Following on from other topics about the benefits, or otherwise, of playing piano scales, I got to wondering whether scales have always been part of the agenda for pianists, or whether somebody at some stage decided one day that they should form at least 10% of every assessment on a budding pianist. I wonder if Mozart had to practise contrary motion scales religiously? Or whether chromatic scales with the hands a minor third apart were on Chopin's timetable? I also wonder if so many people would be so positive about their benefits if they weren't on exam syllabi? Would pianists' playing standards really drop if they weren't, or would they maybe then spend more time perfecting real music, hence improving more quickly? I never played a scale in my life, having never done exams as a child, until I took it upon myself to do Grade 8, and then I had no choice. But I genuinely don't think my playing suffered from the lack of them.

What I really wanted to ask here was whether anybody knows anything about the history of scale-playing. What evidence do we have about the practice of playing scales as an obligatory exercise from, say, the Baroque period? Was there any standardised, formal assessment around then, or were pianists simply assesed by their contemporaries on the standard of their playing?

I found it interesting to learn recently that we only think of the Virgin Mary in blue because that was the most expensive colour that could be used in Rennaissance painting, hence anyone with money who was commissioning a religious painting would have Mary in blue. So now we all think of her in blue. There's also a historic reason for Roman Catholics only eating fish on a Friday. I wonder if there's a similar historic reason for having scales as such a large part of exams? Something that we've overlooked, but that means we now take their neccessity as gospel? A Very Respected founder of the AB, for instance, who was mad keen on scales, who has been lost in history somewhere?

Or am I just going to be told to 'wise up - scales are important!'?

I think they have been used for a long time.
The following quotes are from "The Great Pianists" by Harold C Schonberg (Simon and Schuster,New York, 1987)

J S Bach worked out the principles of modern fingering. Up to his time, the thumb and little finger of the right hand had hardly been used. Right hand scales were generally played with only the third and fourth fingers going up,the second and third coming down. Bach seems to have been the first to allow the thumb to pass under the other fingers.

In the few examples of fingerings he (Bach) has left us, he constantly passes the third finger of the right hand over the fourth.

This does not , of course, tell us if scales were practised regularly but if they were it seems that unusual fingerings were used.

J S Bach's son, Carl Philip Emanuel, wrote a definitive treatise on keyboard playing in 1753 and incorporated modern fingerings with the thumb frequently turned under.

Interesting topic, Dulciana!

I don't have any answers, but I'd like to put on record that compared with when I started teaching, more and more of my pupils seem to be reluctant to practise scales or to really bother getting the fingerings 'under their belt'. The exception is the Grade 1-ers, who are generally happy to practise them - perhaps because it is all new and exciting - but as soon as we get to the hands-together stage (talking piano here) there is a definite increase in sloppiness and 'hoping to get by' - and of course this makes it very much harder for them when the speed needs to increase and more scales need to be learnt.

I'm pretty sure that when I started teaching in the 80s, pupils on the whole (there were always exceptions!) tended to be rather more careful about getting them right. They do seem to think now that scales are more trouble than they're worth - and when I have to spend precious lesson time doing what the pupils should have done in their practice, I tend to agree!

I seem to recall reading that Mozart was keen on scales and would make his pupils practice and practice them. In my view scales are important as they map out the notes, and where the fingers should be for each different key. A knowledge of scales also makes learning chords a lot easier. To learn a language properly and to get the most from it one has to know verb endings for all the different tenses. Music is just the same. Sure one can learn and play pieces of music without knowing what a scale is but they add to a greater understanding of the music. It is also easy to turn them into fun exercises for the start of a practice session - fast, slow, staccato, legato, loud, soft. Is not playing just another excuse for yet more dumbing down?

I don't know about the history - but in practice it's possible to get by perfectly well without being able to play scales. I've been playing the piano for decades and still can't play scales. Mostly because I've never been interested enough to learn how. That's not to say I don't know my scales (just waiting for my G6 Theory result).

Last week I lost my voice but still went to my singing lesson and had a my first piano lesson instead. I took my LCM grade 3 book and my teacher declared that I would pass grade 3 and so I shall take it in the spring. Thank goodness LCM have a no-scales option for piano, otherwise I wouldn't bother.

