PLAY FAST AND EVEN SCALES ON THE PIANO // Make Your Scales Sound More Effortless // Piano Tutorial

Hi, this is Danae, and today's video is about how to play fast, even, and effortless sounding scales. Scales are a very basic technical skill when playing the piano. They come up in almost any study, in almost every piece, any piano concerto, and of course it is something that you have to feel very comfortable playing and very secure in. So this is why I think it is very important to find your personal way to play scales in a way that you can do it if you wake up in the middle of the night or in your sleep. Because if this is something you really shouldn't think about too much, you should just be able to play through them without having to give it too much thought. I already mentioned in my warm-up routine video that you might have already seen, if not, I'm going to link it in the description box down below, that there are some exercises that I do every day. I practice scales in general every single day, sometimes more, sometimes less. I have a couple of exercises that I do every day, just because I think it is one of those things that have to be automatic, and I practice different keys every day, so I don't get used to just one particular pattern, but to all of the different keys that there are. But there are a couple more exercises, and in today's video I'm going to go a little more in-depth into the exercises that I used to do, especially also when I was younger, in order to feel very comfortable while playing scales. I have five exercises that, as I said, I used to do every day. Now I just pick out one or two, depending on how I feel and what needs more exercise in my hand and in my fingers at that particular point in time, but I would definitely recommend doing all of them on a very regular basis, at best daily, if you have the time and if you can afford to do that, because it definitely helps. I also think that when practicing scales, you develop your basic technique, so the way that you practice these very basic exercises and these very basic movements is the way that you're going to be playing a lot of things that are also much harder later on. This is why it is very important, I find, that when practicing the scales, you really look out for your hand posture, your arm posture, if you are feeling tense, if you're feeling relaxed, how you position your fingers, because this is really what's going to determine how your technique is going to develop later on. Also, if you're a beginner, of course you're going to start practicing scales at some point as a warm-up. Again, I would definitely suggest that you look out for your position, how you press the keys, exactly where those pressure points are, just in order to make sure that you develop a very promising and good and reliable technique that can take you very far later on in your piano career or piano life. So, let's get into the exercises. Today, just to demonstrate, I'm going to use the C major scale, just to keep it very simple, but of course these exercises apply to any scale, in any key, and as I said, I alternate keys every day, but today I'm just going to show you the C major version of these exercises. So in the first exercise, you isolate the notes in which the thumb goes under. In the C major scale, that would be E and F, because the fingering that I do is 1-2-3, then the thumb on F, and then on 4, and then the thumb on C again, so it's B-C and E-F. So I practice those two moments by isolating them and putting my wrist as high as I can without tensing up, and leaving a lot of room for the thumb to be able to go under, and then putting the wrist back down while pressing down the note. Then I add in one note before the B, so the A. And then I add in the G as well. And then I play this group of notes fast. I do the same for the E and F. And then the same for the left hand. The left hand, it would be A and G, and then D and C. And then the same for the A and G. What is important while practicing this exercise is not only that the wrist is completely relaxed and doing this movement of going up and down, but also that your elbow is relaxed. I would try to avoid your elbow going up here, or tensing up, of course. And I always make sure by holding it with my other hand, and making sure that I could just press it, and I could move it around. My teacher used to say that I should imagine my elbow floating on top of oil. So imagine that you have oil here, and your elbow is kind of lying, loosely lying on this oily surface, and you can just very effortlessly move it around. So after this exercise, I go on to the next one, in which you isolate the thumb and press the other fingers at the same time. So in this case, you would press the thumb, then 2-3, then again the thumb, and then 2-3-4 at the same time, as a cluster, basically. And whenever you have the thumb, you put your wrist down. Whenever you have the other fingers, you put your wrist up. And you do it in a kind of dotted rhythm. So the right hand would be like this. And then you change up the dotted rhythm. And then you do exactly the same thing for the left hand. Exercise. You play clusters on every side. So you press the thumb and the second finger, and then you press the third finger and the thumb, and thereby you practice that moment where the thumb goes under the fingers again. And then for the other part, you play the thumb, second and third finger as a cluster, and then you