Hey! I'm hoping to take grade 4 flute in march but I'm finding it difficult to learn the required scales, i can't think of an easy way to learn and remember them, so does anyone have any useful tips?

Maybe set out to learn all the major ones first, over a time period of 2 weeks. Just focus on one or two for a few days and make sure you get them secure...then move on to new ones..but keep going back to the ones you've already learnt.

Once you've done the major scales , move on to the minors. etc. etc

Yes, following on from Nat's advice you should concentrate on just a few scales each day, then after you mastered them move onto the next one... then every few days repeat all the ones you've learnt so far. To make learning scales less tedious, you could perhaps play them with different moods, some legato, stoccato, pesante, dolce etc (that's what I did for my clarinet G3, though it was in the Guildhall syllabus). It's just practice

Ok thanks! The forms have to go in this half term and now im pretty confident that i'll manage it! I've never failed and exam before and I skipped grade 2! Thanks for your help I always find it useful!

Scales are always a pain and it's something you just gotta do and I'm am not friends with them. I did my exam a couple of weeks ago and the best way I've found is to learn all the majors first, then the minors. Make yourself achieveable goals like lreaning a new scale and getting it going pretty good every two days or whatever ios comfortable. I also tried flash cards to remember which scales had which flats or sharps etc and got my brother to test me. Making up rhymes is always good too *blushes*

Do you know what the notes are?
Can you recite them?

If you can describe exactly where you put your fingers for each note flawlessly then it's a good sign. Otherwise, get out the metronome, pick a couple of notes per day and play everything you need to starting on that note. Don't forget minors or arpeggios. You could make a chart to tick so you know you've practiced them all enough.

I write my scales out like this to help me remember them,
Majors:- C (-), D (F#, C#), Bb (Bb, Eb) etc etc writing all the accidentals in brackets, how many octaves etc. I then print all this out on an A4 sheet of paper (although my grade 8 scales have stretched to two sheets!!!!) and then put the sheet of scales up everywhere. I've got my grade 8 on December 9th and I've got sheets up in my room, in the music room at school, on the fridge, on the ceiling over my bed etc. It's worked for me in every exam so far! Helps me to memorise them.

The only advice I can give is NEVER read out of the book! only ever for fingerings or any little niggles you want to clear up. Otherwise it's a nightmare to learn them from memory!

Yo Kate,

Does not reading from the book help?
I've always read from the book (for cello not piano) and I've always been bad at scales.
Wow, that could be useful!

Liv

1. Memorise them.
2. Play them with your eyes shut.
3. Use a metronome occasionally as a check.
4. Job done.

must depend on the person - & maybe the instrument? I find looking at them in the scale book really useful esp on the flute. not usually necessary on the piano as they're somehow more obvious with all the notes laid out for you.

I hardly ever use the book, but if I do it is more for wind instruments than piano.

I tried learning all mine by ear - on recorder - and goofed up big time. I think it is best to do both - use the book some of the time and go without it at other times. Fingers need to know the sequences, but your brain also needs to know what the fingers are doing. I'd long known in theory what all the scales were, what key signatures etc - if you know the order of flats and sharps, then the flat major scales all have one more flat than the name of the scale (B flat major has a B flat and an E flat) and for the sharp major scales the leading or last note of the scale is always the new addition as you go up the sharps - thus C# is the leading note of D major, and the sharps for that scale are F# and C#. However the theory helps rather more when you can see all the notes laid out for you as on the piano - and for wind that is hopeless.

Flats - B E A D G C F
Sharps F C G D A E B

ie one is the reverse of the other.

I'm due to take grade 6 piano early next year & the scales for that are an absolute nightmare!!! I took grade 4 in March this year & the scales came as a bit of a shock to me as the last exam I had taken was grade 1! I learnt them how other people have suggested learning them - majors first, then minors, then broke the arpeggios into small groups although they aren't as hard as scales so they weren't much of a problem. For grade 6 I have had to break the scales up into even more groups - majors, harmonic minors, melodic minors, staccatos, contrary motions, thirds etc, so I would suggest keeping the practise going even after your exam (I didn't - big mistake!) as then you won't have as much work to do for the next one.

