Scales, Arpeggios & Chords in E-flat Major

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and today it's another finger power day. We'll be learning how to play two octave scales, arpeggios, and diatonic chords in the key of E-flat major. Let's come to the piano to get started. Let's do a quick piano posture check-in. Remember that your bench is a super important part of having good posture. It's important to not have it too close. Remember that gives you your T-Rex arms which can create tension. Also of course you don't want to be too far away. Find a position where your elbows can just be slightly in front of you, comfortably so, and you want to make sure your bench is high enough that from your elbow to your wrist is approximately parallel to the floor. Now if your bench is too low, you may find your arm kind of sloped, too high it may look like this. So you may have to use blankets or towels folded up, or cushion, whatever you need to do to get your bench tall enough so you can have great posture. Your back is tall with relaxed shoulders. And as you're playing these scales, make sure your elbow isn't flapping like chicken wings. You want to use a smooth motion. Your elbow is going to move a little bit. It shouldn't be held stiffly, but it's going to just kind of float, not flap. Finally, remember the shape of your hand is important. Those fingers should have a natural relaxed curve, but then as you play make sure this joint doesn't collapse. Okay if it looks like this, I call that hula fingers, right? Okay, it shouldn't collapse. You want to have enough firmness that the joint stays curved in the correct direction. As you play the black keys, there may be slightly less curve, okay? You don't need to over curve your fingers. It's just a natural curve with just enough firmness that it keeps that shape as you play. Now, in case you've forgotten how many flats are in the key of E-flat major, it wouldn't be a bad time to briefly review our ladder of fifths. Remember, the starting point on our ladder is the key of C major with zero sharps and zero flats. That's our C major scale. Every time we go up a fifth on the ladder, we add one sharp to the key signature. So, what's up a fifth from C? One, two, three, four, five, G major. Has one sharp. Go up another fifth: One, two, three, four, five: D major has two sharps. Keep going up fifths we keep adding one sharp for every fifth we go up. Now, if we go down the ladder, we're taking away sharps. We go down a fifth from D to G, we take away a sharp, back to one sharp, down a fifth to C, we take away a sharp. Now what if we go down a fifth from C? We already have zero sharps. Well, if we go below C a fifth: one, two, three, four, five, there are no more sharps to take away, so now we have to start adding flats. A fifth below C brings us to F major. F major has one flat. Now a fifth below F looks like it would bring us to B, but listen to that: It doesn't quite sound right, right? It's not a B, it's a B-flat. Why is that? Well, we were in the key of F before. Remember, there isn't a B. It's a B-flat. We've flattened it on our ladder, so it needs to stay flat as we go down fifths. So, a fifth below F is B-flat, and B-flat major has two flats. See how we're adding flats now? Now what if we go down another fifth from B-flat? Remember E-flat was our new flat, so now down a fifth lands us on E-flat. The key of E-flat major has how many flats? If you said three, you are correct. And from our ladder of fifths, we can see that those three flats are B-flat, E-flat, and A-flat. You may recall that these three flats are also found in the key signature for C minor, and that's why, let's see C minor: Remember? Same three flats, and that's why E-flat major and C minor are relatives. They have the same key signature of three flats. So if they had like a three flats family reunion, both E-flat major and C minor would be invited. So since we're working on E-flat major today, let's get comfortable with where these three flats are. Can you find and play them all over your own piano? Just find all the E's and B-flats and A-flats. All the way up and down your piano. Let's take a moment and play around with those three notes to get really comfortable where they are. You can improvise a little song. So, when you're playing scales I sometimes like to think of certain notes as hot lava, right? When you're a kid, right, you played hot lava games where you couldn't touch the floor. Well, these are the three keys you can't touch. They've become flat. E, A, and B are now hot lava. As you're playing your scale, these three keys become the flats, and you won't touch these three white keys at all. They're the hot lava keys. Now let's start with our left hand today. And we're going to start with finger 3 on E-flat, and let's practice our groupings. We can have a group of three, so with 3 2 1 play a group of three, and then 4 is going to cross over to this A-flat and then we're going to have two black and two white keys in this next group of four. So can you play that group of four? Then play another group of three starting on E-flat one black two white, and then another group of four. Two black, two white, and then finger 3 crosses over to play E-flat, then we come back down a group of fou ...