scales

Back to basics - the Key to Music

Having started my series of blogs about the theory of music with time signatures, the next logical step is to look at key signatures and the way composers use them. I know many amateur musicians have no formal training in music theory, so we’ll begin with the absolute basics. You’re welcome to skip ahead through sections you already know, or use them as a refresher.

The geography of key signatures

Let’s begin with the layout of key signatures. In most recorder music we rarely venture beyond three sharps or flats but it does no harm to check out the entire range of keys, especially as they are all interconnected. For starters, the key signature always appears directly after the clef and before the time signature. This pattern of clef then key signature is repeated on every line as a handy reminder.

Key signatures contain either sharps or flats - never a mixture of the two - and they always appear in the same order and layout. For sharps this order is F C G D A E B and for flats it’s B E A D G C F. Knowing this means you never need to think about exactly which sharps or flats are in your key signature. For instance, if there are three sharps they will always be F, C and G - no exceptions.

Perhaps the easiest way to learn this it to remember the following phrase, in which the first letter of each word gives you the order of the sharps:

Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle

To remember the order of the flats, all you need to do is reverse the phrase;

Battles Ends And Down Goes Charles’ Father

Now let’s take a look at the layout of the sharp and flat key signatures in the two clefs we use most when playing the recorder. The sharps and flats are kept close together on the stave and apply to every instance of a note - not just the ones which appear on the same line or space.

Now you know the order of the sharps and flats we need to look at the keys themselves.

Major and minor

As you’re probably aware, every key signature is connected to a major key and a minor key. For instance, a key signature of one sharp could be G major, but it could also be E minor. The latter is often known as the relative minor of G major because it is related by having the same key signature.

We’ll look at the difference between major and minor keys in a moment, but first let’s familiarise ourselves with the pattern of these keys.

You may have heard other musicians talk about a cycle or circle of 5ths without really understanding what this means. This term is often used because each new key signature is five steps away from its neighbours. For instance, if you count up five notes from C (always include the note you’re counting from the note you’re counting to in the five: C-D-E-F-G) you reach the note G. This is the distance between each of the keys when you either add another sharp or reduce the key signature by one flat.

This is most clearly illustrated by looking at it in a circle. The major keys are shown on the outside of the circle and the minor ones inside. By working around from the top of the circle in a clockwise direction, a 5th at a time, you progress from one key signature to another, ultimately returning back to C major. It’s with noting that there’s some duplication at the bottom of the circle, where we reach the really extreme keys. For instance, D flat and C sharp sound the same, but you can have a key signature for either note - one has five flats, the other has seven sharps.

As recorder players, we’re unlikely to be worried by G flat major too often, but it’s useful to be aware of the existence of these extreme keys and to understand how they relate to each other. I would still recommend you practise scales in some of the more extreme keys to gain a fluency with the less commonly found sharps and flats. That way, when you encounter a stray D flat somewhere you won’t be thrown by it and have to stop and think about where to find it. Earlier this year I wrote a blog post about using scales and arpeggios in your practice - if you haven’t already read it, you can find it here.

Identifying your keys

It’s all very well knowing you’ve got four sharps to play in your music, but next you need to know the name of that key. Again, there’s a quick and easy way to work this out without having to memorise every single one. Let’s look at the major keys first:

For sharp major keys, the name of the key is a semitone above the last sharp of the key signature. So if you have four sharps, the last one is D sharp and therefore you’re in E major.  Likewise, if the last sharp in your key signature is E sharp, the key is F sharp major.

For flat major keys, it’s even simpler - the name of the key is the penultimate flat of the key signature. Therefore, if you have two flats (B and E) you are in B flat major and if there are five flats (BEADG) you’re in D flat major. Admittedly this solution doesn’t work for F major, which only had one flat, but it’s one of the most common keys in recorder music so I dare say you’ll probably remember that one!

