I'm entered for G4 in the coming session but I'm getting worse instead of better, particularly on scales. I don't have any motivational problem with playing scales, and I've been playing my G4 scales ever since I passed G3, over a year ago, and I know them. Or at least I used to know them - lately I've been playing not just the wrong notes but my mind goes completely blank part way up or down the scale and I haven't a clue what comes next It even happens on easy scales that I've been playing for the last 3 years since Grade 1. It's been like this for a few weeks now and I'm starting to panic worry about it... Has anyone else had this, and what to do about it ...

[gentle hugs, if that's ok]

Sorry to hear this. I have phases where I seem to be go backwards too, and all I can say that is that the phase pass and things come all right again. You've got such a lot on your plate with organising the concert as well as all the other things you're no doubt doing, and I wonder whether that's playing a part? I know it's difficult but try to relax, and the scales will come back.

Take care of yourself



Ambs
x

I've had similar experiences and it usually means I've been doing too much and need a break.

The golden rule is to do everything slowly enough so you don't make a mistake, even it if it seems painfully slow. That way, your fingers are still learning - albeit slowly - and this is better than confusing the finger memory by making mistakes. Er... does that make sense?

Anyway, why not take a few days off with no playing whatsoever. Sounds terrifying, but it can help!

I think there have been quite a few threads on the benefits of stopping playing before.


Steve

I've had this (long time ago) and in my case it was because I knew the scales so well that I was on autopilot most of the time and my mind would wander until I suddenly "woke up" part way and didn't know what note to play next.

What my teacher suggested at the time was to play the scales differently in order to force me to concentrate e.g. descending before ascending, cross hands, different rhythm, one hand legato and the other staccato etc. Not sure which instrument you're playing so these may not apply but should at least give you an idea.

Good luck with you G4!

Thanks Amber, hug much appreciated



I'm wondering if you mean doing too much playing or too much generally? And a break from playing or a break generally?

What you've said about playing slowly makes sense. I'm used to playing them relatively fast because normally I know them and can play them quite fast, but under the circumstances I can see that it would be better to slow down again.

My playing usually goes to bits just before the exam.
I agree to slow down a lot.
Are you thinking what the next note is.......G A B C D E F# and so on, or do you just play the pattern?
Bev.

I think you've got a lot on your plate at the moment skylark, with the Leeds concert just round the corner, it's quite understandable if some other things 'go missing'.

Get to the other side of 31st May, and I think you'll be in a better frame of mind, and those scales'll start coming back to you.

Thanks for your support Barry. I suppose I have got quite a lot on my mind at the moment, although thankfully the concert stuff is providing much-needed light relief I'd been planning to get away to Keswick Jazz Festival on Thursday for a few days but I have to stay in Leeds now (there might be a ticket going begging if the person I've offered it to can't use it )



Yes that strikes a chord. I used to think it was a good think to do, to be able to play on auto-pilot without thinking about it, but maybe it isn't so good after all. I think I have been in a rut with the way I play them - because I thought I knew them, I guess I thought I didn't have to concentrate too much and I suppose the chickens are now coming home to roost. So changing the way I play them will probably help, thanks.



I used to think of the notes, but since I speeded up, I can't think of the notes as fast as I can play so I've been playing automatically. So probably I should slow down again then and start thinking of the notes again, at least until I get back to normal

Hi Skylark

I hve had this happen to m on certain pieces of music that I have spent a long time on. My teacher says this can happen when you reach a peak and then go down. This is why she only gets you to do exam pieces about 6 weeks prior to the exam.

When is your exam, do you have time to take a break from the scales and pieces and do something completely different. Then after a break go back to them and I think that you will find that you will be ok again.

ET

The fact that you've thought the comment through, thought of two possible meanings, and asked which, says to me you have a busy head at the moment. So sit down and chill for a bit Have a day or two off from scales

Hi skylark, sorry to hear this.

I have the same problem with my piano pieces for my Grade 7. I have played the pieces so many times, I am now heartily fed up with them. (And I don't sit the exam until the winter!). When it comes to the lesson, they go completely to pot which then leads to accusations of not practising by my tutor.

I think they have reached the point where I know them so well that my mind is racing away from the printed music and I'm playing ahead of what is written. (I have no idea if that makes sense, but hopefully someone will know what I mean!).

