Piano Scales And Chords Pdf Free Download
Rory Falu
Major scales are the most important piano scales: firstly, because they are very common and, secondly, because they are fundamental to understand keys. If you hear someone mention that a piano sonata by the composer and pianist Franz Schubert is played in A Major, it means that it depends on the A Scale.
You can scroll down and see keyboard images all Major scales. Further down, you will see an overview with all the notes together with intervals, semi-tones and the formula of the Major Scale. This theory helps you learn the concepts and memorizing it easier. See also Major scales exercises and arpeggios.
Some of the scales have two names divided by a slash (e.g. C# and Db), because they can be played in two different keys. The notes are, however, the same on the keyboard. As an example, C#, D#, E#, F#, G#, A#, B#, C# and Db, Eb, F, Gb, Ab, Bb, C, Db (as in C# / Db scales) are the same notes but partly written differently. In some cases, there are double-sharps (e.g. F##) that can look peculiar, see theory for an explanation. Also, the notes in the diagrams and the notes in the overview below sometimes differ. This is because the notes below the diagrams are foremost thought to be easy to understand.
As soon as you know a certain major scale, you can easier grasp the chords in the same key. That is because you can randomly choose three different notes from a scale and you will get a triad. In the key of C, for instance, the standard chords being used are:
Knowing how to construct major and minor scales is hugely important because basic chords found in key signatures are built on each scale degree. Chord-building can also double as powerful piano fingering exercises that can give pianists increased finger strength and music theory knowledge. Basic chords, or triads, are built off of three notes. Both hands will use the 1, 3 and 5 fingers to play basic chords.
The other way we can think about building chords is by using simple formulas of intervals to construct the basic chords found in major and minor keys. Major and minor keys are built off of a series of major, minor, and diminished chords that never change.
The order of major, minor, and diminished chords found within keys never changes, so we can assign each chord its own unique Roman numeral to help us identify its place within a key. All major keys contain the following sequence of major and minor chords. The smaller numerals represent minor chords while the larger ones represent major chords. Any chord with a small circle beside it represents a diminished chord.
For example, starting from middle C you can create a finger exercise by arpeggiating the chords found in all the keys on both sides of the circle of 5ths. Or, starting from C, test your chord-building knowledge out and arpeggiate major, minor, and diminished chords chromatically step-by-step until you reach the C an octave above with both hands.
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According to the internet, it's a great book. According to classically-trained pianist's who are paid instructors, it's an awful book and will only confuse those trying to learn and practice scales.
If you keep all the notes of a scale the same but change the tonal centre, you create a new scale or mode. So, a mode is a scale created by establishing a new root note within a pre-existing scale. Modes are just a different way of thinking about scales and keys. Using modes allows us to allocate an individual mode/scale (I will use the two words interchangeably) to every single chord in a progression. In Jazz, this is a very convenient way of thinking, as we will see in a moment.
This is the basis of and the idea behind the Chord-Scale System. Every single chord in a progression is allocated a particular scale which can be used to improvise over that particular chord. Of course, there are many different scales you can use over a single chord, but we will get to that soon enough. So technically, when improvising, every time a we change chords we also change scales.
Notice that both scales contain all the notes that comprise the CMaj7 chord. Because the CMaj7 does not have a 9th, 11th or 13th we do not know what key it is in, and therefore we can use both scales over this chord. When thinking in terms of keys (rather than modes) we can say that the CMaj7 chord can be derived from both the key of C Major and G Major (C Lydian).
And so hopefully you now see, chords and scales are really the same thing. They are both comprised of the same limited number of notes. As I have mentioned in the past, all music theory can be broken down into notes and intervals. And things like scales and chords are just abstractions from the 12 notes of the octave.
When it comes to playing the piano, pianists have thousands of chords to select from, with some chords being more popular than others. Check out some of the most common chords in the piano chord chart below, or keep reading to find out more about piano chords.