OK, that’s the major keys dealt with, but how to identify your minor keys? If your piece is in a minor key, there are will almost certainly be extra accidentals (usually sharps or naturals) dotted around in the music. We’ll look at the reason for these later. These should immediately alert you to the fact that the music is in a minor key, and you’ll probably be able to hear the different character of the music too. To figure out which key it is, use the rules I mentioned above to identify which major key is associated with that key signature. From there it’s an easy enough step to work out the related minor key, which is three semitones lower. So if the major key is G major, those three semitones are G to F sharp, F sharp to F natural and F natural to E. Your related minor key is E minor.

So you can see these rules in action, here are all the key signatures together:

Quick refresher - tones and semitones

Before we go on to look at major and minor keys in more detail it’s worth having a quick recap on tones and semitones. In western music the semitone is the smallest distance between two neighbouring notes - the equivalent of moving between neighbouring black and white keys on the piano. From a non-keyboard player’s perspective, a semitone is the distance between a natural note and its flat or sharp neighbour - e.g. D to D sharp.

A tone is a step wider - two semitones - as you can see from the keyboard illustration below. Semitones are shown in red, while tones are shown in blue.

These two intervals are the building blocks for all major and minor scales, creating the sounds we hear in major and minor keys. It’s important to understand the distinction between these if we’re going to understand the difference between the different types of scales.

Shades of major and minor

We often talk about music being in major or minor keys but have you thought about the difference between the two? We’ll get into the technical differences in a moment, but the most important distinction is the way they make the music feel. One of the ear tests often given in music grade exams is making the distinction between major and minor when listening to music, and teachers often ask students to decide if the music makes them feel happy (major) or sad (minor). This is, of course, a huge oversimplification - there are plenty of sonorous, serious pieces of music in major keys, or lively dances in minor keys. Perhaps a better distinction might be to think of music in a minor key as having a ‘darker’ sonority and major as being ‘brighter’. Let’s have a listen to some examples:

One of the most joyful and energetic examples of recorder music in a major key is Vivaldi’s Concerto, RV443, played here on the descant recorder by Lucie Horsch.

In contrast, the Welsh traditional lullaby Suo Gan is very poignant and thoughtful, but is still unmistakably in a major key.

And now two examples of music in a minor key. The first movement of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto is in D minor but is still full of life and energy, yet it definitely has a darker feel.

Perhaps one of the archetypal pieces of minor key music is Elgar’s melancholic Cello Concerto, composed soon after the end of World War I. The opening is heart wrenchingly sad, but even here there are moments of vivacity in the scherzo.

What’s the difference?

While we respond differently to music in major and minor tonalities, it’s also useful to understand the technical distinction. The key difference is the distance between the first and third notes of the scales, although as we will see there are other distinctions too. In a major scale, the distance between notes 1 and 3 is a major third. By contrast, in a minor scale the interval (distance) between these same notes is a minor third.

A minor third is made up of three semitones, while a major third is a semitone wider. Why not play the two examples below and hear the difference for yourself?

Of course there are other differences too, so let’s take a moment to look at the make up of major and minor scales.

Major scales

Major scales come in just one variety and the notes are the same whether the scale is ascending or descending. As you can see from the red boxes in the example below, each major scale contains two intervals of a semitone - between notes 3 and 4, and again between notes 7 and 8.

Minor scales

The minor scale has three different sub-species, as you can see below. The natural minor includes just the notes contained within the key signature. A natural minor scale is fundamentally the Aeolian Mode, but modes are a rabbit hole I’ll save for a future occasion or you might still be reading at midnight!

Like the major scale, the natural minor contains two semitones, but this time they occur between notes 2 and 3 and again between notes 5 and 6.

The Harmonic Minor scale tends to be the one most people learn first, although it’s used less than the other two in western classical music. When children begin preparing for grade exams they have to learn scales and arpeggios from memory and I think many teachers start with harmonic minors simply because they’re easier to memorise. This is practical solution, even if melodic minors are arguably more practical use in the music we tend to play every day.