My Dad was a fine pianist... and he hated scales. I remember sometime last year, he was listening to me practicing my scales and he said "Maybe I need to practice scales now" (he was 78) "but they're just so boring". I have his AB exam mark sheets... like his WW11 Grade 6 where he got 145... the only thing he lost marks on were his scales.
However, any tricky passage he would practice again and again... so I suppose he practiced scale passages but only in context. He came 5th in an International post war competition so he must have done alright without too much scale practice.
However... for me.. piano scales seem so logical. They help me learn key signatures etc. Scales on the clarinet are so, so different... there's not a lot of logic to the fingering!!!!!

I'll be really interested if others know the history of scales!!!!

In the rest of Europe ( the world?) I don't believe the teachers are as obsessed with scales as we are here. And many of us only are because of the exam requirements. American teachers that I spoke to when I did the EPTA course were pretty shocked and horrified at the AB syllabus.

And as for fingering - well, very rarely is the 'exam' fingering the best option for very long in real music. How many times do we come across a fragment of a scale/ arpeggio, whatever, and, in context, there are better fingerings? Penelope Roskell has written a fascinating book on the subject - and advocates quite different fingering from the accepted norm. (Of course, the syllabus states that any workable fingering will be accepted). In practice, I do teach conventional fingerings, purely because of the contraries - which then wouldn't work if applied to the similars. It's quite natural to want to put the thumb under a black key.. and I often find myelf saying to students that this would be fine in a real piece, but won't work for this exam scale! How ludicrous is that?!

As for all the Grade 8 ones, 4 octaves.. honestly, life really is too short. Particularly when considering the vast wealth of piano literature there is to explore. And there are far better, more constructive, ways of developing a secure piano technique.

I could go on... but well said, Dulciana.

Just for the record... I hate scales... they were the bain of my life when I was studying piano but I have to admit, for me, they were the discipline side of the instrument. The hard work you had to put in before you got to do the fun stuff.

The people who were really serious about becoming the best they could be could be heard in the school practice rooms ensuring they could play their scales and that's how I wanted to be. I wanted to be technically and musically good at the instrument and scales are surely also there to keep your fingers fit (so to speak) They are great for warming up too! I could never have played all the amazing chopin and liszt pieces I so loved without the supple flexible and disciplined fingers that I had from doing all those scales.

Sorry to be a party pooper, but i think they are really important, despite the fact I despised practicing them... I did it anyway because I knew to be good I needed to do some of the boring stuff to enable me to be able to play the really good stuff.

I only did up to grade 5 exam wise but went on playing to grade 8 standard and beyond as piano was my second instrument and so i decided not to take the exams but to work through the repertoire. I am actually thinking of taking my grade 8, maybe next year, just because it would be a shame not to have it after all the work I've put in to being able to play the piano.

Very interesting topic. Could this also partly explain why there are so many more great pianists per capita coming from the Continent or North American when compared to the UK?

I believe too that the ABRSM approach to examining on scales is not terribly musical nor oriented towards developing thoughtful musicianship but rather mechanical regurgitation.

In the last exam I took, for example, Grade 7 Piano. I needed to be prepared to play scales, arpeggios in first inversion, dom7 chords announced out of the blue by the examiner and completely independent of any context.
Much better in my opinion would be to examine more in depth on limited set of related scales, where the student could actively demonstrate knowledge of chords, cadences and modulations to relative minor, dominant subdominant and a more relevant, musically connected demonstration of the scale patterns.

Current examining resembles a bit of a trained monkey trick and actually can decrease musicianship by allowing students to bang away months on end just focusing on learning by rote.

One of my teachers (she would be in her mid-30s now) studied at the Royal Conservatoire in the Hague and never played any scales at all during her career until she came to the UK and began teaching the AB syllabus. Personally, I loved scales because each one is a slightly different challenge. But give me Czerny over Hanon any day, and Bach over Czerny.

Edward

From what I have seen in France (my own experience, that of my daughter, bits of other pupils oboe lessons and things I hear from all sorts of instruments when waiting in the music school corridor)...

