hi, i've got a grade 5 tennor sax. exam on the 27th march. I am having some trouble remembering the following scales:
F minor
F# minor and
Ab major

any suggestions on remembering them???
Dx

Try improvising on just a few notes at a time taken from the scale eg 123, then 12345, then 678, then whole lot. Keep playing around with lots of short phrases and different rhythms - its a good way to fix the notes in your head.

It's mainly the key signatures which present the problem.
David.

well, find the relative majors of f and f# minor by going three semitones up (f minor--->A flat and f# minor --->A major) and if you know these key signatures, they are same in the minor but just making the 7th note higher (e.g. f minor will have an e natural).

As for the A flat major? remeber it as this: tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone.

Hope this helps!

The only thing i find helpful is just playing them again and again until they stick.

A technique you could use is playing them using a dotted quaver followed by a semiquaver rhythm all the way up, and then switching it so the semiquaver comes first. This helps to think about the notes more as well.

oh and sing the notes to yourself all day

like ''f g a'' all the way up.


Hope this helps, i hate scales and everything to do with them when i have to learn them.. yet when i play them for fun i love them!

well if you break the scales in to about 5 notes and just play it contiuously, and do it with the rest of the scale your fingers will remember the notes so you wont have to
like for e.g. Bb major

Bb C D Eb F and down again

good luck! hope i was helpful

My daughter has devised a way to remember scales almost forever and that entails practising the scale adding one note each time (A, B; then A, B, C; then A, B, C, D, etc.) and so on ascending and descending. It takes a long time but - or precisely because of this - you remember the scale very well after a few days.
Best,
John

I have just done my violin grade 3 and trying to remember the scales was really hard. In the end I missed a few of the scales she asked me to do.

But i remembered some of them by asking people to ask me what the scales consisted of and trying to remember and there is another way and it old school but it look cover write check or look cover play check.

Serious it is really good and you do start to remember them.

Good Luck