As you can see in the example below, in a harmonic minor scale note 7 is raised by a semitone - in this case the F becomes an F sharp. This creates a semitone between note 7 and the key note, which creates a clear sense of pulling one’s ear towards the scale’s final destination.

The addition of this accidental also creates another interesting interval, marked here with blue circles - is an augmented second. This stretched shape in the musical line creates a more exotic feel - much like the melodic shapes you’d hear in the tune from a snake charmer’s flute.

If you want to hear the harmonic minor scale in use, Gustav Holst’s Beni Mora contains oodles of them from the outset. It was inspired by the music he heard on a visit to Algeria and instantaneously feels exotic to western ears, despite its orchestral soundworld.

Finally, we have the Melodic minor scale which is the variety we meet most often in the music we play. As you can see in the example below, both the 6th and 7th notes are raised by a semitone on the way upwards, and lowered back to their native pitch as the scale descends again. This means the semitones occur in different places on ascent and descent, but the effect is a very easy ‘melodic’ sound.

The Overture to Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni is a beautiful example of minor scales in action, definitely rooted in the dark, melancholic toneworld of the minor key. In this recording, 33 seconds in we hear small sections of melodic minor scales (listen out for those exotic augmented seconds) and and 1 minute and 12 seconds there are chains of melodic minor scales, rising and falling in the flutes.

A Baroque quirk

Having talked about minor key signatures and the way minor scales are constructed I should perhaps mention one small glitch in the system. This occurs specifically in minor keys with flats in the key signature and mostly in Baroque music. As we’ve seen already, in a melodic minor scale (the type which occurs most frequently in Baroque music) about 50% of the time the 6th note of the scale is raised by a semitone. Therefore from the perspective of someone writing out music, or engraving plates for printing, there will be lots of occasions when you have to insert an accidental. Because of this it’s not unusual to find music from this period where the final flat of the key signature (looking at it from our 21st century perspective) is omitted.

For example, this extract from Barsanti’s G minor recorder sonata has only one flat in the key signature. Had the E flat been included, the engraver would have then needed to add flat accidentals for all the notes circled in red. Of course, the other side of the coin is that he or she then needed to add E flats in for all the notes circled in blue! One could argue for or against this Baroque practice, but it’s important to know about its existence when trying to understand the key your music is written in.

The false relation

No, this isn’t one of those family friends you always called ‘uncle’ when you were a child, even though he was really nothing of the sort! Instead it’s the name for a harmonic curiosity that crops up in early music; in particular repertoire from 16th and early 17th century England. You’ll often find it in music by Tallis and Byrd but Henry Purcell had a penchant for this piquant effect too.

You remember I talked earlier about the way a melodic minor scale has raised 6th and 7th notes as it ascends, returning them to their original pitch again as the music descends? Well, occasionally composers created melodic lines which did both at the same time. Sometimes you’ll get a direct clash as the raised 7th and lowered 7th occur simultaneously, creating one of those ‘double take’ moments as you try to figure out if someone played a wrong note. On other occasions it’ll just be a ‘near miss’ and the effect isn’t quite so astringent. There’s nothing to be done here, except to check the score to reassure yourselves that all is well and then simply enjoy the exotic clash in the music!

As you can see in this short extract from Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus, a G sharp and G natural come into direct contact, albeit fleetingly, in bar 37. The music is in A minor, so the tenor line has the raised 7th note of the melodic minor scale (leading upwards to A), while the bass has the G natural which is descending. The fact that the two happen simultaneously creates a beautiful, piquant discord.

Endlessly evolving keys

While I’ve talked here about the relationship between key signatures and scales, in reality it’s unusual for a piece of music to remain in one key throughout. The process of moving between different keys is modulation. In order to explain this fully a knowledge of harmony and cadences is ideally required, but again that’s a large topic for another day.