Scales do play a part in musical development but in a very different way. Scales are not played from memory (most people eventually end up memorising them because you play them a lot but they don't set out to memorise them and it doesn't matter if they can't), scales don't seem to be very important until the player is relatively advanced (my approx. grade 3 daughter knows only 3 major scales on the cello and no minor ones) and they seem very often to be turned into scale-like exercises rather than pure scales. I'm afraid my examples are not really relevant to piano but a few examples for other instruments; wind instrumentalists play their scales over the whole range of the instrument and not from tonic to tonic, they also use scales to practise different articulations; string players use them to reinforce intonation and to practise different types of bowing.

Scales are not examined in the three exams which exist in France and nor are they a requirement if you are audtioning for one of the major Conservatoires. I once sat in on a masterclass of eighteen-year-olds preparing these audtions and the teacher kept insisting on the importance of scale practice but it was constantly related to the pieces they were learning (ie they would look at a few bars at a time (or sometimes only one), think about which scale the passage was in, play the scale from tonic to tonic then play the bit of the scale actually in the piece as long notes, all legato, all staccato with the articulation written, if it was in the higher register of the oboe an octave lower and then in octaves and then at the right octave etc.)

That certainly sounds like a more musical, imaginative and rational approach. Scales - and Hanon and similar - can so easily become purely mechanical, and ultimately desensitising.

Slightly off-topic, but recently I was talking with the Director of Music of a well-known public school about Music Scholarships, and he told me that in his experience the very best candidates generally hadn't taken a music exam at all. And that these were the players who best showed a genuine love of their instrument, and presented the most interesting repertoire.

I have said on another thread (Teachers Forum) that I fell too many young children in this country are over-examined and over-assessed with little discernible benefit.

I used to hate doing scales but later on when I started doing Beethoven sonatas I could see why scales where important. It does make you improve your technique in the long time. Probably because it had been drummed into you for so long when you see a familar passage such as apreggios in a piece it makes it asier to handle.

Nowadays I will mostly do studies instead of scales like Czerny and Hanon a bit more interesting. Every so often I will go back to them to refresh mostly as a warm up exercise.

Here is some more information on the history of scales taken from Grove Music.

Beethoven taught Czerny and told Czerny's father to get C P E Bach's book (referred to in my earlier post). Czerny's lessons from Beethoven consisted of scales and techniques at first and then progressed through CPE Bach's book with the stress on legato technique.

Clementi published in 1801 Introduction to the Art of playing on the Piano Forte and this book started with the names of notes followed by explanations of scales with suggested fingerings.

So the answer to "have pianists always had to play scales?" appears to be yes.

However, many early keyboard tutors devoted much attention to harmony and chord progressions with exercises on turning a harmonic skeleton in to interesting variations. The art of improvising was considered very important and many composers were formidable improvisers - a skill somewhat neglected now in classical training

Mmm - interesting question, I have a love-hate relationship with the things.

I find that scales do quite a lot to help establish a feel for keys - although I don't agree that they help with chords - most of my pupils play chords long before they learn to play a scale.

J S Bach worked out the principles of modern fingering. Up to his time, the thumb and little finger of the right hand had hardly been used.

Oh yes, I had forgotten about that. Some of my gcse students use only two or three fingers on each hand - maybe there is hope for them yet!

Yes, I completely agree! I think exams are great for older students but used too much with children and by the way in my limited experience adults seem to like playing their scales more too.

Some really interesting information so far! And interesting points made. I wonder, though, if in the days of Bach the requirements of a musician were a little different than now? It has been mentioned that improvisation, now much neglected, was considered a very important skill, and that, as such, knowing keys, scales and how to modulate must have been crucial. (Am I right that most professional musicians in those days were church-based to some extent or another?) Publishing obviously wasn't what it is now, and it must have been more important for musicians to be able to make up their own music, without the likes of musicroom.com to hand! And before the days of Bach, Buxtehude, Telemann, etc there just might not have been so much music to choose from anyway!

But if we place more emphasis now on performing music that is composed rather than improvised, are scales still so important, or are they just passed down as a sometimes unwelcome legacy?

I like scales

Lots of people don't, but personally I find they help me sight read, and are useful when I need to improvise a left hand in a piece.

