The Art of the Scale
Learn to play scales the way concert pianists do: relaxed, fluid, and musical, so every run sounds like part of the song instead of a technical exercise bolted on.
Scales Suck. Music Doesn’t.
You know the drill: hands separate, hands together, one octave, two octaves. Boring, mindless, soulless scale practice. What’s even the point?
Classical pianist Daniel Anastasio used to feel exactly the same way, until he started noticing scales everywhere. Mozart using the scale as a beautiful path across the keyboard. Chopin’s runs that mimic the range and agility of an Italian opera singer. The powerful flourish that launches an entire Beethoven concerto.
This course rebuilds the way you approach scales from head to toe: posture, hand positioning, and that clumsy thumb alike. So when you meet a scale in real repertoire, you have the freedom and the technique to do whatever you want with it.
The demonstrations pull from classical repertoire (Mozart, Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven, Burgmüller), but the techniques transfer directly to any context, jazz included.
Meet Your Instructor
Trained at Cornell, Juilliard, and Stony Brook under master pedagogues Xak Bjerken, Jerome Lowenthal, Christina Dahl, and Gilbert Kalish, Daniel Anastasio brings rare academic depth to his teaching. As Assistant Professor and Director of Keyboard Studies at San Antonio College for seven years, he developed a reputation for making complex musical ideas accessible, a skill he continues to apply through pre-concert lectures and guided listening experiences. His performing career spans solo and chamber work, interdisciplinary collaborations, and a versatile range from Baroque harpsichord to contemporary multimedia premieres.
