I've always had a problem recognising* scales/arps when I see them written. Because we have to play scales from memory for exams, that's the way I always learn/play them, and I've always had a mental block about playing them from the page in case it affects my memorisation of them. Yes, I know it's and that's why, now that my G4 exam is over and done with, I'm going to do something about it.

So I've been trying to read familiar scales from the scales book. When I do that, there is no connection for me with the scale that I've memorised It's like they're in different "boxes" in my mind. Can anyone else relate to this problem... and does anybody have any ideas as to how to get over it?



* Edit: "recognising" in the sense that although I can see the pattern, I don't go automatically into the fingering for that scale

I get confused every time I look at scales on a page too. But then I don't really memorise them either; I learned to play scales/arpeggios by ear as a kid, so my brain/fingers(?) "think" in terms of what the next note should sound like and not what it looks like or what note it actually is.

Sorry, no solution here. I wonder, though, why you feel the need to sight read scales?

You should come and live in France.
My oboe teacher was appalled at the idea of playing scales from memory and insisted that I buy a scale book and play from that.

What you might like to try is to write your own scale book. For his more advanced students he has one that one of his own teachers made where you have the same scale but going up one note at a time. So in C major you play:
C D E F G A B C D,
C B A G F E D,
E F G A B C D E
D C B A G F E
And so on all the way up the clarinet. Much to his disapproval I do this without the music as he says doing it with the music means that you will be able to instantly recognise any scale passage (composers having the annoying habit of not starting on the keynote ).

I always learned scales from memory but never had trouble recognising a scale or arpeggio (or part of one) when it occurs in a piece. Maybe I just always saw a natural link between the practical and theory as I don't remember being taught this?

I've got a book of exercises which presents scales as kerioboe has described. It's very good though the first time I tried it, it was a nightmare. The first one in the book is G Major - I was OK on the 'first' scale, but doing G Major starting on A threw me a bit.

But, ha ha, just realised the book is by Mario Duschenes - Canadian! So perhaps it is a French thing

Same here. Because I concentrate on jazz I try to use written prompts as little as possible, but when I look at a wriiten piece of music I'll quite often pick out bits - "Oh that looks complicated, but it's just a whole-tone scale starting on E" for example. When I play scales/arpeggios/scale patterns, even tunes I find that more and more I'm thinking of them in terms of the note numbers (3rd, 5th, 7th etc) - it certainly helps in being able to transpose them quickly into different keys, I'm not sure if it also helps in recognising the various patterns when they occur in written music.

Me too, generally, sometimes I have a panic is a sclaic passage looks complex but it is usually only a problem - if it is a problem - when actually sight-reading.

Personally I think there is value both in memorising scales and in learning them from the page, and I think it is great skylark that you have gone "hmmm, I have a problem with this" and are trying to do something about it.

Kerioboes book (argh, sorry, for some reason today I cannot do apostrophes on my keyboard, apologies for the bad grammar there!) sounds like a great way of learning to recognise scale passages in different contexts other than "starting and ending on tonic and being a round number of octaves!"

Unless you're playing from music with lots of accidentals and no key signature, for normal keys you don't have to recognise scalic passages at sight because (apart from the odd # or b in minors) all scalic runs are written with no accidentals. All you have to do is remember what key you're in (or more importantly, what fingering you need for the notes). I think it also helps if you read music more in terms intervals and shapes rather than single notes (eg. run down from Db to Ab in Ab major,rather than Db, C, Bb, Ab).

Scalic passages are generally written without the sharps or flats of the key signature even in scale books, as they use key signatures too. So (IMO) learning to read them for the page is no bad preparation for reading them in "real" music.

Thank you everybody for your thoughts and comments.


Maybe sightread isn't quite the right term.... I mean that even with music that I'm learning, my eyes/brain/memory/fingers don't make the connection between what I'm seeing on the page and a scale that I know from memory, so sections that should be easy because they're just scalic runs, are no easier for me than any other section. Since so much music is made up of scale/arp runs (even if they don't start on the keynote), it would be much easier (particularly in, say, semiquaver runs or a fast piece) to go into automatic mode for the scale (which I can do from memory, but not when reading). If that makes sense


I see the sense in this, but I must admit it sounds a bit daunting I'm not sure I'm ready for this, but I'm going to print it out and keep it for when I'm more advanced.




Is that the book written for recorder players? Did you get used to doing it in the end, and would the exercises transfer to other instruments?



That's the problem


Yes you're right... and again this is the problem. Even if I *saw* Db to Ab in Ab Major (rather than Db, C, Bb, Ab which I confess I do at present), my brain/fingers wouldn't go into Ab Major mode. I don't make the connection, even though if asked to play the relevant scale from memory, I would be able to do it

It also bears a strong resemblance to Taffanel and Gaubert's EJ4 for the flute, although the flute version is 9 notes up followed by 7 notes down. So it does look like a French thing!