In my grade 8 exam I was given a sight reading piece in A major, and out of habit I think, I ran up and down the A major scale quickly (one octave). I caught the examiner smiling as he had his head down, and I still wonder now if it was a good smile or a - "what on earth is that strange girl doing?" smile

I think scales are really important for being able to play in all the keys. Proof of this is that the keys of scales that weren't in the group i did for G7, i'm now really rubbish at playing them (especially when it comes to sightreading), whereas others, I'm fine.
The one bad thing i have to say about scales is the sheer number of them you have to learn for Grade 8 (i can't remember exactly how many, but its well over a hundred i think). Just to play through the scales at the recommended speed takes a good hour i think (not that i can ever be bothered to play alll of them in one go) Also, I think pianists get it hard when it comes to scales as well, because, for example, there aren't nearly as many for recorder.

Do scales (and the rest) make us better musicians? Having always learnt scales, it's impossible to say what my understanding of music would have been like without them. I think they have helped my theory, fingering and general keyboard geography, and that arpeggios and 7ths have particularly helped my sight singing.

I think there is value in learning the major and minor scales and chords - rather than arpeggios! - and dominant and diminished 7ths, simply because they help teach us to recognise intervals and know what they will sound like before we play them and force us to understand the theory - what a scale is, what an interval is, how each key has its own key signature and what this means, which notes are played in each key, and so on. Imagine trying to learn all that without ever having played a scale.

However, I see no particular usefulness for hands together, contrary motion, third apart, sixth apart, played in thirds and sixths, arpeggios in all positions. And why four octaves instead of two in the later grades? Who decided that - it just takes twice as long to practise, but you don't learn anything new! It's kind of like being able to recite any verse of the New Testament on demand - it's an impressive memory feat, but doesn't necessarily make you a good Christian. When it comes to piano in particular, I would rather simply play a given common chord on demand (to show knowledge and good fingering) than an arpeggio, which are found much less frequently in isolation in piano music. Chords would be quicker to practise, too!

So do we think that with regard to knowing scales, chords and arpeggios it's more of a knowledge thing than a playing thing? For instance, would it be a good test to be asked to play the chord or areggio of, say, chord four in the key of x, instead of simply being asked to memorise everything in order to mindlessly regurgitate it on demand in an unreal situation?

With regard to arpeggiated chords in real music, I don't find that my pupils who are good at memorising all their exam arpeggios are any better at playing them in context. If anything they have the tendency to play them like a technical exercise, with equal weight on all notes, or simply bringing out the strong beats. The difficulty lies in teaching them to rise and fall with musicality as appropriate to the music at hand.

Quite so, Dulciana - I totally agree - and found the emoticon to prove it.

Instead of these 200 (plus) 4 oct scales, contraries and other superfluous clutter, I'd love to see keyboard players being given the option of some basic keyboard harmony. It's all too possible to buzz up and down in a totally mindless fashion, and with poor technique ( compounded by all the repetition)

Not so long ago we had a Grade 8 organist on one of the forums here - apparently able to get her fingers round Messiaen and other virtuosic stuff in a recital - yet asking for help with a basic harmonisation of Happy Birthday! To me, this seems very wrong. Keyboard harmony should be taught before the written stuff , and would actually be some use.

Knowing all this stuff is one thing. Endlessly practising them to the detriment of real music is another...most of us have limited practice time, so practising 200 plus scales, arpeggios and all the rest IS to the detriment of playing real music, putting time into understanding harmony and so forth. Yes there are scales etc in mozart sonatas and so on.... that come with their unique fingering and phrasing, so are not like exam scales.

I can do all the standard 4 octave scales with varying degrees of mindlessness. It takes me only a few minutes to get any one of them a third or whatever apart, or in contrary motion, or whatever, with a degree of fluency, should I need it for a piece I'm learning. I'm not convinced that continuing to put hours and hours into them, to get all of them simultaneously to near full marks standard under exam conditions, helps me in any way whatsoever. I would think hours of endless repetitive practice not only compounds poor technique but creates poor technique.

I think scales can help to train muscles for speed of execution and evenness, but I can't see the need for so many being required for exams, or the pressure on students to practise them endlessly; yes, they may help a little to give the musician facility when sightreading at speed, but proper music doesn't use four octaves of Eb minor in contrary motion - it might use six or eight notes of the scale, then turn or jump about to do something more interesting. That immediately means we have to think again about what our fingers are doing, and switch from the ingrained pattern to one which fits what the music does next - and on my main instrument, the recorder, that sometimes means using a completely different combination of fingers to make the same note. Since we learn to play our instruments so that we can play music rather than scales, I think it is a very valid question to ask - and I'm not at all sure that we need so many scales, and such a huge amount of time spent working on them as tradition seems to demand. I would much rather spend the time learning how to play the bar of tricky note combinations - still painstaking and at times tedious work, but far better focused - than trying to memorise two or more octaves of the scale from which only half of that bar has been made.

