Learn your scales! Scale study helps you develop piano technique. This book covers the most essential and widely used scales in jazz, funk, R&B/soul, bossa nova, rock, and pop music. It explores the theoretical aspects of choosing scales and modes for composing melodies and improvising, as well as the relationships between scales and chords. Each chapter includes scale theory, fingerings for practicing each scale type in twelve keys, and etudes where that scale type is applied in a musical setting.

You’ll learn how to: identify, construct, practice, and use the most important scale types used in contemporary music, in all twelve keys, and understand how they relate to each other; use effective practice strategies to implement fingering techniques that lead to facility; understand the relationship between each scale and its related chords–which will help particularly in lead sheet interpretation; use these scales as melodic material in improvisation; hear and identify these scales as they are used in contemporary hit songs and jazz standards.