Hi Woody,

In my experience, the thumb almost never plays a black note. It's just not comfortably designed to do so.

One situation where the thumb works on black keys is in playing the C# pentatonic scale which consists of only the black note (C# D# F# G# A #). In other scales, the thumb will usually play the first white note that follows a group of black notes. For example, the scale of C# major would be C# (finger 2), D# (finger 3), E# (thumb), F# (finger 2), etc.

The below site gives the scales as I pretty much remember them.

http://www.pianomother.com/Major_Scale.html

Regards,
Noel

MY SONGS...
Audiophile BIAB 2025