Good luck!

Lisa xxx

The thing that seems to be causing the problem here is that some people appear to be suddenly needing to learn several scales in a short time.
I know that some people do not either like or believe in doing scales but if you are going to be working towards graded exams as a pupil or teacher surely it is a good idea to introduce scales in whatever order makes sense for your instrument. This can be done as soon as enough notes are known and with no need to rush. You learn/teach one at a time then add the next. There is only ever one to learn at a time that way and by the time a grade needing a lot of scales is reached they are already know (as they would be at each intermediate grade).

I have found it very helpful to learn the relative minor key along with each major - this effectively means doing two at a time, but saves time in the long run. As others have said, it also helps to deal with in order that each additional sharp/flat is added, so C major/A minor then G major/E minor etc.

i always play scales as a warm up and they then just stick in my head

I have found a great book that helped me loads with my scales. Its called "Face Your Fear - Scales" and really makes them a lot more fun to learn. The book comes with a cd that you play along to so they are more interesting.

i really recommend it if you are having problems making scales stick in your head

the website for it is http://www.opuscopus.com/fyf-scales.php

Hope it helps you as much as it helped me!

To be honest I don't find it a major stuggle because I remember them from piano. But otherwise, I just do the first five notes then all eight etc..

I find that its best to learn all the key signatares, then I can work out what to play in each scale - easpecially with minors, I can't just memorise the notes I have to know where they have come from. Also I often warm up with major scales (on cornet), working up in semitones, which helps learn them all - I'm trying to do the same with the minors now, which is a little harder.

I've started writing down all my scales onto little pieces of paper and then drawing them out one by one. If you do it fine then it goes onto one pile and if you do it wrong it goes back in the original pot. It has helped my scales enormously because it means you only practise the ones that you can't do, and it just keeps the others going. But introduce new scales slowly, or else you'll end up very stressed at the end of a rehearsal if you havn't only managed one or two of your scales.

I've inherited students who have had group lessons in school who have just been told to go away and learn their scales. All the lesson time has been spent on pieces, because 'they get the most marks'. As a consequence, I've had students who have passed Grade 4 knowing no scales whatsoever, and have needed to learn a large number all in one go.

Unfortunately, it is far from uncommon.

I working towards grade 4 too and i have no trouble learning the notes its actually playing the scales thats the hard bit! I find what works for me is listing the sharps and flats in each scale then if that doesnt work try remembering the fingerings if you have a pictoral memory.

Choose a scale. Play it at a speed where you will make zero mistakes. Be sure you have your metronome on. Then move the speed up four beats per minute. Repeat scale. Move speed up. Repeat scale. Move speed up. Continue this method until you can no longer play the scale. Move the metronome down four beats per minute. Play the scale three times at this speed with no mistakes. Move the metronome up four beats per minute, play the scale.

Do this over and over with each scale. Eventually make the selection of scales random. A good system is to select the scales from a hat or other system where the scales have no relation to each other.

You will be amazed how much better you get.

http://forums.abrsm.org/index.php?showtopic=10093&hl=scales is a thread which shares a few techniques, and I also posted about splurts and chromatic scales in these threads:

http://forums.abrsm.org/index.php?showtopi...&st=0&p=152755&

http://forums.abrsm.org/index.php?showtopi...82&#entry159782

If moving up 4 BPM is too much, remember you can move up 1 or 2 bpm if you have an electronic metronome.

Any system to make you play a random group of scales (as in the exam situation) is good.

Hi everyone!

Over the past ten odd years of playing I've experimented with various methods of learning scales. My first was to just lie to my teacher and pretend everything was fine, which unfortunately wasn't such a brilliant idea, and consequently I only did it once.

