Okay I'm doing grade 5 this summer

Rondo
Dream
New Orlean's Nightfall one

(any tips welcome)

but mainly I've got a lot of scales to learn and some of them(especially the minor ones and the contary motion minor ones) just don't go in.

How do you learn scales and what do the examiners look for in them?
My last exam read scales need more line?

New Orlean's Nightfall is cool.
to get good marks in scales you should play the scales straight after the examiner asks you to.

I wouldn't play them immediately after being told. It's better to pause for 3 or 4 seconds and think about what the examiner said. Make sure it's the right scale your about to play. You won't lose marks for it. Keep them even and flowing at a consistent speed for all of them.

Oh, and learning your scales. Try doing it as if it is crotchet quaver crotchet quaver etc. Then try doing them in triplets.

For the minors, it might help if you read up on how they are constructed. It helps you understand them better and you can work out which notes to flatten etc.

When you have your minors done, try going back to the contary motion minors. You should improve because now you can play the minors normally.

Thanks
oh i've done the not listening thing. I think I have selective hearing or something. Last week my teacher asked for a scale and I just played the first one that came into my head. I did it perfectly and was really chuffed. sigh.

You do get better marks for ready response so keep thinking time to a minimum.
If it seems as though you are having to think about what notes you have tp play you won't get quite as many marks.




It might help to always practise scales in pairs.... each minor paired with its relative major.
If you have trouble remembering key signatures for minors this can help with your theory too...

I have a funny habit of always playing the wrongs scales e.g. Bb minor instead of B minor. It's probably just me. But I've always had decent marks for scales even with loads of thinking time.

I get my pupils to think of scales as like a sprint and not a marathon. You have to get off very quickly to do well. It should be an immediate response as the thinking about them should have been done in the regular practice before the exam.

I wish I did I will be practising quick response times from now on.

One of the criteria that examiners use to differentiate when giving marks for scales is response time. Have a look at page 41 of These Music Exams.

Guess I should work on my response time then.

i'm taking my grade 5 soon too, i learnt all my major scales, i do them all in one, i do c major, then straight onto C# then D, Eb etc. all one octave so i get the notes. then i move onto my minors. I work out all the maajor equivalents and just add the raised 7th. I'm still working on F minor contremotion though!

If you've done all of the grades so far, grade 5 scales actually require a lot fewer new scales to be learnt than grade 4. The grade 4 ones are mostly selected new ones that haven't come up before. In grade 5 being a general 'all of them' it only introduces a few that haven't been covered in the previous grades and just uses all the previously learnt ones again .

What I always found hardest about scales in exams was the fact that I didn't know what was coming next. Pupils seem to basically know them, but flounder when they come out of order. For that reason, I tell them to write out the names - eg B melodic minor, G Major, xxx in contrary motion - cut them into strips, crumple them up, and pick them out for themselves at random - responding as quickly as they accurately can. This really shows them how well they will perform under pressure.

Yes... I'm working on Grade 5 scales!!! There are just so many of them !!!! My teacher makes us learn scales before the pieces... Just about mastered all the scales now except c sharp minor contrary!! I do the thing Patricia describes... writing all the scales on pieces of paper and pulling them out at random too... it works really well and gets you used to playing them at random.My teacher prefers allocating scales out to different days ... so she writes you a timetable of Scales of the Day. the problem I find with that is that there are certain days when time is tight ... so those scales never get learnt properly ... so I ignore her (don't tell her ... I hope she isn't on the forum) and use my pieces of paper. I read about a method of scale learning called "splurging" on the forums the other day... that seems to work too . I tried it for some difficult scales. Trying different rhythms is good too...

You could also try adding one note at a time - eg CDE, then CDEF a couple of times, then CDEFG, etc. Sometimes fingering can go astray when playing staccato. This might help keep an eye on that.

I had to learn C# minor contrary like that!

Thanks everyone. Am in the process of writing them out now...
I just need some little pieces of paper...

All the tips are good but remember that it's not the end of the world if you muck it up... in my Gr 5 organ exam I started a scale three times and got 19/21 on them - the examiner wrote 'A quick response in these, and fluency shown. Tiniest blips in C# Minor and one arpeggio'!! So at the end of the day it is more important that if you muck up one of them, you don't let it dent your confidence, but just get on with it and play the rest as well as you can.

On a different note - C# Minor!! Ugh.....

I don't mind that one too much somehow I just can't do Bb F# or Eb minor but I think I'm just a bit weird

No, no. Not weird at all. For a scale with just 3#, F# minor is horrible!

I had a nasty experience in my G6 playing Bbmin. The less said about my scales the better...