Here is an example of how Musicarta can help you learn your scales efficiently. Use this pattern (and the ones that follow – see links at the bottom of the page) to revive your scale practice regime and start reaping the benefits of ‘knowing your keys’!

The ‘Three-times-five’ pattern

This pattern will help you help you learn where to turn your thumb under in the Group One scales – C, G, D, A, and E majors.

These scales divide the octave very obviously into a group of three, and a group of five notes. The thumb passes under finger three and finger three passes over the thumb (both hands) to give enough fingers to play the eight notes of the octave.

Learning the pattern

Practice the right hand first.

Starting at the bottom on tonic (home note) middle C, run up and down the first five notes using ‘true scale fingering’, that is, passing the thumb under finger three even though you don’t really have to.

While the right hand is doing this, the left hand will simply be walking from the little finger side to the thumb side, plain and simple.

Play the bottom five notes of the scale, up and down, hands together. The right hand practices turning the thumb under finger 3, while the left hand just runs across the fingers and back.

Then you will want to run all the way to the top. Add this on to the end of your three-times-up-and-down-the-first-five-notes. The left hand runs out of fingers at the thumb but with three notes still left to play, and so passes the third finger over to complete the octave.

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The rest of the Musicarta material on key signatures

• How the sharps and flats build up;
• How to immediately name a major key from the key signature;
• Contour scale practice patterns;
• Rhythmic scale practice patterns;
• Scale-tone practice patterns
• Pentatonic scales
• Modes
  

Plus the invaluable Key-specific Keyboard diagrams "and much more besides" has now moved to the

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Playing the whole pattern

Here is a line diagram of the whole pattern.

C major

You play only the white keys in C. The lozenge shape indicates the tonic – the home- and name-note of the scale. (The tonic is nearly always the top and bottom notes of scales.)

The pattern in other Group One keys

E major

Two variations

The first variation preserves the same shape exactly but plays the notes in what is called ‘dotted rhythm’, or in ‘swing quavers’, ‘with a triplet feel’. It’s quite a bit harder to play like this. (The example is in C.)

The second variation has a different but similar shape. See if you can play the exercise from the line diagram and the audio performance file alone.