I tend to suggest people learn scales from memory, but play scale exercises from the score. That way both skills are developed. For players from Grades 1-5 level, Paul Haris's Improve Your Scales is an excellent resource.

I used to play scales from memory and that's what i still do. However it's not difficult to recognise key signatures in a piece. what i learnt is that all majors with a sharp start with an f sharp. Then work your way in counting in fives till you reach the note before the key signature you're working. ex. D major it is Fsharp (count 5) Csharp (note before the D) and stop. So key sig for a D major is Fsharp C sharp. If your working for a B Major it's Fsharp, Csharp Gsharp Dsharp Asharp. Always count in fives for majors with sharps. For majors with flats, you count in fours, you reach the note of the key and add another flat. ex. e flat e flat major is bflat, (count 4) eflat and add another flat is aflat. That's how i recognise them.

I've got the Grades 1-3 book but I confess I've never used it much. I've just got it out and read the first line of the introduction... "Have you ever realised that it is much easier to learn something if you want to?" I guess I didn't want to do it *enough* when I got the book (OK, let's face it, I didn't want to do it at all ), but now I've seen the light and I do want to do it, so I'll make one of my projects for the summer break Thanks for recommending it.

My teacher has me using the 2nd book for excercises/studies.

Haven't got entirely used to it yet due to not doing anywhere near enough (any?) practice But it did become less "freaky-weird" quite quickly.

It was a specifically recorder book. There's one for descant/tenor, and one for treble. But it was also last in print about 40 years ago, I happened to find mine in a charity shop

Hi, I'm an adult learning the flute. I had lessons a couple of years ago, but never learnt scales. Then had to stop playing cos of ill-health. Now I'm starting again. I want to teach myself scales. So far I can only play C major (yeah anyone can do that one). I don't want to tie myself to sightreading them as I couldn't play without a score last time. I do have flash cards I can use, but obviously they're not ordered as a book would be. How do you know which scales to do 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc?
Thanks

Two remarks. First of all not all scalic runs are written without accidentals. When the piece is modulating into a different key you may very well have a run of notes with accidentals which does not correspond to the key signature and in more modern music you have it all the time.

Second, this is where I think piano playing differs from woodwind playing. With the piano you are right, you just have to remember which sharps (or flats) you need and play the corresponding keys. The fingers you choose to put on each key will depend on the notes which come before and after the scalic passage. With a woodwind instrument such as the oboe (and I think the clarinet is "worse") you have alternative fingerings for some of the notes and the combination of fingers you choose to produce a particular note depends on the note before (not usually a problem) and the note afterwards (ie you only realise once you have played the note and are about to play the next one that you should have chosen a different fingering). If you can recognise a scale passage and know the scale well then your fingers will automatically choose the correct fingering.

It can be very hard to train yourself out of automatic fingering on woodwind instruments. I have no problem recoginising scalic passages and play scales from memory (although when I first started scales on the oboe I had to visualise the piano keyboard in my head before playing the scale on the oboe). In a piece I played a couple of months ago there was a two octave run starting and finishing on D but with a C natural. Intellectually I realised immediately that it was in fact a G major scale starting and ending on D but it took me literally hours to train myself out of automatically fingering C#, D in the top octave (this being a rather awkward cross-fingering which I had spent some considerable time training myself to do in the first place). My teacher's exercise of playing the scale starting on each note is to try and get the fingers to memorise all possible combinations of fingering starting on any given note.

Skylark, the problem with using a book written for another instrument is that it won't cover the complete range of the clarinet. It occurred to me afterwards that the example I gave in C major for the clarinet wasn't really a good one as C is not the bottom note on the clarinet. You would either need to start it on E (I think that's the lowest note isn't it?) or start on C, go up to the highest note you play, come back all the way down to E and then go up to C.

It looks complicated described in words but if you have the music it shouldn't be too hard. After all you don't have to play it fast to start with. It wouldn't take that long for you to write a scale out this way using Finale (or Sibelius or whichever programme you have).

I was actually talking about recorder (and other woodwind) rather than piano, but I didnt make this clear, so sorry for any confusion. For me, fingering goes out the window in scalic passages in piano music, so I just take it as it comes and hope it goes ok . When i said 'or more importantly, what fingering you need for the notes', that was including the different fingerings used for particular notes in particular keys. So i guess my point was to have in mind the key it's in and its fingerings while playing.

You do have a point though about when there's a modulation.

Yes but this is still not necessarily true for oboes and clarinets when you have alternative fingerings for the same note. To give an oboe example, I have two possible fingerings for F natural (some oboes have 3) the more awkward fingering (forked F), which also has a slightly different tone-colouring compared to "normal" F, has to be used if the F is before or after a D, E flat/D# or D flat/C #. You could just decide that if you have more than 2 flats in the key signature that you will always use the forked F but you will then end up using it unncessarily; being able to recognise a modulation helps to choose the correct F fingering.