From a player’s perspective the important thing is to look out for accidentals in your music. Yes, there are certain accidentals you’d expect to find in minor keys (specifically your raised 6th and 7th notes) but if you start to encounter additional sharps or flats it’s likely the music has modulated to a new key. You need to be Hansel, following the breadcrumbs through the forest in Hans Christian Andersen’s children’s tale. Look at the clues in your music - perhaps you’re in G major, but suddenly lots of C sharps begin appearing and the likelihood is the music is moving from G into D major, which has both F and C sharp in the key signature. Or perhaps, in the same G major piece the new accidentals are D sharps. In that case E minor is a more likely destination, with the D sharps being the raised 7th note of the scale.

Music often shifts to keys that are fairly close to home - perhaps the relative minor or just a step or two around the circle of 5ths I talked about earlier. With the tools I’ve given you today you are better equipped to follow the breadcrumbs and figure out where the music has migrated to. Here’s a final example to illustrate my point. In the first page of Telemann’s Recorder Sonata in F major he moves the music through no fewer than four keys. I’ve annotated this extract with different colours to show the important accidentals and the keys the music modulates into. Some of them are fleeting, while others feel more significant. You can click on the music to see it enlarged.

Over to you…

Equipped with this knowledge, you can now take it out into the world and use it to help you understand the music you play in a deeper way. If the concept of identifying modulations seems overwhelming for now, why not simply make a point of looking at the key signatures you encounter to identify where you begin? When faced with a new piece of music, take a moment to decide which key it’s in. The key signature itself is a big clue, and this might be all you need if the music is in a major key. If you spot some accidentals too, see if they fit in the melodic scale of the minor key with the same key signature and be ready for some darker, more melancholic tones.

Did you learn something new today? If the answer is yes, I hope my words have demystified music a little more for you. But if there are still gaps in your knowledge which need filling do leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to help you. This is an ongoing series of blog posts which I hope will collectively help you gain a deeper understanding of the music you play.

Learn to love your scales!

What comes into your mind when you think about scales and arpeggios? Perhaps memories from childhood - being nagged by a teacher to practise? Or maybe even a degree of perplexity about exactly what they are?

Many of us have a love/hate relationship with scales. When I think back to my teenage years I realise I owe my music teachers an apology for my lack of application when it came to these fundamental exercises. Time and again I would spend the last two or three weeks before a music exam frantically cramming my scales and arpeggios instead of learning them gradually over a longer period, Fortunately for me, I had an uncanny ability to learn them at speed and I usually got away with this last minute feverish rush of learning. The downside was that I never really absorbed them thoroughly, so within a couple of weeks of the exam I’d forgotten them all again! My slapdash approach must have been infuriating, but those teachers I’m still in touch with seem to have forgiven me!

Of course the irony is I’ve seen the same situation from the other side of the fence many times during my teaching career, quietly trying cajoling my students to start learning their scales and arpeggios as early as possible…

What are scales and arpeggios?

The first movement of Telemann’s Sonata in F major which is built upon lots of scale patterns.

Scales and arpeggios are the fundamental building blocks of music and all western music is created from these patterns. A scale uses neighbouring notes, while an arpeggio uses the 1st, 3rd and 5th steps of a scale to create a broken chord, where the notes are played in turn to create a melodic line rather than as harmonies.

Major and minor scales contain eight different pitches within each octave, arranged in a particular combination of tones and semitones. On the other hand, a chromatic scale includes all 12 notes - just as you would if you played every black and white note in order on the piano.

You’re probably most familiar with the concept of major, minor and chromatic scales, but there are many more types besides. Pentatonic scales have just five notes (sound just the black notes on a piano and you’re playing a pentatonic scale), modes are created from the patterns made by playing the white notes of the keyboard in different combinations, and jazz musicians have their own varieties of scales.

They’re not just a feature of western music either - in some musical cultures other patterns are used. For instance, Indian music is based on ragas - scale patterns which can include intervals even smaller than our semitone.

