Playing Scales Fluently

Can you play (almost) all scales with just one fingering pattern?

Playing scales is an essential subject for the technical training of every pianist in all musical styles. That is why there are already numerous books and methods on this subject. The aim should be to achieve fluency across the entire keyboard, to become familiar with dynamic gradations and different tempi and to develop an understanding of tonality.

This method by pianist and music teacher Pooyan Azadeh helps learners of all ages to find an easy approach to playing scales with its systematic approach. The new approach makes it easier to get to know the key pattern with the characteristic arrangement of the black and white keys. Particular attention is paid to the use of the thumb. The newly introduced simultaneous tapping of this "problem finger" gives the player better control over it and can quickly correct mistakes in the sequence. This encourages the player to try out all the scales. It has been found that the new method is particularly suitable for playing contemporary music, as it does not necessarily start from the root note.

The booklet contains an overview of the 24 keys, 12 major and 12 (harmonic) minor.

The natural minor scales are not illustrated, as they can be played with the major fingering using this method.

Pooyan Azadeh was born in Iran in 1979. He has been playing the piano since childhood, has been conducting choirs since the age of twelve and can already look back on ten years of experience as a university teacher. He studied classical European and classical Persian music at Tehran University of the Arts. From 2007 to 2013, thanks to a DAAD scholarship, he continued his education in Germany at the Music Institute of the Martin Luther University in Halle (Saale), specializing in music education (piano). In 2014, he completed his doctorate there with distinction on Persian piano music.

Azadeh was the first full professor of piano at Tehran University of Arts and founded a private piano school (Pooyan Piano Institute, Tehran) in 2015 and the first music and art university in eastern Iran (Pooyan Art University, Semnan) in 2018.

Pooyan Azadeh is the founder and director of the "Intercultural Piano Pedagogy Project", an international piano project at the Bayreuth Festival of Young Artists, which he launched in 2010.

Pooyan Azadeh has received numerous prizes and honors as a pianist. At the Rast International Music Awards in the United Kingdom, he was awarded the "First Prize" in the category "Western Classical Music - Piano". He conducts several workshops worldwide and has performed as a soloist with the Iranian National Orchestra, the Tehran Philharmonic Orchestra and the German Symphony Orchestra Halle.