play the fourth finger and the thumb together. And you just alternate these two. So for the right hand, it would look like this. And then also starting from the top, just to switch it up. And as you can see, I try to give every cluster that I play a tiny impulse. And I do that in order to make sure that I'm completely relaxed in my arm. So I kind of move my wrist forward a little bit and do the same here. And in the left hand too. The next exercise is one where you always stop on the second finger and then play the thumb where it's going to go. So for example, you play C, D, stop on the second finger, and then tap the thumb on the F. And you play pretty quickly until the next second finger, which would be G, and then tap the thumb on the C. It's very important that you wait until your hand is really completely relaxed. I know I keep saying make sure that you're relaxed, but it's really, really essential that you don't even have the tiniest bit of tension. Because here, if you have a bit of tension, it doesn't really bother you. It's not such a big obstacle. Of course, you can keep playing. But the point is, once you get to the super hard studies and super hard technical moments in concertos, it is going to bother you. So make sure that even in these simple exercises, you have zero amount of tension in order to just not have it later on. So I play the second finger and wait. Even if it takes five seconds, I just wait until I really feel, OK, everything is released. Then I tap the thumb. And then going back down, as you saw, I always stop at the second finger, do the same release, and then play until the next second finger. And I do that, of course, to practice what comes after that, which is the moment where the fingers go over the thumb, going back down. And then I do the same thing for the left hand and vice versa. So going down and upwards. So another thing to look out for when playing that exercise is that the fingers that are not playing, so the thumb is tapping, second one is holding the note, but the other three fingers, third, fourth and fifth are not playing, that they are also completely relaxed, or as my teacher used to say, almost asleep. They're sleeping, only the thumb is awake. And then when you have this fast moment, where you're quickly playing until the next second finger, that's the only moment when they're active. And ideally, they're only going to be active while playing their key. Of course, this is only something that happens in your mind. Of course, they're going to be also active while the other fingers are playing. But it's good to imagine as minimal action as possible, and try to make your fingers be as still as possible when they're not playing, because it also increases your chances of being very relaxed and not tense at all. The next exercise is one where you basically go through one octave of the scale by adding one note. You start out with two notes and then add a note each time. Here, once again, I know I might sound a little bit boring saying the same thing all the time, but once again, you only continue when you are completely relaxed. So I start out with two notes. Relax, maybe even touch my elbow to make sure. And the same for the left hand. And after this exercise, I go on and start playing the full scale. The first way I do that is by playing it in four different ways. I start with one octave, then I play double tempo for two octaves, then I play triple tempo, or you could say triplets, for three octaves, and then I play quadruple tempo, or just the 16th notes, for four octaves. When I play the one octave, I make sure to do what I also did for the clusters, really give each note its own impulse, keep very relaxed fingers. Then when I get into the two, three, and four octaves, I try to focus on being more legato and playing even in as minimal movement as possible. And then the same for the left hand. I also play the left hand through going upwards first, and then back downwards as I would when I play both hands together. Now for this last exercise that I just played, I used to put on the metronome in order to increase the tempo slowly. So for example, I would start with 120 and then go to 160, not in one day, but within, let's say, months, as you feel comfortable. So this was kind of a medium tempo that I just showed you, but for me today, I would play it in this tempo. But again, it's not about playing it fast immediately. This is obviously a process that takes time, and increasing the tempo as the weeks and months progress is basically what got me to playing it this fast now. So after this, I put both hands together and play them up and down, and also going outwards and inwards again. So I hope that you enjoyed this more in-depth video about scales specifically. As I said in the beginning, this is not the only warm-up thing that I do on a daily basis. I usually reduce the exercises for the scales a little bit, and also do some arpeggios, some chords, some general warming up and stretching exercises for my hands. But when I really want to focus on scales, this is what I do. And it works in every key, and I would really recommend doing these exercises if you're interested in building up a secure and very reliable technique as a bass. I really hope that you found this video helpful, and that you can find ways to improve your scales with these exercises. Let me know what you think in the comments down below, and I'll see you again in the next one. Bye!