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The A Major Scale
The A major scale has three sharps, F-sharp, C-sharp, and G-sharp, and a balanced layout that sits comfortably under the hand. It shares its fingering with C, G, and D major. With three black keys, the hand has more landmarks than in the white-key scales, and it tends to feel more settled as a result.
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A Major Scale Overview
| A Major Scale Overview | |
|---|---|
| Keyboard Layout |  |
| Staff Layout |  |
| Key Signature | Three sharps (F♯, C♯, G♯) |
| Notes of Scale | A, B, C♯, D, E, F♯, G♯, A |
| RH Fingering | 1 2 3 - 1 2 3 4 - 5 |
| LH Fingering | 5 - 4 3 2 1 - 3 2 1 |
| Relative Scale | F-sharp Minor Scale |
| Parallel Scale | A Minor Scale |
Visualize the A major scale layout on the piano
The A major scale has a balanced shape that alternates between white and black keys. The lower half is anchored by white keys around a single black key, C-sharp; the upper half has a small plateau of two black keys, F-sharp and G-sharp.
Read the A major scale on the staff
Here is the A major scale for both hands together, one octave up and back down.
Play the A major scale with hands alone
Let’s start with each hand on its own. Every scale divides into two core positions, the groups of notes the hand can hold in one position: a group of three notes played with fingers 1-2-3 (red on the charts) and a group of four played with 1-2-3-4 (blue).
The fingering is the same as C, G, and D major. In the right hand, A, B, and C-sharp form the three-note group and D, E, F-sharp, and G-sharp the four-note group, with the top A on the fifth finger (green). In the left hand, the bottom A takes the fifth finger, B, C-sharp, D, and E form the four-note group, and F-sharp, G-sharp, and A the three.
A useful way to work with the core positions is in three stages:
- Block: play all the notes of each core position together, moving up and down the keyboard. This lets us see each position as one shape and get used to the pattern repeating.
- Crawl: play one note at a time, but hold each note down until the whole position is under the hand, then pause before moving on. This builds the physical sense of each grouping.
- Anticipate: play legato, releasing each finger as the next one plays, while keeping the next position in mind before we arrive at it.
Play the A major scale with hands together
Once each hand feels reliable on its own, we can put them together. The difficulty here is that the two hands’ core positions don’t line up, so following them in both hands at once tends to create more confusion than clarity. Instead, let’s look for sync points: moments where both hands use the same finger on the same note, or where the fingers form a mirror image.
The 3rd fingers meet on C-sharp and on F-sharp.
The thumbs come together on D and E, where fingers 1 and 2 form a mirror image, the “crab claw”.
The same three stages work for sync points:
- Block: find each sync point and play it on its own, outside the scale.
- Crawl: play the scale up and down, stopping on each sync point to look at it and notice how it feels under the hands. There’s no need for legato here.
- Anticipate: play in a steady rhythm, seeing each sync point coming and landing on it with a slight accent.
Expand the A major scale to more octaves
Once one octave feels consistent, we can extend the scale further up the keyboard. In the right hand, instead of finishing on the fifth finger, the thumb passes under to A again and the core positions repeat until the top. In the left hand, the core positions simply continue upward; on the way down, the thumb takes the place of the fifth finger on each A until the very bottom, where the fifth finger finishes the scale.
Avoid common mistakes in the A major scale
With three black keys, the difficulty is usually getting to them in time, rather than finding them at all. What tends to happen is that the hand changes position and then scrambles up to the black keys at the last moment. Sitting a little further into the keys means the fingers are already resting on the black keys as soon as the position changes.
Coming down in the left hand, the fourth finger tends to land on E out of habit. Tucking the thumb under a little earlier, to start the core position on E, keeps the pattern intact.
Other techniques related to the A major piano scale:
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