PIANO ADV---------SCALES

[notanidea]

Our DD is trying to do her scales for grade 2 piano. I am not musical and unable to help her out. She is musical and is doing well otherwise.She says she is doing it right during the practice at home but according to her piano teacher although her notes are right the fingering is wrong. She is getting frustated with this and I am too as I am unable to help her out.Is there any way I can help her?

for most scales (other than F Major) the RH fingering goes 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 (1 being thumb, 5 being pinky). LH fingering goes 5 4 3 2 1 3 2 1.
F major goes 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 for RH and is the same as the others for LH)
HTH

just had to go and play scales to check. Don't suppose you do F# minor for grade 2.

oops obviously I meant for most of the straightforward scales you'd encounter at Grade 2 - had to go and try out F sharp minor myself to see what the fingering actually was -it's quite interesting!

The examiners don't mark the fingering - however if the scale is stilted or uneven because of the fingering she will lose marks. But you can actually use any fingering you want.

How did she do at grade 1 scales?

Have a google for scale fingerings - there are some good charts with pictures of the keyboard and which fingers go where for each.

I spend a lot of time teaching fingering for scales because my teacher was a little, hum, flexible about scales and I don't thank him for his lack of interest. Maybe in another 10 years I will share his view!

And its really good to get used to the 'correct' fingering as this will be able to be used for longer scales for the next grades - and faster - then with both hands - you almost need to teach your fingers to be able to do it automatically...

She was fine with grade 1 scales.I will google it and see..

Hours of drilling scales, arpeggii and broken chords are the only way to really succeed with Baroque keyboard music - you are definitely doing your daughter a favour by getting her to do the right fingering now!

thirtypence I hope you never change your mind - they're a tad boring at the time but extremely important.

cant find any pictures of fingerings although the numbers were given

Is this any good?

Thanks everyone. Smartiejake - have downloaded it and given it to DD.

OK. If the fingering is a problem, her teacher should be leaving out F major hands together for the moment until she is secure on the rest. All the other scales for Grade 2 have identical fingering.

A little tip my pupils find useful is that (except for F major in grade 2, as I've said), middle fingers always have to go down together. So if you're about to tuck over/ under in one hand and can't remember what, look at what the other hand is about to play. You can't use one middle finger without the other!

You will need to sacrifice speed for a while to get it correct. Very slow and steady is the only way to practice them until it is. And it's really important to get right, because those fingerings will take you right up through Grade 8.

If it's any consolation, I think the leap from apart to together between grades 1 -2 is the biggest scale leap she will ever have to make.

Thanks. She was ready to do her grade 2 exam this summer but as we are going away in summer. She is only 8 and We thought playing should also for fun and not just for exams.So she playing/learning different pieces at grade 2 level.She knows how to play wonderful tonight but the teacher said that other pieces can be left out for some time before she learns otherwise she gets bored of the pieces.This happened in grade 1 when she knew her pieces byheart and not looking at the dynamics when playing- if that makes any sense.