Keep doing this until you can reach your desired tempo. This is how you learn how to play scales super-fast. By the way - if you're a beginner working through a beginner book, you will also want to supplement your exercises and pieces with scales on a regular basis, as these books often don't emphasise the importance of good scale-playing.
I truly believe scales are much more beneficial to your technique than anything else. Learn to play your scales! You should also be practicing your arpeggios and broken chords , as well as your sight reading. The easiest way to do this is to buy a book of songs. Open the book, and just play through it. The key things are rhythm and continuity. Do not stop playing, even if you get lost; make something up.
Think about it. The singer will never want to work with you again. Czerny is a good place to start, as well as some of the Bach inventions and sinfonias. Over time you can move onto Chopin studies and Bach Preludes and Fugues. Experiment with the music you like; just remember to keep practicing those scales! Great advice. I am a beginner with 15 months experience and I practice scales every day but will add a metronome as I struggle with rhythm particularly when playing pieces. I will also site read every day from now on.
I have been playing for a year and a half. Now, on my second scale book. Slogging through it. Learning all 12 scales, in multiple octaves is brutal!
Then minor scales. Got any motivational ideas? Learn each Major scale along with its relative minor scale. Work on them in pairs! Same key signature, same notes, they just start and stop on a different note. So for C Major, the relative minor is A minor. Also, practice both the Natural minor scale and then the harmonic minor scale. For harmonic minor you just raise the 7th scale degree. In the case of A minor, this would be a G. Work on one set C Major and both natural and harmonic forms of A minor for a week or two then move on to G Major and its relative minor of E.
It is handy to have a printed copy of the circle of 5ths with the relative minors printed on it as well. For my students, once we get to E, I go back to the top and then go counter clockwise to F, then to Bb, then to Eb, then Ab. I finish up with Db, F , and B last.
Also, always play the scale to whatever piece you are playing before you practice that piece. Thank you for your article. It is always helpful to go back to basics and the scales are the tips of the roots. Keep advising. The requirements of an exam syllabus perhaps represent the biggest barrier to effective, purposeful scales learning. Too often over the last 25 years I have taken on transfer students who have previously only been taught a limited selection of scales in the run-up to the graded exam.
Between one grade and the next, they had forgotten most of the scales previously learnt, their teachers complicit in allowing this to happen. Reaching towards Grade 5, at which point the scales in every major and minor key are required, they found that they faced the seemingly insurmountable challenge of re-learning all the scales previously mastered, but now forgotten. This sad situation is perhaps exacerbated by the mistaken view that scales are dull, but as we shall see, they need not be so if taught creatively.
Again, it is mistaken to suggest that there are dozens of scales to be learnt when preparing for Grade 5. But a perfectly reasonable assumption is made that Grade 5 candidates have properly learnt the easier scales from earlier grades; where this proves not to be the case, there can be a rude awakening!
There are of course additional requirements appropriate to the Grade — in this case, the range stretches to three octaves, and at a slightly more fluent tempo. There are a handful of contrary motion scales added, too. But this rise in demand is merely the natural and logical extension of facility that can be expected of a student who has been deeply and cumulatively learning these scales over the previous years.
In short, deeper learning involves fully engaging with, living with, internalising and memorising scales. It involves making connections between scales and other aspects of musical learning — crucially, deeper learning must engage all three treasures of musical learning : musical essence, technique and understanding. These are a few small ideas, and the creative teacher will be able to add innumerable teaching and learning strategies to the list. Taken together, the ideas in this article all point to a wonderful outcome: scales learning can become connected to, and tremendously strengthen, all the other aspects of musical learning.
Above all they are the ingredients for the most special moments of beauty, passion and lyricism in some of the greatest music ever written.
Part Two of my article: Learning to Play with Precision. Bechstein piano: Frances Wilson. Photograph James Eppy, used with permission and thanks. Andrew Eales is a widely respected piano educator, published author and composer based in Milton Keynes UK, where he runs a successful private teaching studio. View all posts by Andrew Eales. Otherwise, practice time is all taken up with scales and pieces and never any exercises, aural, or sight reading.
Like Like. Thanks Tom — some interesting points there! Scales — and a sense of key — can be the glue that holds it all together. Like Liked by 1 person. I agree that scales are the times-tables of piano instrumental playing.
Thank you. Just the sort of information I needed as I try to get into the routine of consistent piano practice. You are commenting using your WordPress.
Scales can help here too. Put simply, scales are just sets of patterns. Knowing them will give your sight-reading a boost because a lot of music is based around fragments of the same patterns. Key signatures, chords, modulations and more difficult aspects of music theory are all much easier if you have a solid knowledge of your scales.
Mastering all these different modes gives you a wide choice of palettes from which to improvise Scales may not sound like much, but when you hear a real master play a simple exercise like a scale it highlights the level of perfection that every musician could strive for in their playing.
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