Improve Your Scales! Piano, Grade 4: Piano Book

Harris designed this workbook specifically to crack exam syllabuses. Rather than treating scales as isolated technical drills, he weaves them into finger fitness exercises, performance pieces, and sight-reading contexts, so students develop fluency and musicality simultaneously. The 2020 revision keeps pace with current ABRSM, Trinity, LCM, and MTB requirements, removing guesswork from exam preparation.

Purposeful and rewarding. Rather than endless repetition, you're solving puzzles: how does this scale sound in a piece I recognize? How do my fingers move most efficiently? Can I improvise with these notes? The structured progression builds genuine confidence, not false security.

Grade 4 piano students preparing for ABRSM, Trinity, LCM, or MTB exams. This book serves both self-directed learners and students working with teachers who need a comprehensive, syllabus-aligned technical foundation.

• Rotate through the finger fitness exercises before tackling scales. They target the specific hand shapes and movements you'll need, warming up muscles rather than just playing notes.
• Use the sight-reading passages to test scale knowledge in real musical contexts. This prevents the disconnection between 'playing scales' and 'playing music.'
• Approach the improvisations after you've secured the scale patterns. They're most useful once your fingers know the keys, freeing your ear to explore.
• Reference the key pieces throughout the year, not just before exams. They anchor each scale to melodic material your student already recognizes.

Assign this as the core technical resource for all Grade 4 candidates in your studio or school. Distribute the finger fitness exercises earlier in the year to build foundational strength, then shift focus to the key pieces and sight-reading sections in the term leading up to exams. Teachers can also pull individual sections for group lessons, since the exercises and pieces work well in ensemble contexts.

• Playing all major and minor scales fluently across required ranges
• Executing broken chord patterns and arpeggios with consistent tone
• Developing efficient finger movement and hand position under technical demand
• Reading scales and arpeggios in context through sight-reading examples
• Creating improvisations based on scale material
• Building confidence in exam-required technical work