Hey there everyone! My name is Evaldas, and I’m from Lithuania, I’m about to get my piano and start learning. I’m so sorry if a similar thread exists, but I just couldn’t look through all the posts as there are so many. My question is about scales and fingerings. I know two people who play piano, one of them has played piano for I don’t know almost 40 years, and the other is my cousin who finished music school. I bet you start thinking “why don’t you ask the guy who played for 40 years to teach you?” trust me I would, but he lives on a different continent. And my cousin is too busy so I have to stick with a book for a while, later if I’m good I will get a professional teacher. So back to scales and fingerings, back to the book (by the way it’s called “Piano for Dummies” ), back to why those two people tell me totally different things. Ok so last weekend I was talking to my friend (the one who played piano for 40 years… ) and started bragging that I’m about to start learning, so I asked him some tips, and he said that the most important is fingering based on scales and I was like “shouldn’t you play how it’s more comfortable for you?” and he said that it’s important to stick to standard fingerings, as it’s very hard to unlearn later. Well I thought “ok, I should find all the scales with the fingerings”, but I had no luck, because I found all these odd scales ‘harmonic, melodic bla bla bla”, which I didn’t need, I just wanted simple major and minor scales. Anyways, so later I talked to my cousin about this all, and she said “forget those scales, you should play how it’s more comfortable for you”, so now I’m so confused, do I need to worry about those scales, or should I play how I think it’s more comfortable for me? And like let’s say I must stick to the scale fingerings, so for example if a song is in key of F major, and RH fingering for F major is 12341234, right? So does it mean that I only use the four fingers for a song in F major? I’m so confused! By the way neither “Piano for Dummies” nor “Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano Course” doesn’t talk much about this, just few scales are given. Help me!

it's best to learn the scales first.. especially beginners..
only people who already know the scales can modify and improvise and play the way they want...
afterall, u got to learn the rules first before u break them.
fingering is a guide of how to play the piece and it's best to follow it first before you do anything else.

doing a scale isn't hard. What you should do is 1-2-3 put thumb under 3rd finger(1)-2-3-4-5. If you want to go to the next octave, instead of 5 put your thumb under 4th finger and start over. Start on C major, and play no sharps/flats. Then move to D major, C sharp F sharp, and continue with each figuring out how it should sound along the way. B and E major start on flats. I never paid much attention to minor keys, sorry.

Everyone is right, including the teacher! There are also books out there for scale work.
Plus, almost all the scales have different fingerings because there are many sharps or flats. So depending on the scale there maybe confusing fingerings to you.