Scales, Arpeggios & Chords in F Major

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and today we'll be working on some finger power. Today's focus is F major. We'll be doing two octave scales, arpeggios, diatonic chords, and inversions. Let's get started with our finger power workout. So in F major today, which has the key signature of one flat, B-flat. So take a second with me and on your piano can you just play all of your B-flats? Let's find every single B-flat and play it on your piano. As you're playing scales in a key, I like to kind of just keep in mind where all my sharps or flats are. So that's the one you want to keep track of. So almost pretend like this B is hot lava because I'm never going to play that B. I'm always going to play B-flat instead. So this white key will never play. It's like it's electric hot lava. Gotta just skip over it. Let's actually start with our left hand today. Why? Well the left hand uses the standard fingering. I call it the standard fingering for scales. It's the same fingering we use for many of the other white key scales, and that's 5 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 3 2 1. Let's practice that in groups. So try this with me. Take your finger 5 on a low F on your piano. Here's my middle C. I'm going to come down quite a bit below that. Octave and a half below that. Play your finger 5, then let's do a group of four. Your finger 2 is going to be on that B-flat. Group of four, then a group of three, and do this with me. So fingers 1 2 3, then fingers 1 2 3 4, then fingers 1 2 3. Okay, then play that group of three again, then a group of four, then a group of three. Then a group of four, and then finger 5. It's very helpful to think of those groups. So as you're playing the scale you can think: here's 4 3 2 1, and then 3 2 1, then 4 3 2 1 3 2 1, then three, then four, then three, then four, and you're done. Pause the video and work on the left hand two octave F major scale, then press play to go on. Now, the standard fingering for the right hand when you're playing a two octave scale is 1 2 3 1. Now, you'll notice that going from a 3 to a 1 landing on a black key is super awkward. You can try playing it yourself. It's like really uh, it's uncomfortable and awkward. So, we have a different fingering for F major because there's a black key that lands on that fourth note. What we're going to do is instead of starting with a group of three we're actually going to switch things up and start instead with a group of four first this time. So we'll go 1 2 3 4, and since we did a group of four, now we'll have to do our group of three, and then we can start over again with another group of four, another group of three, and then we can top it off with our finger 4, and so our finger 5 never plays at all in this scale. So let's try it in groups. Play a group of four. Now we're using right hand: 1 2 3 4, then try a group of three, then try a group of four. Then try a group of three, and then play finger 4 on top, then do a group of three, do a group of four, do a group of three, and finish with a group of four. Now pause for more practice with that. If I was going a little too fast you can pause and do that some more on your own. Otherwise, here's what it's going to look like to put that together into a regular scale: 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 3 2 1 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 4 3 2 1. Pause the video and work on the right hand two octave F major scale, then press play to go on. Now it's time for arpeggios. Let's go back to the left hand our fingering for the left hand is: 5 4 2 1 4 2 1 2 4 1 2 4 5. That's the standard fingering. The right hand is also the standard fingering. We don't have to worry about black keys because we're on the F major triad. All white keys: 1 2 3 1 2 3 5 3 2 1 3 2 1 Pause the video and work on left hand F major arpeggio two octaves, right hand F major arpeggio two octaves, then press play to go on. I want to mention one thing about your piano posture as you're working on your scales and arpeggios, and that's to avoid what I call the chicken wing elbow. As you're like crossing over, sometimes your elbow will want to do this to kind of help your hand do the finger crossover. And you want to avoid that. Number one it looks really weird, and number two it means that you don't have a flexible wrist. With a flexible wrist, you can manage those crossovers without elbow motion, and when you want to play really fast scales someday, you don't have time to be, you know, flapping your elbow around that much. To be able to play fast scales, you need a flexible wrist. So let's try this together. Can you just take the wrists of both your hand and let's make fists. And then just roll in little circles like this. This way and then reverse it. Go the other way. Reverse it again. This should be a nice stretch. You can even hold your hand straight up. High in the air. Other way. Okay, now as you're playing scales and arpeggios, your wrist is going to have to make subtle motions, and so if you stay flexible, like when you cross over notice how your wrist is having to make a little subtle shift. It's not something your elbow is helping with. It happens in the wrist. So work for a really smooth arm and subtle motions in a flexible wrist so you can have a really smooth technique as you pl ...