Reddit mentions of John Thompson's Modern Course for the Piano - First Grade (Book/Audio): First Grade - Book/Audio

Hey there and Welcome. It sounds like you are well on your way and you have the drive and determination to succeed.

> practicing all the major scales daily. (I may be fingering them wrong..)

This book has all the standard fingerings for scales, arpeggios etc. Try to learn the correct fingerings from the outset so you don't have to unlearn and relearn later on.

> Is this the fastest way to piano fluency?

It will definitely help if you are playing a lot of Classical period classical music (e.g. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven), since a lot of Classical music is scale and arpeggio fragments bolted together.

However, IMHO, the best way to achieve fluency is to build up a repertoire of pieces, starting extremely simple and gradually increasing in difficulty - this way you are building up a "vocabulary" of stock phrases that will reoccur again and again in more advanced pieces you encounter later on. There are many graded piano instruction and repertoire books available, such as this one. These will also help to build your fluency at reading music, something you will have to address at some point if you want to play primarily classical music.

I don't know if this might not be a bit controversial, but if you are starting from scratch I'm wondering whether it might not be a useful practice to get into of playing a piece until you have it memorized, then play it blindfold. Being able to orient yourself on the keyboard without looking is a skill that will become more and more important as you progress in proficiency, and as you go on you will encounter more and more pieces where you will have to jump in two directions simultaneously so you can't look at both hands. If you are able to get a muscle memory sense of distances on the keyboard, it will stand you in great stead in your future playing.

Best wishes for your piano journey.

I'm not sure if a better series of books has been released since I started learning, but look at John Thompson's Modern Piano. Very good descriptions and progression of finger techniques. And later on, you can add on finger exercises from Hanon as well as Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier