Printable Piano Music Scales in Major and Minor

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Would you like to learn piano music scales and be able to play with the correct fingering?

In this lesson, you can print and practice all the major and harmonic minor piano music scales with fingering. The printable scales below are organized in groups along with comments, so you can learn the fingering easier!

There are 12 major and minor piano music scales

There are 12 different pitches on the piano. You can easily see them as 7 white keys and 5 black. This is repeated over and over again, higher and lower at the piano.

Starting from any key on the piano, you can play a scale. A scale is a series of notes (pitches) arranged from lowest to highest.

The Major and Minor scales are the most common scales when playing the piano. You can start either a major or a minor scale from each of the keys on the piano.

All scales have a specific pattern of whole steps (tones) and half steps (semitones).

All 12 major scales share the same pattern of whole and half steps between the notes:

Whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half

Major scale pattern starting from C.

This pattern of whole and half steps creates the specific sound of major!

The 12 minor scales, however, come in 3 variations:

The Harmonic minor scale uses the same keys as the parallel major scale (same starting note, but major) but lowers the 3rd and the 6th.
The Melodic minor scale uses the same keys as the parallel major scale but lowers the 3rd when ascending (going up) and the 7th, 6th and third going down.
The Natural minor scale uses the same keys as the parallel major scale but lowers the 3rd, 6th, and 7th steps.

So this gives us 3 different patterns (compared with the 1 pattern of the major scale).

To simplify, we can still say that we have only 12 minor scales, but with altered notes on the 6th and 7th steps. So a minor scale can be played in a natural, harmonic, or melodic variation.

Piano scales fingering rules

A simple rule when playing scales is not to use your 1st finger on a black key (since it is too short).

The fingering pattern you will see (much more clearly when playing many octaves) is the grouping of finger numbers 1 2 3 and 1 2 3 4.
Try to practice piano music scales that share the same fingering first, and always hands separately.

It may be fun to play both hands together, but it's more important to be able to confidently play one hand at a time without effort.

Now go and do some "finger-jogging" with these piano scale exercises! But remember to start S-L-O-W-L-Y!

Piano music scales. Free printable piano scales.

Printable piano music scales in all major and minor (harmonic) keys

Below you can print free piano scales pdf for beginners to practice along with. All the scales are in one octave, but you can practice each piano scale in as many octaves and in any tempo you like.

The scales are organized in order of difficulty following the circle of fifths, but I also teamed the major scales with the parallel harmonic minor scales so that you can see the small changes they actually have.

Many times you can even use the same fingering. This also makes the scales easier to memorize.

Make sure to read the comments in the score to help you more.

Please note that no key signature is used in these beginner piano scales pdf. This makes it easier to quickly learn the scale pattern and fingering without worrying about the key signature.