Why do I need to learn scales and arpeggios?

This is a cry many teachers have heard from their students in frustration! While they may not seem terribly exciting, learning scales and arpeggios helps your music making in many different ways. Let’s look at some of them…

They help you gain fluency

If we’re to play music with ease and speed, fluency is vital. Getting to the point where your fingers automatically find the patterns needed for each note at speed will allow you to tackle ever more challenging repertoire. If you have to stop and think about which fingers to move before each note (as a total beginner might) your musical lines will lack a sense of flow.

Improve your sight reading skills

Because music is made up of scale and arpeggio patterns, being able to recognise and fluently play these combinations of notes helps you read unfamiliar music more easily. If you want a comparison, it’s a bit like learning to read text. When we first learn to read we recognise the individual letters. Gradually we learn that these letters often appear together in particular combinations so we begin to recognise syllables and ultimately whole words and sentences. The notes of a scale are like the individual letters, while a scale is a long word or sentence which we take in at a glance through familiarity.

Coordinating finger movements

One of the big challenges of recorder playing is the complexity of the fingerings. Modern wind instruments have keywork to help simplify the finger patterns. Recorders lack these, so instead we have to play complex forked fingerings (for instance B flat on the descant or E flat on treble recorder). Shifting between neighbouring notes can often involve moving multiple fingers up and down simultaneously. We can use scales and arpeggios to practise this and make our finger changes neater and quicker.

Coordinating tongue and fingers

Not only do we have to coordinate our fingers, but our tongue needs to match the speed of our finger movements too if we’re to play a genuinely legato melody. Once again, scales can be a useful tool to help achieve this.

Building up speed

Want to play faster? In that case you need to practise the patterns which occur most often in music and gradually learn to negotiate them more quickly. What’s the best way to do this? Yes, you’ve guessed it - scales and arpeggios!

Practising double tonguing

Once you’ve built up some velocity, you might need to explore double tonguing so your articulation can match the speed of your fingers. Again, using simple scale patterns are a great way to work on this without having to think about reading complex music at the same time.

For music exams

Most adult recorder players have no interest in working for exams, but if you’re someone who’s motivated by exams, you’ll need to learn some scales and arpeggios as well as pieces of music. The syllabus for the lower grades may only include a few different keys, but by grade 8 you’ll need to know all the major and minor keys.

Have I convinced you yet?

Assuming I have, you might well be asking some of the following questions…

Do I need to learn all of them?

In an ideal world, knowing all the major and minor scales and arpeggios (plus chromatic and other patterns) is a desirable aim. But this doesn’t mean you have to learn all of them! For anyone even learning a carefully chosen selection is immensely useful.

If you’re not sure where to begin, start by looking at the music you’re currently working on. What key is the piece in? For instance, if you’re playing a sonata with a key signature of two flats, try learning B flat major and G minor - the two scales with the same key signature. The music is likely to work through both of these keys at some point and if you can play these fluently the patterns you encounter in the piece will come more easily too.

Realistically, unless you choose to play Schickhardt’s set of recorder sonatas in every key, most music for our instrument explores a limited range of key signatures. It’s unusual to see recorder music in more than three sharps or flats, so I would recommend aiming for fluency in these keys before you worry about the exotic realms of D flat major or G sharp minor.

Do I have to learn them from memory?

This is a much debated topic among students and teachers. For music exams you’re expected to learn the prescribed scales and arpeggios from memory, but as we’ve already noted, many adult learners have no interest in testing themselves in this way.

In order to play scales fluently from memory you need to be completely on top of the finger patterns, knowing precisely which fingers to move between each note. This requires what is often called ‘muscle memory’, although in reality our muscles don’t have memories. This process is actually achieved by generating strong connections between our brains and the nerve pathways used to send instructions to the fingers. To achieve that (I plan to explore this more in a future blog post) requires lots of repetition, and in my experience, the process of memorising such patterns definitely seems to be harder for some people than others.

