Week 5

One of the reasons it's so essential to know all of your piano scales is so you can play the piano with the most natural and effective fingering. When reading piano music our fingers need to know where to go.

Since so much of music is based on scales, knowing all of our scales without ever having to think about their proper fingering is an enormous head start.

In general, play any scalar passages with the same fingering that you use when playing those scales alone.

As for scales, it's essential to learn the standard fingerings for arpeggios, also referred to as broken chords. Chords in root position aren't enough—we also need to know all chord inversions.

Chord inversions are "spellings" of a chord with a note other than the fundamental in the bass. Let's take a simple example:
The C major triad consists of the notes C, E and G, in that order:

As long as the C is on the bottom, the chord is in root position. Both the above spelling (C E G) and this one (C G E):

... are in root position. If we put the E on the bottom, the chord is in first inversion:

E-G-C and E-C-G are both the first inversion of the C major triad, because the E is on the bottom:

If the third note of the chord, in this case G, is on the bottom, the chord is in second inversion:

The chords can be in closed position:

 or open position: