Look up a scale in context
Each guide combines an interactive keyboard, playable audio, two-hand fingering, staff notation, an interval formula, and diatonic chords where applicable.
Piano Scales Reference
Nineteen essential piano scales with notes, fingering, staff notation, and playable audio. Free, no signup — pick a scale and listen.
Major Scales
The brightest, most familiar tonality — start here if you are new to scales.
Minor Scales
Natural and harmonic minor — the sound of sadness, drama, and most Western minor-key music.
Church Modes
Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, and Locrian — different starting points of the major scale, each with its own distinct color.
Pentatonic & Blues
Five-note scales plus the blues scale — essential for improvisation in rock, jazz, pop, and blues.
Understand piano scales, then put them to work
A scale is an ordered sequence of notes that defines the tonal vocabulary of a piece of music. On piano, every scale is a pattern of whole and half steps — the same shape can be transposed to a new starting note. Learning scales gives your fingers repeatable patterns and your ear a framework for melody, harmony, and improvisation.
Move from reference to recognition
Once a scale looks and feels familiar, use the scale identification exercise to recognize major, minor, modes, pentatonic, blues, and other scale colors by ear.