All piano chords contain a root note -- this is the note the chord is named after -- as well as one or more additional notes. Basic piano chords often consist of only two or three notes, while the more advanced chords tend to incorporate even more notes.
The most common type of keyboard or piano chord is a triad, or three-note chord. A triad contains a root note and two other notes, most often the notes that produce the intervals of a third and fifth above the root note.
One way to get the basic shape of a triad is to place your thumb and fingers on adjacent white keys and push down with your thumb, middle finger, and pinky. Learning this technique will set you up to play various basic piano chords with ease.
Minor chords, like major chords, contain three basic keyboard notes: a root note, a third, and a fifth. To play a minor chord, select any root note, then count three half-steps up to the third. From the third, count two whole-steps (or four half steps) to find the fifth.
This site is geared to playing musicians and composers. We developed some tools while playing and composing that helped us in our work. At first the tools were just a list of relationships that we used to help us find scales and chords. After a while, the lists became too long, so we implemented some macros in Excel to find more chord relationships.
The fundamental scales every piano player should know are the major and minor scales. Pianists who want to play rock, blues, pop, and jazz should also learn the pentatonic and blues scales. Finally, jazz uses even more scales, such as modes, bebop scales, and whole tone scales.
Piano scales also help piano players improvise! For example, you can use any note from the C major scale to improvise on top of a chord progression in C major. Blues and pentatonic scales are also popular tools to improvise with.
The notes of a scale are called scale degrees. Major scales have seven degrees and they each have a name: tonic, supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, submediant, and leading tone. You may hear scale degrees and degree names mentioned when musicians talk about diatonic chords.
The harmonic minor scale follows the key signature of the relative major key and raises the seventh note of the scale one half-step. For example, the seventh note of D minor, C, is raised to C-sharp. Here are all the harmonic minor scales in all 12 keys:
The melodic minor scale follows the key signature of its relative major key and raises the sixth and seventh notes of the scale one half-step when ascending. Then, the sixth and seventh notes of the scale are lowered back down when descending. Here are all the melodic minor scales in all 12 keys:
By now, you should be comfortable with major scales. Did you know that there are seven ways to play one major scale? We can do this by starting and ending on each of the seven degrees of the major scale. These are called modes. For example, playing the C major scale starting and ending on D gives us the D Dorian mode.
This scale has a strange, ambiguous sound that is quite unique. In classical music, late 19th century composers like Claude Debussy used the whole tone sound to convey dreamy atmospheres. Whole tone scales are also popular in jazz.
Playing 5-finger scales has significant value for early-level pianists. This innovative book helps students chart progress through all major and minor 5-finger scales, cross-hand arpeggios, and primary chords. Engaging teacher duets for each key are used for scale exercises. Students also enjoy improvisation activities for each key with creative prompts to inspire imagery, character, and tempo.
In this section, we shall take a look at chords sorted by key. We will take a look at chords in the keys of C, C sharp, D flat, D, E flat, E, F, F sharp, G flat, G, G sharp, A flat, A, A sharp, B flat and B major and minor. All keys!
For instance in the C major scale the notes are C D E F G A B C. The chords in the key of C must be named after each of the seven notes. In other words, each note must have a chord that corresponds to it. The chords can be either major, minor or diminished and the notes that form each chord must be part of the major scale.
The same applies when deciding what type of seventh chord to play. The 7th note must be part of the scale. For example, the first chord is Cmaj7 (C E G B) while the second chord in the key of C is Dm7 (D F A C). The chord corresponding to the note, B is Bm7b5 (B minor seventh flat five, also called B half diminished). The seventh chords in the key of C are Cmaj7, Dmin7, Emin7, Fmaj7, G7, Amin7 and Bm7b5.
The pattern of chords for any minor key is minor, diminished, major, minor, minor, major, major. Using the key of A minor as an example, whose notes are A B C D E F G, the chords in the key of A minor in order are A minor, B diminished, C major, D minor, E minor, F major and G major. Clearly, every chord makes use of notes that are part of the scale.
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