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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 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
This pattern of whole and half steps creates the specific sound of major!
The 12 minor scales, however, come in 3 variations:
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.
A simple rule when playing scales is not to use your 1st finger on a black key (since it is too short).
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.
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.
TIP: Practice the piano music scales in the exact order they are written; this helps you to get used to the fingering patterns!