It's probably a similar thing with you. And I believe the more scales or a piece is practiced, the worse it gets. Have a break as people have suggested. You do have a lot of stuff going on at the moment. I've told my tutor I am going to have the next four lessons (I have fortnightly lessons) free of working towards exams and focus on pieces I want to play for pleasure. I know you don't have the time scale to do that, but play other pieces apart from exam stuff for a few days. You'll probably find you can play everything better after that.

Good luck with your exam.

It happens to everyone (apparently going backwards) from time to time.

No need to worry. Maybe a short holiday or break would do you some good. Review the way you are working at your music - then carry on practising and studying. You WILL start moving forward agaIN. Have faith.

That made me laugh, thank you

ET, I do feel as if I've been working on these scales for far too long. I'm ready for some new scales, but I daren't start my G5 scales in case I get mixed up in the exam. I'm having a bit of a break from two of my pieces which are fairly secure, and the third piece I only recently starting working on so I'm continuing with that one. The parts of it which I couldn't play well before are improving, but the bits I *could* play well are getting worse :sigh: Having a break is a very scary thing to contemplate And I don't know what my teacher would say if he knew I'd left off practising my scales



Yes I do know what you mean. On the one piece I'm working on, I find I'm sometimes playing the music without actually reading the notes. Like with scales, I used to think that it was good to be playing automatically and it used to work, but now it isn't. I think I'd better slow down and concentrate more



Yes, you get to the stage where you can't see the wood for the trees and this thread has helped me realise what I'm doing wrong. And been reassuring that it's not necessarily the end of the road - I do so want to get to Grade 6 because the pieces for G6 look really enjoyable

It's just something that happens sometimes, so try not to panic

In my grade 7 flute exam, I got about three quarters of the way up a particular scale and stopped dead, with no idea of where I was or where I needed to go next. Its was one that I knew very well, and I was completely bewildered by the fact that it was crashing out. After I came to an abrupt halt in the same place three or four times, the examiner moved on to another scale. I still got 17 for scales and although that was the only serious stuff up, there were slips and stumbles in a few others, so I don't think it brought my mark down by much.

One thing that I've noticed is that the more I panic, the worse things get (and I started to panic quite badly at that point), so if you can somehow try to relax a bit about the scale problem, it might well go away. But even if you have a scale panic in the exam itself, it probably won't be a huge problem. The examiners know that people get nervous in exams and that that can cause a few glitches. As long as it's clear that you're well-acquainted with the scales and generally play them with good technique, the examiner's overall impression of your scales will be OK even if some go off the rails.

All best,
T.

Playing other variations of scales can help with the autopilot situation. My teacher had me playing scales in all sorts of odd patterns.

I often play recorder style down the dominant scales these days, e.g for C major CDEFGABCBAGFEDCBAGABC

Or what we always referred to as running scales (this is going to take a lot of typing) CDEFGABCBAGFEDCDEFGABCDCBAGFED and so on, remaining the same key but starting on a different note, all through one octave, until getting to BCDEFGABAGFEDCBC. For the easiest keys I can still just about manage this marathon in one breath!

Then there's playing in jazz quavers, playing natural minors as well as melodic and harmonics, playing scales in mirror images (so start at the top, work down, and then work back up again) and dozens of others. Obviously, I was playing these on flute, but I'm sure you can adapt and by the time you've puzzled those out, getting back to the normal scales is a breeze!

Best of luck de-muddling, and try to not panic. *more hugs*

Yes that's precisely what's happening to me... it even happened on A Minor recently - A Minor, for goodness sake! Not that A Minor is a G4 exam scale, but I play the non-exam scales regularly as well just to make sure I don't forget them. But it happens on all the scales, and like you say, it's bewildering why it happens when you know you know them



Yes that's exactly how I'm feeling now - I'm almost afraid to play them now because I've got to the stage of *knowing* that they're going to go wrong Which is silly, I know, and I'll take on board the advice on this thread, go back to playing them slowly, thinking about the notes I'm playing, and playing them in different ways more. I used to do this, and I think because I've got so familiar with them, I'd forgotten all the good practice techniques



I haven't tried that one! It sounds as if it needs a lot of thinking about, which is probably what I need so I'll give it a go, thanks!

