Improve your scales! Piano Grade 1: Piano Book

This workbook cuts through the tedium of scale practice by anchoring technique to real musical purpose. Harris structures the material around the actual requirements of four major exam boards simultaneously, so students aren't practicing scales in a vacuum but building the specific patterns and ranges they'll need to perform under pressure.

Structured yet musical. The workbook avoids the sterile feel of pure technical drilling by embedding scales within studies and pieces that actually sound like music rather than mechanical exercises.

Grade 1 piano students preparing for ABRSM, Trinity, LCM, or MTB exams will find everything required in one place. Teachers also benefit from having a coordinated resource that aligns with multiple syllabuses without juggling separate books.

• Start with finger fitness exercises before moving to the scales themselves; these warm-up passages prepare the hand for the larger patterns ahead.
• Work through the key pieces and improvisations after mastering each scale group; they reinforce what the scale work develops without feeling like repetition.
• Use the broken chord studies to develop independence between hands rather than treating them as supplementary material.

Assign this systematically as part of your regular lesson sequence during the year leading up to exams, working through one key area per week. The varied activities mean students stay engaged across multiple weeks of preparation without fatigue.

• All ABRSM, Trinity, LCM, and MTB Grade 1 scales and arpeggios across required keys and octaves
• Broken chord techniques in multiple inversions
• Hand position and finger independence at the elementary level
• Sight-reading within scale-based patterns
• Basic improvisation using scale material