Memorising scale and arpeggio patterns presents a particular challenge for players of wind instruments. With the piano or a string instrument, there’s a logical visual pattern as you work your way up and down the keyboard or fingerboard. In contrast, each note on a wind instrument of any type requires a different combination of fingers. Yes, moving between some of these is fairly logical. But I’m sure you’ve noticed how that logic disappears when it comes to cross fingers (particularly flat and sharp notes) or the upper extremities of the recorder!

An additional challenge we face as recorder players is the limited range of our instrument. Most woodwind instruments can play scales covering at least a two, and sometimes three, octave range in all keys. In contrast, the recorder can comfortably manage a handful of scales at two octaves, but for most intermediate level players an octave and a half is the limit. This means scales come in different shapes to maximise the range we cover, either turning at the top or the bottom of the instrument. Remembering which scale follows which pattern is an additional thing to learn and can add extra stress to the process.

For my Score Lines subscribers I created scale sheets showing some of these patterns, which can be downloaded from your Members’ Area. I’ve linked to the treble recorder sheet here, but if you’d like access to all of them please feel free to subscribe here - it’s free and there are lots of other exclusive goodies for you to download besides the scales!

While learning scales and arpeggios from memory is undoubtedly desirable, I would argue that playing them from music is probably just as useful for most amateur recorder players. One of the most important skills to develop is sight reading (I’ve written a blog about this here) and being able to recognise scale patterns and convert them into fluent playing is a great way to achieve this. As with most skills, do this by starting slowly and gradually building up some speed.

How fast should I play them?

As with so many things, it depends! If you’re using a scale to develop your tone you might do best to play it very slowly - perhaps four beats on each note. But if fast playing is your aim you’ll need to take a different approach.

When I first started having lessons with Philip Thorby, I spent about three months solely working on slow scales and other exercises as we focused on developing my tone and legato playing. Ok, this may sound rather extreme, but I was aiming for a career as a professional player so it was absolutely necessary. My technique certainly benefitted from this approach and I finally began to understand scales and arpeggios in a way that set firm foundations for everything I was to learn later. Taking this approach with even just one scale and arpeggio can be hugely beneficial if it helps you focus on the foundations of your technique.

The most important thing is to play your chosen scale or arpeggio correctly from the very beginning. If that means you start out playing each note at a metronome speed of just 60 that’s absolutely fine, as long as the notes are 100% right. When you can consistently play all the notes fluently and cleanly at that speed, gradually increase the tempo until you reach your desired tempo, checking at every point that you’re still maintaining the same consistency and precision. A metronome is a really useful tool here to hold you at one speed.

How often should I practise my scales?

I’m a big advocate of little and often. Having a huge practising splurge on your scales just once a week makes it difficult to achieve consistent results. A much better way is to programme in short, frequent practice times - maybe five or ten minutes every day. This way you remind your fingers of the correct patterns at regular intervals so they become habitual more quickly. Perhaps even keep a recorder out at all times (a plastic instrument can be handy if you prefer to put away your wooden recorders) so you can pick it up and play a scale for a minute or two every time you walk by.

Which variety of minor scale should I practise?

Minor scales come in two different species - harmonic and melodic. Harmonic minors use the same notes whether you’re ascending or descending, so they’re slightly easier to memorise. However, they also include an augmented second interval (the 6th and 7th notes, which sound vaguely reminiscent of a snake charmer’s flute), circled in red below, which is less commonly used in western music.

A Harmonic Minor

In contrast, a melodic minor scale raises the 6th and 7th notes by a semitone on the way up and returns them to their original pitch on the way back down. This is an added complexity to memorise, but these melodic shapes (hence the name) are more frequently found in the music we play. For this reason, if your plan is to practise them with music and you only have time to work on one type of minor scale I’d recommend the melodics as a priority.