Not by me, that is for sure.

I tried and failed to flog my pupils through AB scales for years. The higher the grade, the worse their scales became. This is hardly surprising; the hour or so it takes to play through the grade 8 scales list is more than most kids spend practising each day.

About three years ago, I tried Trinity, mostly but not entirely because of the reduced scales component in their exams. Now reincarnated as Trinity-Guildhall, their examination's 'technical' section almost makes sense, with the dramatically reduced scale requirements. Those dinky little exercise\study pieces have proven popular with the kids.

TG scales are not without their insanities, but guess what? Because there are so few scales to learn, the kids are prepared to learn them properly. I felt like a lone voice in the wilderness for years, shouting to the rooftops that a few scales learned properly are far more valuable than a morass of scales learned badly. It turns out that I was not alone.

Nice post Dulciana. It is good to see others questioning the orthodox AB view of scales.

If they are built up gradually and part of the normal practice routine it doesn't get to this state.
I never did anything that felt like endless scale practice and as I've said before if you group them it doesn't really add up to 200 plus scales, just 24 (or 36 if you want to count both versions of the minor separatetly) with some different tricks thrown in. Though at grade 8 it's not all of them.
A soon as you have more than about 4 scales to practice you can start dividing them into groups to practice over 2 or more days so that they are not taking up too large a proportion of practice time.
Once learned I found that grade 8 piano scales could be comfortably covered on half an hour a day by splitting them into 4 groups.

I think that part of my attitude to scale practice cones from the fact that I waited a long time before I was able to have piano lessons and scales were a part of the learning right from the first lesson. Just one of the wonders of learning to play the piano for me really.

That's often the problem I find though. The teacher may have great intentions regarding gradually building up scales etc, but if the student doesn't learn them precisely when asked to you end up with a back log. I find students who have commenced their 'exam life' with me are fine as they are used to my way of doing things (learn any new scales for your grade before you start your pieces, then revise some every week till the exam) but inherited students or just plain stubborn students tend to end up in a knot, trying to learn them all in one go, which as we all know is a disaster!

I think the key is, fewer scales more sensibly chosen and possibly a little study instead. I used the Royal Irish Academy of Music and by grade three they have to have all white key major scales in two octaves, all black key major scales in one and all white key minors on one octave. Its barking! Students end up totally stressed out over it if they haven't practised regularly. And even my good students can be quite bad about their scales!

I've read a lot about the seemingly terrible scale list for grade 8, and it's always made me wonder why it's such a problem

I'm sure plenty will disagree here, but I tend to think if you are at that standard, it should go without saying that you know every key/scale on the piano already? It shouldn't be a case of learning them from scratch, and from what I've read in other threads, it seems that's what is happening. The difference between how many octaves you need to play shouldn't be stressful either. Once you can play 2 octaves, you can play 3 if you want, and then 4. It's not learning a new scale, it just has to go on for a bit longer!

Of course it's maybe easier said than done if you get a pupil who hasn't been used to playing scales, but the AB is likely going on the assumption that scales are an ongoing thing, and by the time you reach grade 8 it's just a matter of polishing them up. If some students are finding they have to "learn" however many hundred scales, well then yes, it will be a lot of work for them, but that's the price you pay for neglecting them in the past?

Goes to hide now

I'm approaching grade 8 at the moment - from a healthy distance - and finding the scales a bind. It isn't simply the ability to play straight scales - of course, hands together in similar motion one octave apart I can play all the scales no problem, any number of octaves. What I object to is having to learn to play them a sixth apart, then in sixths, in contrary motion and the inversions of each arpeggio. Knowing that I am going to be tested on these things under exam conditions and required to play them at a given speed means that even though I know the grade seven scales, I must still practise them and re-learn them in different combinations for grade eight purely for the purposes of getting a good exam result. And to be sure I don't falter or lose my place in the exam, I must practise four octaves - because that is what I will have to do in the exam, and if I have been practising only two octaves there is a chance I might panic under exam conditions. Practising all these variants and making sure they are correct and fast takes considerable time for me - but maybe I'm just slow.