Also the point remains that if you are just practising scales starting and ending on the key note then there is a tendency to automatically go into the fingering for the scale of the key that starts on that note (hence my example of two octaves of G major, starting and finishing on a D).

I'm just relearning all my treble recorder scales, and I'm using a scale book and my ears.

Theoretically I know what notes go in each scale, but I am an aural/visual learner so having the dots infront of me helps.

Of course this is an aide memoire and I will memorise them as I think of scales on a woodwind instrument as a series of intervals that have to be played in tune, as is the case with arpeggios, dominant sevenths and diminshed sevenths, but the book does help to start with.

It is very dependent on how you think, and the type of learner you are. I need the book, because the kinaestheic bit is just there as confirmation, it is the aural bit that is dominant, and the visual bit that imports the information.

I can see the sense in doing this and I've got Sibelius so it's not a problem, but I thought I'd start off with working through the "Improve you Scales" book. It's really weird - I've gone right back to the beginning with F Major and I know in one of the exercises it's an arpeggio, but it doesn't mean anything to me until I switch my brain to "picturing" it as a I do when I play from memory, and it's only then that I "recognise" it. I have a feeling this is going to take a long time...

forgive my saving some posting space by editing a little.
I think you make such excellent points, Kerioboe about these things.

Saxophone is about as bad for different fingerings - at least 4 fingerings for Bb ...

Your comments about a scale of G but beginning and ending on D implies that we should not think only of scales but also of modes all the time we are playing these sequences of notes (I wanted to avoid the word 'scale'!) Am I right that it was the Mixolydian of G you had to play?
This ties in with your teacher's plan to play in each/any key starting on every note is such a good idea. It's probably also good to start scales at the top, come down and finish at the top. Or start in the middle...

I heard a sax learner saying he had been advised to play his scales by starting on Bb (lowest note on the sax) - up to the top of the range - then come down in B... go up in C.... etc
Then you do it all over again but starting on B ... so that the pattern is changed! Excellent and Exhausting mental Exercise! Apparently Sonny Rollins still does this after years and years of playing - he's got it down to a few minutes!!

I think Trevor Wye, in one of his excellent books about flute playing, says you should use the whole range of the instrument otherwise it is wasted!

Another great point Kerioboe: "you don't have to play it fast to start with" - so true, but we are often tempted to speed up and what happens then?

I don't think I'd see this as a negative thing.
I think all you need here is to learn to trust yourself and lose the gap where you 'convert' from one way of thinking to another.
I've not done enough scale/arpeggio work on clarinet for the automatic to start to kick in yet but if I slow down my thinking this is pretty much how it works for me on piano.

Welcome to the Forum Liridona.

My teacher encourages me to order my scales practice according to the number of sharps or flats in the scale, so after C major you might go for G major (one sharp), then D major (two sharps) etc. And/or F major (one flat), Bb major (two flats) and so on. Scale tutoring books also seem to work along more or less similar lines. Don't forget the arpeggios along the way

You might do well to get yourself a scales book - there are several to choose from and most of them are much more interesting than simply stating the notes on a stave. For example, when I started I had a book called "Funky Scales for Clarinet" published by Chester Music (they probably do a flute version). As well as exercises it had tunes based on the scale/arpeggio just learnt and there was even a CD accompaniment, though I confess I have never used the CD myself. It is meant for children, but even as an adult it makes for more interesting practice than just endlessly running up and down.

Enjoy!

I start by learning my scales in the order of the number of sharps/flats in the key signature but then move onto flash cards and a random order to see how much I really know. I avoid looking at the music at all and just go with the key signature and think through the letters in my head. G-A-Bflat-C-D-Eflat-Fsharp-G But that is partly because my main reason for learning them is to pass an exam I think it may be better for your sight reading to look at the music.

I also like the idea of what SaxFan said about playing a scale across the whole range of an instrument instead of just 1 octave/2 octaves etc. I can see that working for me.

I am a very adult adult also learning the flute and when my teacher said a couple of months ago that I needed to learn some scales for my exam in July, I thought it was going to be a piece of cake, taking into account the many years I have been playing the piano. I was truly horrified to find that I couldn't even play simple scales like D major or F major. I just had a mental blockage even after a few notes of the scale.

The first piece of advice was to slow down! I was trying to play them at my piano playing speed - disaster! The second piece of advice was to follow that given above and do them in the order of numbers of sharps and flats for both major and minor keys. Well, progress was still very slow, so I had to sit down quietly and analyse the problem. This turned out to be that quite simply I always (correctly or not) played piano scales looking at my hands, so it was not the sequence of notes I had memorised but the pattern of fingering on black and white notes. Not being able to see my hands on the flute (at least, not without developing a very severe squint) I had nothing to look at.

