The Way to become an Pianist Part 3: Getting to know Your Scales

               In the book of How to play Popular Piano in 10 easy lessons, by Norman Monath, so far I had gone over chords and melodies in the past blogs. Now I'm introducing scales, the scale is simply an ascending or descending sequence of notes that progresses according to a particular formula... The formula would be every note is a whole-note apart(Whole-Tone scale) or half-tone apart (Chromatic scale) (Monath 56).  As you could see below, are the images show what different kind of formula there are.

Furthermore, scale has 2 type, a major and a minor, but to start off, the author suggest to play the major scales at first. The author also noted a tip or a formula, "The formula for major scale is based on these intervals: 1, 1, 1/2, 1, 1, 1, 1/2. No matter which key of the piano you start on, if you use that formula the result will be a major scale" (Monath 57).  The 1 are whole step note, (White to White key that have black key in between them) and 1/2 (White next to another white key). After realized and applied the formula to my practices and using my knowledge as a violinist, the major scales aren't so bad, since I already know the placement of notes on the keyboard. The practice made me a better musician overall, by training my ear to get in-tunes of notes, so if I need to hit the notes on my violin, I can hit the correct note. Not only that, its help me learning the new formula and how it works and creates a simpler way to play the keyboard with scales.

              Do you all find playing basic major scales in general on musical instrument easy? If not, what is the obstacles? For me as violinist, starting on C Major is pretty simple, but as it start going up to like three or more sharps, it's get more difficult on the violin, however not so much on piano!