None of my teachers really deal with scales with me, so I thought I'd better get cracking on this by myself.

Can anyone suggest some strategies for learning them properly? I've got scales and arps books for all my instruments. How much time should I be devoting each day to them? Is it best to learn them one at a time, or to play them all repetitively each day? Is it best to learn both the harmonic and melodic minor scales, or just one or the other? Do I need to stick to the ABRSM fingerings? I can play most scales and arps by ear, so it's a matter of building up the right technical skills I think...

Help?

Hey Meerkat,

I choose a key a week and work my way through it at the start and end of my practise. You can change the fingering if you like (I shift on the octave for most of my three octave scales which is not the fingering in the books) as long as it is consistent and practical. As for learning the harmonic / melodic forms - I generally play my key of the week in three forms over three octaves major, minor H and minor M. Violinia posted an interesting observation somewhere on learning your minor scales really quickly based on playing the major key and thinking of the minor as modes from the outset. I found it interesting and helpful, it might be useful for you too.

Good luck!

I think it's better to play all of oyur scales through a few times than to dedicate all your time to one before moving on to the next one. You'll properly become better 'rounded' at all the scales if you are always playing all of them if that makes sense
Have you tried playing them with your eyes closed? That helps with remembering them as well as training your ears to what they should sound like.
You can also use those 'scale diagrams'- my teacher draws 4 veritcal lines for the 4 stirngs, and marks x's where the fingers are put down to help you learn them

I do find that sometimes concentrating on one or two at a time helps. When I did Grade 8 violin I did intensive practise on a particular scale each day. e.g. one day I'd do Gsharp harmonic minor, then the next day I'd do Gsharp melodic minor, just to get the differences in finger pattern really burned into the old brain!

Experiment and see what works for you.

I did a different scale pattern every day. You'll find scales like E major 1 octave and A major 1 octave correspond. It makes sense to learn the patterns at the same time, so you think in groups instead of keys, as each key will have 3 different fingerings. This is true from grade 1 up to grade 8.

What a clever idea!

Hmm, wonder what the 3-octave A major scale corresponds to?

Tess

Ah yes, the exception scale. That's my excuse for being so bad at remembering the pattern for A flat scales From B flat upwards though, it's all the same, just a pattern for 3 octaves and another for 2 octaves.