I had the same problem with my scales a few weeks ago. I started with a new teacher and when she asked me to play the G Major scale I played it in the "autopilot way" I used to practice. At this point she advised me to practice playing the scale louder as it would help develop strength in my fingers..and that's when my scales went to pieces! I was so used playing them in one way that any changes would throw me back. When she then asked me to play the same scales EXTRA slowly I couldn't do it. I could play the scale fast but not slowly...I suddenly was using the wrong fingers!!
There's been some excellent advice in this thread and I would suggest just as a few people have suggested earlier to play your scales much slower and also in different ways. My teacher suggested I should sometimes do them staccato, some other times play using 4 octaves and making every 4th note sound louder (ie in C major - The first C will be loud, D E F will be soft, G will be loud, A B C will be soft etc...).
Even though these scales are not part of the Grade 4 syllabus it has really helped me and when I go back to playing the "normal ones" again I can play them much better and playing the scales in different has brought some fun into playing them..
I'm sure you'll be playing them really well again in no time and that the exam is going to go very well!!!

[quote name='skylark' date='May 7 2008, 11:39 AM' post='695915']
[
ET, I do feel as if I've been working on these scales for far too long. I'm ready for some new scales, but I daren't start my G5 scales in case I get mixed up in the exam. I'm having a bit of a break from two of my pieces which are fairly secure, and the third piece I only recently starting working on so I'm continuing with that one. The parts of it which I couldn't play well before are improving, but the bits I *could* play well are getting worse :sigh: Having a break is a very scary thing to contemplate And I don't know what my teacher would say if he knew I'd left off practising my scales


Hi Skylark

I wouldn't contemplate on moving to Grade 5 scales, but maybe take an evening to go back to the basics. When I get to this point where I feel I am going backwards I do some really easy pieces and scales. I then find when I go back to my problem piece, it is back on the right road again. I think this is partly due to confidence as I flip though these old pieces with ease. When we get problems like you are experiencing it does damage our confidence so not suprising really that we have trouble.

It happens to us all at some point or other.

Good Luck and let us know how you get on.

ET

You could also try doing the scales with different articulations (eg two slurred and two detached and then the other way round, slurred in threes, slurred in fours or with a dotted rhythm).

As most people have said, probably the best thing to do is to take a break though for a few days and I'm sure it will all sort itself out.

I agree - a nice break for a couple of days would probably be good for you.

I just got back from my piano lesson where (a) my pieces were all terrible (awful really) (b) I didn't get a single scale correct first time (even things like C Major!) © I couldn't do a single arpeggio - consistently hit the wrong notes, fell off the end of notes, forgot how many octaves I was supposed to be playing - my teacher summed it all up as a 'train wreck'

So, my teachers order was 'take a break'. I haven't to do anything until the weekend and I've not to work on my pieces at all this week unless it's just playing them really really slowly.

Also, sometimes when you know something really well, your mind does tend to wander a bit and then when you realise this is happening you start to concentrate. However, the act of actually thinking about something that is actually second nature makes you completely loose the plot.

Hope everything starts coming together for you again

Thank you for all your advice and experiences, missypiano, ET, kerioboe and jumper. It makes me feel a bit better knowing that it's happened to other people too, and that it's likely to be just a temporary blip.

I've also realised that I've slipped into some really bad practising habits, so I'm going to do as many of you have suggested and have a couple of days break from it, and then start again with a different practice regime. Thank you everyone

How's it going now Skylark?
Did a bit of a break help things to settle down?

T.

Thanks for asking Teigr. I can't say I'm back to normal yet I'm afraid.... I seem to have lost confidence with it

I take comfort from the fact that it won't last forever though and that eventually it will come back. I guess it takes time, and for everybody it's a different length of time... Hopefully it will come back soon

It'll come back to you skyers.

Easy to say, I know, but don't panic! Take things nice 'n' steady. Quite happy to have a chat to you at Leeds if you're still struggling by then (if you're not up to your ears in organising stuff!).

Yes I must admit, it's difficult not to panic a bit, wondering if/when it will come back. If we get chance, it would be great to have a chat about it at Leeds, thanks

It'll be when, not if skylark.

Oh dear! :-(

But like Barry said, try not to panic. It really does happen to pretty much everyone sometime.



It will. Really it will. Though it's a bit of a Catch-22 situation, because the more you worry about it, the more of a 'block' you'll build up about it, which will make it harder to overcome. I know that it's way easier for the rest of us to say "don't worry" than it is for to actually do! But if you can manage not to fret too much, it should make it easier to get past it. But even if you can't /not/ worry, you'll still get past it.

