Now, let’s see the notes of the scale! If you recall on the notated scale above, the pitches are separated into whole steps and half steps. Pianists orient themselves using the key in the middle, known as Middle C, so the A flat I will be using is the A flat directly to the left of this key. It will, however, be easier to start as close to the middle as possible. To play a lower sounding A flat, find a group of three towards the left of the piano and to play a higher A flat, head towards the right side of the piano. This is true of every group of three black keys on the piano. The A flat is the black key in the middle. To find an A flat, first locate a group of three. In the picture below, I’ve circled the groups of two in blue and the groups of three in red. If you are playing on a piano, you’ll notice that, excluding the one farthest to the left, the black keys are grouped in twos and threes.

As we learned earlier, a scale starts on its root, so we will need to locate an A flat. Now that we’ve gone over the notes that make up the A flat major scale, we will learn how to play it on the keyboard. You May Also Enjoy: Key Signatures Chart.You’ll note that the flats are notated with what looks like a lowercase “b.” That is called a flat sign and even though, musically, the sign is always located in front (to the left of) the note, it will be spoken the opposite way, as in “ A flat” or “ B flat.” Now here’s what the A flat major scale looks like written for the treble and bass clef (right and left hand): It will still sound like the “do, re, mi” pattern that you may have learned as a child.

Take heart though, all of those flats won’t change the way a major scale sounds. As stated before, the key of A flat contains four notes ( B, E, A, and D) that are “flat”, or lowered by one semi-tone. The root of a scale gives the scale its name, so the root of the A flat major scale is A flat. In music, a “major” key is a key with a major third distance between the first note – the “ root” note – and the third, creating music that carries a “happy” sound to our ears. There’s quite a bit more vocabulary to unpack, so we will do so now. An A flat major scale is one such scale set in the tonality of A flat major, a major key containing four flats. Now a musical “scale” is a graduated sequence of notes dividing an “octave”, or set of eight notes. A Flat Major Scale – Left Hand Fingeringīefore we can dive into how you can play A flat major scale, it’s best we first quickly cover the concept behind scales and why they’re important.A Flat Major Scale – Right Hand Fingering.

D flat major scale with whole and half