sounding even in time and tone (does that make sense?). The sooner you practise that the better: legato, staccato and jeu perlé.
The stronger fingers are worked the most in scale playing, the 4th next and the 5th finger least so five finger exercises might be better for the beginner. If scale playing is going to figure in one's future a good starting point might be five finger scales, tonic to dominant, starting and finishing on the tonic but using different finger patterns and all five tones in between, e.g. 123454321, 132435421, 142535241, etc. Include phrasing and dynamics.
As each key is mastered begin the next set of exercises (the next day/week/month) on the dominant from the previous exercise gradually working around the circle of fifths, always with thumb on tonic, RH, 5th in LH). Notice on your way that the first four notes in the next group complete the scale in the previous group so the notes used in a scale can be learned before starting full scales and the order in which black keys are added becomes ingrained. Later, when you begin full scales, you might start with B Major (RH) and gradually remove black keys as you go back down the circle of fifths but keeping the fingers on their preferred homes. The Left Hand starts on Db Major and progresses up the circle, again removing the black keys as we move towards C Major. (Chopin's idea, not mine.)

In short, (oh, if only...) aim for finger control over finger strength so practise phrasing, the dangers are from excess tension, the enemy of speed, causing technical difficulties with respect to speed and dynamic control and inflammation in the hand and finger joints with respect to physical injury, and practise while being consciously aware of tension and release until it's part of your playing mechanism. Does that cover all your questions?

Animisha, I was hoping the difference between us wouldn't be so obvious (!) but in our pieces we approach notes from different directions, over different distances, with different fingers, different dynamics and with different articulations from note to note and our pieces also vary over time. We have to consider how we’re playing much more than in scales where we’re using adjacent fingers on adjacent notes, often with the same dynamic, and we can easily go faster than our control mechanism is really ready for and we bang things home with a hammer instead of guiding them gently into place with greater care and precision. Is that reasonable?

It's five, I must leave, there's no exception to the rule...

RFox Chopin's idea is that the long fingers go on the short keys and vice versa. In this way the 4th finger, RH, "belongs" on Bb and in the LH it belongs on F#. This is the easiest way of passing the thumb under the fourth, the trickiest part of each scale.

I agree with most of what you write but not this. You write this with an appeal to authority too, which is why I object even more strongly.

I'm not a beginner. I had years of lessons and have learned the classical scale fingering. However, my hands are so constructed that playing 4 on black followed by 3 on white a semitone away is not comfortable and I do everything I can to avoid it, prefering to use 3 as a pivot and rearanging the fingering of passages to make it comfortable.

Appealing to Chopin does not make a statement more true. Work with a teacher. Figure out what works for your own hands.

iternabe BTW does anyone do chromatic scale practice? When I first heard about chromatic scale, I did not quite get its usefulness. Then one day I came across this video by Paul Barton talking about using the 3-4-5 finger chromatic scale to exercise the weak fingers. That seems to make a lot of sense.

That exercise is not for beginners! You can hurt your hands doing 3-4-5 chromatic scales if you haven't developed enough hand flexibility.

Chromatic scales are used very prominently in romantic repertoire. It's good to know the standard fingering with 1-2-3 so that you can easily play any chromatic passage but unless you're advanced you don't really need more than that.

I say that as someone who has learned the fast chromatic fingerings and also practiced with 3-4-5 and done chromatic double-thirds. Those things are very useful if you need to play music that has these types of scales but they aren't exactly the best use of your time before that

BartK wrote

I agree with most of what you write but not this. You write this with an appeal to authority too, which is why I object even more strongly.

Thank you for the acknowledgement. The appeal to authority was more descriptive. It was introduced to me as Chopin's fingering and the term natural fingering is not yet widespread.

Is your disagreement that natural fingering isn't the easiest way of passing the thumb under the fourth? If so I'm curious about how you finger Bb Major (RH) or E Minor (LH). Do you still use the 123, 1234 groupings or have you dispensed with that method altogether?

Given that you also advocate we figure out what works for our own hands, albeit with a teacher instead of a purely systematic approach, I doubt you're suggesting that we should all learn standard (and inconsistent) fingering without trying alternatives and regardless of ergonomics. What am I missing here?

RFox Is your disagreement that natural fingering isn't the easiest way of passing the thumb under the fourth? If so I'm curious about how you finger Bb Major (RH) or E Minor (LH). Do you still use the 123, 1234 groupings or have you dispensed with that method altogether?

Given that you also advocate we figure out what works for our own hands, albeit with a teacher instead of a purely systematic approach, I doubt you're suggesting that we should all learn standard (and inconsistent) fingering without trying alternatives and regardless of ergonomics. What am I missing here?

I was writing about scalar passages in general, which are rarely a full scale over several octaves. Usually there are changes of direction, leaps, etc. In such passages I try to avoid the figures that are not so comfortable for my large hands, if possible.

I'm not saying the standard scale fingering is the best. I learned it because my teacher taught it. Some scales have never been comfortable but I worked at them anyway because sometimes we can't avoid the uncomfortable fingerings. You can try alternative fingerings to make scales easier or smoother but deliberately working on a fingering that's more difficult can also be beneficial.

In pieces, I have occasionally used alternate fingerings. For instance, in the Rachmaninoff Étude-Tableaux in G minor, the fast scale at the end wasn't as smooth as I liked until I changed the LH fingering to be more like E-flat major and sudently it was much better. However, I don't think you really need to practice all the alternate fingerings to be able to do this in a piece. If you have practiced all the standard scales then it's just a mind shift and slight adjustment.