Sometimes it helps to do something really different, just to prove to yourself that it's not really as horrific as it might seem. When I was doing grade 5 piano I got myself in a real funk about contrary motion minor scales (Bb and F#). I was absolutely convinced I couldn't get my brain or my fingers round them. Then one day I was doing organ practice in church and on a whim tried some of my piano scales and they weren't nearly as bad as they were on the piano, even though I'm a lower grade on organ. Having proved that I /could/ get through them, I practiced them more thoroughly on the piano and they started to come together fairly well in the end. (I had a fairly general "I can't play the piano" thing going for a few weeks - the scales were just the worst symptom of that - but I didn't have a block like that about the organ, which is why that worked.)

I don't think I'd advocate trying your clarinet scales on the sax, as there's scope for mixing up the fingering patterns there, but I'm sure you can think of some other way of helping get around the block by doing something a bit different.

Having an exam looming when things aren't going right is always worrying, but I've had times where things seemed really bad very close to an exam but then came together in the last few days. Better that than have everything peak too early, so by the time you get to the exam you're bored of everything and lose the 'edge' from your playing.

T.

The way I look at it is with the added stress exams cause, you can never be note perfect unless you walk into an exam not thinking it's an exam (or dosing up on valium first , so don't stress about achieving the ultimate performance and that should help you to relax or at least stop the panic. If you play what you think is note perfect during home practice and then muck up at a lesson as always happens with me, it's usually that I haven't realised I was actually making the same mistakes at home such as speed or tone or even just the simple change in environment (for the drivers out there, how many times have you 'auto-piloted' driving to work, knowing when to brake, 'seeing' a problem up ahead etc and then driven somewhere different and made really daft mistakes like changing lanes without using mirrors or indicators etc?! Also I've found (and been told by my teacher) if I play the same thing over and over and over again then of course you're going to play it incorrectly and it's those inaccuracies you're going to concentrate on and not the other bits you've got right.

What I find helps is going back to playing easier stuff I know I've played before ok just to calm myself down - not exam stuff. Even just spending a practice playing long notes at different dynamics (which really doesn't need concentration on technique just listening & breath control). If you're at grade 5 standard, have you unearthed the earlier grades in the previous/new syllabus and tried studying it/sight reading it for a day or two? That's almost like a break but at least you're still practicing something.

Hi Skylark

Have you tried going back to playing your easy pieces and working back up gradually. When I get to the point with my piano where I feel like I am sinking, I go right back to the first pieces that I started with and work upwards. This really does help, and by doing this I have also renewed my confidence.

Relax and enjoy your music witout the pressure of the work for the exam.

On another front, do you think that you may be trying to tackle too much at the moment as I know that you have recently got your sax? I am sure that you are not but it could be that you are burning yourself out and what you need is a rest.

Take care. Thinking of you.

ET

Thank you for your encouragement everybody. I had a lesson tonight and spent the time on aural, which was good because it had been building up in my mind that whatever I played tonight would go horribly wrong. So it's taken the pressure off me a bit and hopefully by next week, things will have started to improve. I'll play some easier things as some of you have suggested, and more long note practice will be good too.

A slight digression on the sax position... I haven't touched my sax since I knew I was definitely doing my clarinet exam this session, and I won't be doing anything with it until after my exam. My clarinet tone isn't very good at the best of times so I don't want to run any risk of making it worse before my exam. I'm waiting for a teacher to contact me back with a view to me having sax lessons during the school holidays, which suits both of us because he's busy during term time (he's a school teacher), and from my point of view, I think it will work quite well to alternate my clarinet and sax lessons during term/holiday time. I don't mind waiting for my sax lessons - my clarinet is the most important and I'll only fit my sax in if I'm on track with my clarinet, which at the moment I'm not!

I feel a bit better about it tonight though, so I'll keep my fingers crossed

So pleased to hear that you are feeling better about things, fingers crossed by next week you will be back on track. What a great idea about doing the sax in the holidays, sounds like that could work out fine.

ET

Here are a couple of suggestions for useful things to do if you have your exam scales in a book, or perhaps on a reference sheet, as written music.

First go to the chromatic scales. Is there a particular note on the instrument that you usually seem to be able to play with your best tone? See if it's in one of your chromatic scales. If it's in more than one choose the one where furthest from either end. Work very slowly up the scale starting on that note. If that's note 1 play it fairly long with the best tone you can manage, then slur from note 1 to note 2 and hold that. Did note 2 come out sounding as good as note 1? Was there a really smooth join between them with all the fingers working really well together? If no, try again. If yes, do the same from note 2 to note 3. If you get frustrated or bogged down, leave it. Next time you practise start from your best note again and do the same thing going downwards. Over a period see if you can "carry" that best tone to all the other notes, step by little step.