The other reason I object is that it seems pointless - apart from the exam result - and is boring to re-learn the same thing over and over in different combinations. How does testing me on this prove that I am a better or worse pianist/musician?

Urgh!! Have you looked at LCM exams? There's a No-Scales option.

This is the point I've been trying to make for a long time.



Scales in 6ths and 3rds are the fun bit...... takes a littl;e getting into but so good when you get the coordination.
Contrary motion disappears at grade 8 but I did continue to practice them as They were a bit tricky to learn in some keys to start with and I thought that I didn't want to 'lose' them.
Playing over 4 octaves helps you in moving smoothly up and down the keyboard and isn't really any extra bother once you've learnt them that way...... I find it harder to turn round after 2 now...

As for speed, I found that this happened naturally and my normal playing speed for scales was usually at least the minimum for the grade each time. The same with my students.
I agree it can take a while to get them all up and running but if you add on systematically it will come and with some once you have the coordination it helps with the next one.

I guess I think that's a lot of time in a busy day just for scales. Way over my boredom threshold. Sorry.

For the arpeggio inversions, I discovered you don't really have to learn new fingering at all!

Just play the arpeggio as normal, using the normal fingering...except for 1st inversion, finger the first notes of the arpeggio silently, and for 2nd inversion, the first two notes silently. Just as long as you remember to stop on the right note, it works a treat

I'm not practising scales regularly now but I do spend almost that amount of time on some sort of warm up excercises anyway so it's no different.
I found at grade 8 (and still now of course) I needed something like 2 hours a day just to keep on top of things anyway. Much less and things get behind with a minimum of 3 pieces on the go.

A point that we teachers understand well. Getting students to see that can be a very different matter.

The reality is that some students will not learn scales properly. The higher up the piano grades a student travels, the more onerous the demand becomes and so the worse the scale performance of these students becomes.

It seems to me that teachers faced with such students have three options:
1) Not allow the pupil to enter the exam until the scales are fluent. This would certainly cut down on the number of entries.
2) Live with the situation, warning the student of the consequences of continuing to prepare inadequately for a section of the exam.
3) Use a different exam board.

I opted for no 3, except for those both willing to learn the scales properly and wanting to stay with the AB.

I suppose the fourth option is to nag endlessly about the scales. This would be counter-productive with most of the kids I teach.

So is the main purpose of scales to pass exams?

The idea that we all plod through grade after grade, learning the scales as we go, assumes we all learn in the same way, and some of the comments I've read suggest that that is the only way worth learning - given that the emphasis on scales is not so great in some other countries, I think we have to ask ourselves if the original assumption is correct.

Supposing someone came to the keyboard through the jazz route, learning first to play chords, and understanding more about harmonic structure....playing by ear much more too - suppose then that that person decided to learn a bit more about classical repertoire after some years. Technically they might well be able to play music from a more advanced level than the lowest grades, but they might perhaps have to learn a bit more about reading notation (this is all very hypothetical, before anyone jumps down my throat and starts to give a personal story which contradicts this idea) - such a person may well also not have learned the classical scales up to that level, and be facing a long and boring plod through them if they wanted to have a formal assessment of their classical playing level. I first started learning my instrument through repertoire, and, having made a lot of progress in a fairly short timespan, found myself having to do just that - my playing ability massively outstripped my ability to learn scales by rote, it showed in my exam results....and yet I do think of myself as playing at the level I reached in the exams, scales or no scales.

If there is more than one valid way to learn to play an instrument, then I don't see why we are so fixated on only testing ability in one limited way - that is why I like the Trinity approach, with its flexibility and ability to acknowledge achievement, whatever the route taken. I'm not suggesting scales should not be learned at all, but I cannot see the need for so many, and for some of us, they can end up taking away from the pleasure of learning music.

I don't think the main purpose of scales should be to pass an exam. About half of my pupils take exams, but the ones who don't still do scales. If I'm teaching them how to improvise it's easy to expain when referring to their scales, and showing them how to form the chords form those scales etc...

I know lots of people can play well without ever having played a scale, but I still find them useful, especially for sight reading.

Hehe. Possibly they have other uses as well, although I have yet to find one.