A Melodic Minor

Using scales and arpeggios creatively

Most readers of this blog won’t be looking to become professional recorder players, so being able to play in every key with total fluency and at high speed is probably not your aim in life! But you can still use these patterns to improve your playing and have some fun along the way. Here are a few ways you could use them…

Vary your tempo according to your intention

If you want to improve your tone you need to focus on quality rather than speed. For this I would pick an easy scale (perhaps no more than one sharp or flat in the key signature) and play it really slowly. By simplifying the notes you free up your brain to think about breathing deeply and blowing freely, producing the best possible tone on each note. Perhaps spend four slow beats on every note before moving on to the next, breathing as often as you need to, always focusing on using the optimum breath speed for each fingering.

If speed is your motivation, again begin at a modest tempo but focus on keeping your fingering even and well coordinated with your tonguing. Perhaps use a metronome to ensure you maintain a consistent tempo. As you perfect each speed setting, switch up the tempo by a small amount and repeat the exercise several times. If you begin to stumble, take the metronome down by a couple of notches and refine your playing before moving on. Be methodical in your approach and you’ll be surprised how much progress you can make in a fairly short space of time. If you’ve built up a good turn of speed with an easy scale why not take the tempo back down again and try it with a more complex key signature?

Experiment with different articulation patterns

The music we play often contains a wide variety of articulation, from long tongued passages to intricate patterns, where small groups of notes need to be slurred here and there. It’s a good idea to begin by practising scales and arpeggios smoothly tongued, staccato and in long slurs as these all demand different technical skills.

Alongside these single technique scales I recommend you also practise patterns that require you to mix slurring and tonguing - you can see some of my suggested patterns below. These are the sort of patterns you’ll encounter in the real world and if you can apply them to your scales they’ll seem less scary in context. These are just a few of my ideas, but don’t be afraid to come up with your own variations.

Four varied articulation patterns you could try out

Be playful

There’s no reason why you must always play complete scales. Don’t be afraid to be playful and creative. Breaking a scale down into groups of four or five notes, running up and down, may help you really master the transition between specific fingerings more quickly. Once you’ve got that fluency you can then glue these small groups back together into complete scales. For instance, you could break up the F major scale shown below like this:

Breaking an exercise like this down into bitesize pieces is a recognised technique, called chunking. It’s immensely useful as a means of building up fluency and consistency, allowing our brain to focus more efficiently on small amounts of information.

Explore different note patterns

Bored with just whizzing up and down your scales as printed? Why not add some variety and explore them by playing the notes in a different order? For instance you could play each one in thirds like this…

You could follow the same principle with fourths and fifths too, although these are harder….

If you’ve learnt every key how about mixing them all up together? One of my favourite challenges is to go up one scale, then move up a semitone and come back down the next one - for instance upwards through F major, down via F sharp major, up via G major, down via A flat and so forth. The same exercise is possible with the minor keys too. If you can play both of these fluently you can award yourself a generous gold star!

Major keys

Minor keys

Finally, look for the satisfaction in a scale played really well!

You may not feel the need to learn scales in every key, and for less experienced players such an aim may be too ambitious anyway. However, there’s a satisfaction to be gained from playing even one or two of them really well, even at a slow tempo.

Scales and arpeggios can be a valuable opportunity to find a contemplative zone, focusing on a simple task done to the best of your abilities. I enjoy spending a few minutes at the start of a practice session playing scales really slowly, closing my eyes and listening to my tone. I focus on the quality of my sound, tailoring the speed of my breath and the strength of my articulation to suit each individual note. By doing this I reinforce the good habits I’ve learnt over the years, as well as warming up mind, fingers, tongue and lungs before I move onto more demanding music.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about scales and arpeggios. Are they something you avoid at all costs, or have you cultivated a love for them? Perhaps you’re still on your journey to becoming a zen scale-master? If you have tips you want to share with others or experiences you’ve found useful over the years please do leave a comment below.