I know you have to play the scales etc. from memory for the exam, but I always like to encourage people to go back to the written version of them regularly because keeping in touch with what they look like feeds very usefully into sight-reading. Huge swathes of Western classical music are made up of little bits and pieces of scales and arpeggios (or sometimes whopping great big bits and pieces in composers' less inspired moments ) , so it's good to recognise them by sight as old friends. Again play them slowly and slurred, with the best tone you can manage, and giving the joins between notes your full attention, stopping to tidy them up if necessary. Vary the dynamics. Perhaps play one pp crescendo to ff, breathing as necessary but seeing if you can pick up the crescendo at exactly the level you left off.

I hope you can invent a new regime that helps you to feel better, perhaps developes things in a slightly different way, holds your interest.

Best wishes to all concerned for a very enjoyable concert. Sorry that one's too far from home for me!

This is the sort of thing my teacher has me doing.
She describes it as all the notes coming from the first one.
I do 'zip' excercises like this (though not very zippy yet) useing both scale and arpeggio patterns.
I call it joined up breathing.

That sounds like a really good exercise, and yes some of my lower notes are not bad so I can start with those.



Point taken.


Thanks for your advice and good wishes, much appreciated

Yeah, I always end up on autopilot and totally losing track if I suddenly start thinking about it.
You should leave your scales for a few days and concentrate on something else.
Or try writing out the scales then you have to think about them properly, that would remind you of them.

I usually learn other things by writing them out but I would never have thought of doing it with scales. Thanks for that, I'll try it!

This will probably incur the wrath of most music teachers, but it's something that works for me....

I sometimes think about scales-as-played rather differently from scales-as-written. I would definitely caution against this for anyone who didn't understand how scales are constructed, as it would undermine their study of music theory. But for anyone who's already got a solid grasp of the underlying theory but chooses to think about things a bit differently for a few scales when actually playing them, I don't think it's so bad.
So I think of some of them using enharmonic equivalents, which gives me things like D F F# or Bb B C#, which is utter nonsense as far as theory goes but which helps me get my fingers round them.

You've already got your grade 5 theory, so you know the rules well enough to be able to break them sometimes if you find it helpful to do so.

I also learn some scales with my own label for them, rather than the one given in the syllabus. So I learn C sharp major rather than D flat major, and A flat minor rather than G sharp minor. (I practice woodwind scales in sets, so having an entire set that starts on C sharp or A flat is easier for me to keep track of. Also, I prefer 7 sharps to 5 flats, as I really don't like flats.)

T.

I don't do this on the piano but I do on the oboe (or perhaps I should say "did" as I am doing it less and less). The one thing I have continued doing (which my teacher disapproves of because he says it's a pianist's way of doing things) is to practise scales which start on the same note rather than major and relative minor. (ie I will play C major and then C minor whereas he recommends C major and then A minor). Also, this being France, he strongly disapproves of me playing scales without the music. For him one of the most important things about playing scales is that you learn to associate the written pattern with the finger pattern.

I don't do it on keyboards either - there I tend to think in visual patterns more than in note names anyway.
If I'm badly stuck on a woodwind scale, I'll sometimes play it over a few times first on a keyboard just to remind myself of what's in it. My recorder teacher was slightly bemused when I needed to do this in a lesson earlier this term.

Woodwind, I usually do them in sets of everything that starts on the same note - major, both minors, chromatic, major and minor arpeggios and dominant and diminished 7ths. Keyboards I tend to do them one type at a time, starting on all (or all required) notes, either starting on C and moving up chromatically, or starting on C and working round the circle of 5ths.
In both cases, my scales are at a level where I have to play most/all of the normal ones and a bunch of extra bits, so it's easier to keep track by doing them in sets or types. For the lower woodwind grades I just had a list of what I needed and went through it in various orders (typically either by type or working up the instrument). For the higher grades I often include scales I don't need to know for the grade, as it's easier than trying to keep track of which ones I don't need and I'll need to learn them all eventually anyway.

T.

I tell my piano students to practice scales in related pairs like that as I think it's a good way to push home the connection of same key signature.
I used to practice piano scales that way but not after I knew related keys easily.

Yep, and mine would probably be one of them! So I probably wouldn't dare do what you suggest Teigr, but if it works for you, it might work for others who see your suggestion