Mind, I do not need to improvise often (ignores off-stage catcalls from pupils shouting out things like, "We thought you always made things up as you went along" ). My limited understanding of jazz is that a knowledge of jazz scales is invaluable to improvising jazz musicians, at a basic level. I suppose the same knowledge might help 'classical' pianists to improvise as well. Whether the one in several thousand amateur players whose impro skills are improved by learning badly a couple hundred of scales and arpeggios makes it worth the pain suffered by the rest, is a moot point.

There you go. I have finally found a use for scales. Any of my TG candidates who take the trouble to learn far more scales than they need for their exams will be able to tackle improvisation more easily, should they wish to offer this option in place of ear tests. Sadly the TG ear tests are quite good fun, in so far as it is possible for ear tests to enjoy such a description, so I cannot see any of my bunch turning them down in favour of improvisation. Ah well; life is never perfect.

I'm not even convinced that knowing how to play scales will help improvisation, necessarilly. Now it has to be said here that improvisation is not one of my own fortes so feel free to argue with me - but any really good improvisers that I've known have never done an exam in their lives, let alone play scales. Playing within a particular key is obviously important, but does this come from playing scales, or from experience of those keys in real music, whether improvised or composed? Scales don't tell us what the dominant or the relative minor is either; we just learn them by rote and in isolation. (TG arpeggios in higher grades are a little useful in that respect because of the way they're asked, but they can still be learnt and played without real understanding.)

If scales are supposed to help us learn real repertoire - 'music' - which is surely the aim that we all have in mind, then I'm proof that the opposite is the case. I never played a scale in my life before Grade 8, but I got almost full marks in them then because I knew the keys from having played 'music', and because my articulation was 'crisp, clear and musical' (Quote) I don't know if this would have been the case if I'd spent hours at earlier stages learning to get the notes right in scales at the expense of playing real music. If my touch was crisp, clear and musical, it came from trying to get the right touch in the 'music' that I chose to play. It was a Trinity exam, for the record, with a technical study, scalic in nature and with lots of arpeggiated chords as well as a smaller number of scales than AB. I just felt this suited me better and offered a better learning experience. The only mark I lost, incidentally, was when I thought he said diminished when he actually said dominant. My brain was behind my fingers and his voice registered after three notes, so I restarted.

But my point is to question whether it's necessary - or even helpful, there being only so many practice hours available in a week - to plod through all those scales at every grade, with the only obvious bonus being that 'it won't seem so bad then by (AB) Grade 8'.

For sure, I get your point. I was trying to fight my own nature and express more liberal views regarding scales than those I actually possess. It seems that we could form our own exam board Dulciana, so here is what I really think.

What is important is that people practise. If they want to acquire a repertoire, then they need to practise actual music. Kids can start with the wonderful music composed for them by composers writing within the last 15 years or so; this repertoire holds rich pickings for enquiring young minds, or even older minds.

Later on, if their interest has been sufficiently aroused, they can develop strong finger techniques by playing the music of Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. Romantic composers did not solely compose technically impossible works; there is much in their output that can be played by pianists still at the 'amateur' stage.

Any piano student who has played, say, (for me optionally) a handful of Scarlatti sonatas, a couple of the 48, a sonata or two by each of Mozart\Haydn and Beethoven, the odd Chopin Nocturne and some of the more playable stuff by Schumann and Liszt is ready to move on.

They can move on to: Chopin and Liszt Etudes; some of the less playable 48 and Beethoven sonatas; Rachmaninov Preludes; insanely difficult Romantic works such as the Chopin Ballades. Throw in a few concerti on the way and you have a pretty formidable pianist at the end of this process.

Go through that little lot and the only thing a pianist needs scales for is to pass exams. Of course, they may well be too interested in learning the music to take time out for the exams.

Now there is someone talking sense.

What piano_teacher does not point out explicitly is that Scarlatti, Haydn and Mozart sonatas are absolutely full of short scale passsages and arpeggios so by the time you have learned a few of them you will know most of the scales anyway AND you'll have some pieces you can play. It is more efficient use of time.

Also, the standard fingerings are as often useless in the context of actual music. Where the fingers are coming from, where they have to go next, and the accentation required by the music all combine to require "non-standard" fingerings as often as not.