I find that the best way is to learn them in groups. Such as, learn all your major scales, then all your melodics, then all your harmonics (or whichever one you're choosing if you're doing the grades that let you choose), or in groups of 4 or similar. It also helps if you know the theory behind the scales; that way, you can say to yourself, "I'll play C# minor" and figure out instantly that it has four sharps (well, not instantly; I don't pretend to be one of those people that can just figure it out in seconds, it takes me a while), and know that melodics raise the 6th and 7th notes, etc. This technique can also be a rescuer in the exam room if your memory decides to float out of the window, as you can just figure the scale out and have a good try at it!

If you're struggling to figure out the scales yourself, look at them in your book, play them once through, then close the book and see if you can play it again. Keep doing it until you get it right; once you've got the confidence that you KNOW you CAN play it, you'll not go wrong. Hopefully.

A bonus about scales is that once you reach grade 8, you know them all already from your previous grades; you just have to play them faster and to two octaves.

Anyway, I hope this helps.

hey i am taking my grade 4 in march two, i also am having trouble remembering my scales just keeping practicing, and make little cards of the scale and the key signature because you really need to know the key signature of the scale before you learn how to play it, well that was the advice my flute teacher gave me hope it is of some use

I'm doing my grade 6 cello on the 23rd of march, and im getting into a slight panic about my scales.. i hate them with a passion, and so dont practice as much as i should.. its my own fault..

It's a hard task, but the best thing to do is be really disciplined and organised about practising them, once you have them good then they become easy marks rather than a huge and scary chore, and will help you know your way around the instrument better too.

Hello Orangepip, Welcome. My son learns cello and loathes scales too. He (or more likely his teacher) will be choosing his grade 6 pieces soon. Out of interest what pieces have you chosen and how do you find them? Good luck for the 23rd.

To remember the order of sharps and flats the following rhymes are useful:
Sharps:
Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle

Flats (just reverse it):
Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles' Father.

I've just passed my grade 3 flute with merit, and my scales were my best part (20/21) despite having a lot of trouble learning them. My methods were:
-Write out every scales and arpeggio on a separate card (separate cards for tongues and slurred) and then pick one out and play that scale.
-Speed it all up a bit then you won't run out of breath as easily.
-Listen carefully, paying attention to your tones and semi-tones, and 'feel' the scale rather than remembering it.

Good Luck!

Check you this thread which has posts on or links to absolutely dozens of different helpful ideas on how to learn your scales

try and learn all the hard ones first, i made the mistake of learning all of the grade 5 piano majors first, but i can't play the minors as well, if you spend about 5 mins each day learning the hard ones first, and then go onto the easier ones, or the way i learnt mine, was that i did the whole octave of scales in one go, so i went, C major, C# major, D major, Eb major, E major, F major, F# major, G major, G# major, A major, Bb major, C major. and then all the minors, and then all the arpegios, and i do the same to all the cromatics too. but i think this only works on grade 5 and above.

(I HOPE THAT MAKES SENSE!!! )

Yeah.... my problem. Even though I only took Gr 6 last term and am due to take Gr 7 in the summer, I've already forgotten all my scales. And I did Gr 7 piano three years ago, so I should have just kept them going, then I wouldn't have this stress now!! Oh well. A lesson learned for Gr 8, I suppose.
EDIT: Mind you, I don't seem to have a problem learning them. Just keeping them fluent.

This seems a great method! I've never thought of doing scales that way before. The way my teacher has always encouraged me to do them is to play them with different rhythms, making the rhythms harder each time so that you have to concentrate more on the rhythm than the scale. Apparently that way you lodge the scale into your memory, and will remember them more easily.

I also did this method regarding scales, that is I wrote them all out and put them all in a box. Then you can pick them out at random without having someone to test you!

How i learn scales...? I learn them by getting a scales book for my instrument, it helps, look at your scales in your book then hide the scale and try to play it off by heart. They are a pain, but they've got to be done and they're easy marks if you know them!

How about playing a major ascending then minor descending? (e.g. C major going up, C minor going down). Also, pulling random scales out of a hat really helps me, but it's personal preference in the end. There's lots of advice been posted here so I'd have a go at everything and see which is best. Good luck!