Play Your Scales & Chords Every Day, Book 2: Piano Book

This book cuts through the monotony of scale practice by organizing material logically and teaching students to understand what their hands are doing. The step-by-step photos alone justify keeping this on your studio shelf, since they eliminate the guesswork that often derails young pianists before they develop good habits.

Focused and purposeful. Unlike scale books that feel like punishment, this one invites curiosity about fingering logic and hand mechanics. Students often discover that scales become easier when they stop fighting them.

Piano students in their second year or beyond who need a structured, intelligent approach to scale and arpeggio mastery. Teachers who want students to understand the architecture of what they're practicing, not just mindlessly repeat patterns.

• Reference the fingering charts before playing each scale, then set them aside. Students who glance at fingering mid-scale develop choppy technique; committing the pattern first builds fluency.
• Play scales slowly enough that you hear each note distinctly. The book's practice suggestions guide tempo; ignoring them in favor of speed defeats the purpose.
• Use the arpeggios to reinforce hand position and wrist rotation. These aren't supplemental; they're where many technical problems reveal themselves.

Assign a single scale or arpeggio per week as part of a student's regular practice routine, pairing it with repertoire in the same key. The Circle of Fifths ordering lets students see relationships between pieces they're learning, deepening their harmonic understanding.

• Major scale fingering patterns across all twelve keys
• Arpeggio technique and hand rotation
• Reading and understanding the Circle of Fifths
• Consistent hand position and posture
• Connecting scale patterns to musical repertoire in various keys