If you look at the great pianists, some did masssive amounts of scales and other technical exercises to acquire their technique, and others (if their books and biographies are to be beelieved) never did anything but learn and play music. It is not diffficult to learn the scales to pass any particular grade of exam, and if you enjoy doing them then that is fine FOR YOU, but it is not NECESSARY to know the scales to be able to play (well) the pieces at that level. There are many routes to keyboard competence. The problem with the scale requirement of grades 1-8 is that they force everyone down the same one.

I learned all the scales at grade 8, but only because they had to be played to pass the exam. Actually, so far as gaining points goes, they are easy pickings. But these days if I am going to spend my time improving, say, G minor in 10ths (=3rds) I prefer to do it by learning the last page of Chopin's Ballade Op 23. And if I am going to improve my "double" thirds I'll do it with Chopin Op25 No. 6.

Personally, I would be delighted if scales ( arps, contraries, things in 3rds etc) were dropped from the syllabus totally - at least after Grade 5 - and the focus returned to repertoire. Dream on.

I can remember when 4 pieces were required for the higher grades - and a complete sonata at Grade 8. Of course, the aural tests weren't so time consuming then - at Grade 8 these take an enormous proportion of the exam time - but that's another topic.

Yes, if students are motivated, it's possible to get them done without too much hassle. But, at worst, having to prepare an excessive amount can be stressful, de-motivating, time wasting, boring, unmusical, and of highly dubious technical benefit.

What's always sad is to hear of students getting to Grade 8 and then never playing another note on their instrument, so disenchanted have they become by the whole process.

Well, off to practise some Goldberg Variations and Chopin studies - never ending work/pleasure...

I think most of the problem is the way scales are taught by rote and in isolation as Dulciana says. I prefer to teach them in a way that helps pupils understand the theory behind them, the relative majors & minors etc...

There are lots of ways, already described here, of getting a good understanding of key, and scales can form a part of that too. Choosing not to do them is fine and I know plenty of people who don't bother at all.

I wouldn't just plod through them using the AB syllabus as a teaching plan. The AB syllabus comes out when someone wants to take an exam. I certainly don't have it to hand as a guide to what to teach next.

Scales play a part in my teaching, but that's regardless of exam requirements

now there's an exam I might be motivated to take.

re scales and improvising: I can improvise in C#minor because I played moonlight sonata mvt 1 so many million times.
OK maybe only a thousand so far. It won't be long before the same can be said of G# minor (Mussorgsky's Old Castle ).

there's a lot more in the repertoire to help you learn about a key and a scale than ever could be had by going up and down the keyboard a million times. I'm not against learning them and even getting fluent in them, obviously, since I have done that. It's repeating them over and over and over and over and .... after you already know them, and having to change rhythm and dynamics on order not to fall asleep ... hello!!!! why not play music?

Testing so many scales at grade 8 seems like explicitly testing high school algebra in a university mathematics exam.
Yes, you need basic algebra in order to do the more interesting stuff. BUT after a certain point you
no longer explicitly test that basic stuff, because if they get it wrong they get everything wrong anyway so its pointless.
In fact, basic algebra really only improves when it has to be used in context, because when you need it to do something you want to do, you finally wake up and pay attention

I like these replies .

ABRSM, are you listening?

Are they **** Why should they, when they have a massive entry anyway, even with a crazy unmusical syllabus that has hardly changed in over a century.. and when it did was for the worse.
Like the algebra analogy, loops

Yes I can see the logic in that analogy as well

I guess it's horses for courses... Maybe they should only test scales formally up until grade 5, and after that point, it's up to you whether you want to practise them or not? If you find they help your playing then do it, but if it makes no difference then don't?

Personally I'd carry on playing them anyway, but then I'm strange

It would be interesting if they tested the ability harmonise at the piano - i'd be all for it

Not quite on topic, but pleasant to report even so.

I accompanied a grade 6 trumpet player a couple of weeks ago. He failed the scales magnificently and the aural, just.

He gained a merit courtesy of stunning marks for pieces and sight-reading.

So, at least one clued-up examiner with a sense of priorities at the AB.

As someone said it's like a footballer doing kick-ups which are all about control. You are bound to encounter scales in a piece therefore it's necessary to play them accurately and evenly. Scales are also good as warm up excercises, even at concert level, unless you want to warm up with a piece which is possible.