I then tried playing from the AB book of scales, but sadly this did not work for me. I also tried saying out loud the sequence of notes before playing a scale and this started to help. But there were two things that were the biggest help for me. The first was to make a mental picture of what my fingers were actually doing on the flute when seen from someone standing just behind my right shoulder. Using this, I started to see in my mind the sequence of fingering, particularly across awkward fingering such as in the upper register. I also began to recognise little events, such as the way the right hand fingers seem to make a little rocking motion when playing the last two notes of F sharp minor. Similarly, the patterns for the arpeggios started to emerge.

The second biggest help was when my teacher lent me the two Paul Harris books "Know Your Scales" and "Improve Your Scales" because I started to notice the use of notes within the scale as I played pieces sometimes for the first time in certain of the key signatures. Incidentally, these two books also helped with my sight reading practice.

Finally, when things started to get much better, I went for the random order approach, also mentioned before. I found I could play all the scales reasonably well in the order on my practice sheet, but when my teacher called out one at random, I still went to pieces. My method was not to make flash cards, but to record myself speaking as an examiner would - "A minor scale, tongued" or "B flat major arpeggio, slurred". There are 62 combinations for Grade 4, and it was a bit of a nuisance recording every one, but when I had 62 short files, I put them all into Windows Media Player, turned on the Shuffle feature, and hey presto - my own voice was telling me which one to play. I recorded my score each time (3 for playing it perfectly first time, 2 for second time and 1 for third time. Any more attempts scored zero) and managed to get up to the 90% level a week before my exam.

The exam result was 17 out of 21 which was miracle compared with what it would have been a few months ago.

I hope you may find some of these ideas, along with those of the other posters, helpful in your quest to deal with scales.

Hi Liridona, and welcome to the forums - sorry for the late reply!

I'm just a student myself so this might not be the right advice, but I would think you wouldn't go far wrong if you go by the scales which the ABRSM allocate to each exam grade. So for G1 they ask you to learn, say, F Major and G Major, one octave, and then for G2 they add in D Major, and at some point they ask you to learn two octaves etc. If you have a look at the syllabus, you'll see what I mean. The syllabus is online via the main AB site and you can download a PDF from this page.



That's a really interesting post gedall40. I've never heard of anyone recording "random scales" like that and I can see that it would simulate the exam situation really well.

I found what you said about watching your fingers interesting because I've just started learning piano so I'm doing it the other way round to you - I'm used to not seeing my fingers because my first instrument I'm learning is clarinet. It's something I'll have to be aware of now that I'm learning piano.

Thanks for posting that.

That's a great idea, gedall40 - think I'll try it for my cello scales.

You are welcome, but I should add that it may not be a good idea to watch your fingers playing scales as I do on the piano - my accompanist said that she does not allow her pupils to do this! Good Luck anyway, Skylark.

Do let me know how you get on with it, Suepea ( ) If you are not comfortable with, or not able to record your own voice or even that of someone else, then my teacher suggested using some photograph display software which puts on the screen a picture for a number of seconds in a slide-show. You could create a slide for each scale and arpeggio and use the random display feature for that. I have to say though that I preferred hearing a real voice, even if it was my own, because as Skylark says, it does simulate the exam situation very well.

Gedall40 your scale idea sounds really good, thanks for sharing it.

My way of making my scale practice random is to have a spreadsheet with all the scale combinations on it, and shuffle that randomly before working down the list in batches.

Rather than points for right first time etc, I use the next column of the spreadsheet to record what kind of mistakes I made ( for example, hesitation, using descant fingerings on a treble recorder, wrong kind of minor scale, wrong articulation, stopping a chromatic scale in the wrong place, wrong range of scale). I then go back and redo all the "non-blank" scales, noting again any mistakes made the second time through. And so on until I've got no scales with a mistake in them.

I do this process for around 20 scales/arpeggios at a time. Then once those are cleared, that's the end of one practice. Next practice I take the next 20 on the list and do the same.....

Once I've got to the end of the list, I shuffle it to start the process again.


The thing I found most useful from this was that I could see what particular mistake I was making most often, and could address that problem.

This has been on my mind for the last couple of days because it's made me think about an analogy with the way in which I use a calculator, if that doesn't sound too odd. I can use a calculator quite fast - as long as it's my own - and although I don't have to think about the individual buttons as I'm doing it, I do have to take in the overall picture of the calculator... I can't do it while I'm looking at something else like some people can. I'm not quite sure what conclusion to draw, but possibly that I've to be wary about looking at my fingers as I'm playing, although I've read that watching your hands as you play the piano is one of the ways in which a piece can be memorised. Hmmm....