73/ Because it helps with the fast movements in concertos.

74 Helps keep your fingers flexible and keep the dreaded arthritis at bay.

Develop quick reactions - then you can duck!!!


75 - it gives more of the piano a thorough workout....... (so it's good for your instrument, not just your fingers....... )

76 Because it's the best way of shutting up a howling dog that wants to go for a walk when you don't.

77/ It improves aural skills

78 Because a hard-pressed adult learner with a full teaching schedule can spend 20 minutes of a piano lesson playing scales before it becomes apparent she's not had time to practise any of the pieces.

79/ It helps develop breath control

80) because they are a good way of warming up. You can do slow scales for long tones, quick scales for dexterity etc. etc.

81/ because they bring new meaning to the concept of boredom...

82/ You can increase your pain threshold
83/ You can increase your boredom threshold
84/ You can make your neighbours hate you even more!
85/ You can understand the misery of bell ringers who have a new recruit
86/ You can experience the pain of suicide, without actually dieing!

87) Want to play every note on the clarinet? Play a chromatic scale!

87 / Because you can annoy other people by bragging about your extraordinary scalic prowess!

88/ Because if you know your scales well, you can use them when learning how to pedal without having to think about anything else other than pedalling

89/ So that you can sightread better.

90. Because the rhythmic consistency of them is relaxing.

91. Because it gives you more choice of which exam board to use.

92. Because you'd look pretty stupid if you went for an audition and it came to light that you couldn't play a scale.

93. Because if you're a student wanting to do ABRSM exams, you wouldn't be very impressed if your teacher didn't know the correct fingerings for the scales.

94. Because not doing the ABRSM exams because you didn't want to practise scales might affect your opportunity to become an ABRSM examiner should you so wish in the future.

95. Just 'coz! (do you need a reason; existentially that is?)

96/ So that you can practise collapsing your left wrist to start the left hand of a scale....

97) Because if you know them, when everything else is not going to plan and you've got to the point at 1am where you've convinced yourself that you can't play anything well, at least you can rattle off some scales and tell yourself that at least you can play something !

^ I can identify with that!



98. Running through some familiar scales is a good way of winding down after the intensity of practising pieces.

Nearly there!

Do you wind down? I run screaming from the room if things have gone badly....

99/ Because you can enter an trance-like state watching your hands moving up and down the keyboard as if they belong to someone else entirely

100/ to remind yourself how beautiful your instrument can sound.

Back to you for no. 101 Dulciana?!

I agree the OP should be given the opportunity to do 101, but if you can't think of another one Dulciana, I'm sure some of the rest of us could keep going

We had two 87s - so we are already at 101 ...

Can I add a Coda then


A. Because when you first start learning the piano, you can get a huge sense of achievement by playing delicious-sounding scales even when you can't yet play a piece

Please please don't tempt my teacher, he could easily fill a 1x60 minute lesson on C major scale, or any other scale, not to mention things like whole tone scales, dominant/diminished sevenths...

Okay - 101/ To check if you're sober enough to drive....

Do we go onto B now with Skylark's coda, or do we go to 102?

Yours is 102 Dulciana! Judith above said there were two at 87 so we'd already reached 101... had you better go and do a scale to see if you're sober???

I teach JudithJ and she is VERY Good At Big Sums so I trust her on this one...

Now the scales have finished, anacrusis can breathe a sigh of relief, and can we go on to some proper, pleasant, unboring, real music please?

For someone who professes not to like scales, you seem to spend an awful lot of time talking about them - you're the second highest poster in this thread and the top poster in the other current scales thread

Methinks the lady doth protest too much

My aversion to scales is what drives me to post, in the face of so much toeing-the-line about the only officially accepted way to learn music, to point out that there are other ways to learn, which can still produce results.
I do accept that all musical achievement requires hard graft and sustained effort over a prolonged period of time, but I'd rather focus my efforts on putting in the hard graft where the actual output is, ie music itself. I will make up little exercises to get round complicated passages, more relevant to them directly than any scale, arpeggio or Hanon-equivalent technical exercise, and doing that has a positive knock-on effect for the rest of my music, so I'm not losing out doing it my way: arguably I'm saving a bit of time in fact. I'd just like to share with other scales-averse musicians that there are other valid approaches - it depends what you want your music for, of course: but in my case, and probably for most musicians, if we're honest, it's there for pleasure, a bit of intellectual stimulation, and a point of contact with other humans....and scales don't do any of those three things for me.
Plus, the thread was started in a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek vein, and it amused me that I was well placed to join in with that. I maintain the thread would have been a lot more boring if there hadn't been one or two maverick contributions.

If that's the case, why not start a helpful thread - not everybody spends their time reading threads about a subject that they can't stand, so many scales-averse members may have missed any valid contributions in this respect that you may have made.


That's fair enough - we can't all like the same things, any more than we can all have the same sense of humour. But for some people - many people, in fact - scales *are* pleasurable and intellectually stimulating. To some extent they even provide "a point of contact with other humans", even if it's only chatting about them online. There again, not everybody wants contact with other people. Each to their own, and just because *you* can't see the beauty in scales - any more than you can see other people's humour - doesn't mean that others don't get pleasure out of them or find them musical, or indeed that they're not intrinsically beautiful and musical and you just can't hear it.


Yes, I agree, some of the other contributions have been amusing in a good-natured way. Perhaps I just don't understand why you feel the need to try and sound superior to people who do like scales whenever the subject crops up in this thread or others.

I was going to send a reply by pm, however your inbox is full.

It could have been me writing this.

I have enjoyed reading this thread. Thanks to the more humorous contributors for the giggles.

I haven't read all of this thread but I think that one rather good reason for knowing and practising scales would be so that we, as teachers could name degrees of the scale correctly.

I am lucky enough to have lots of practice time. If I could practice only an hour or two a day I would do very few scales.

Hmmmm. Not entirely sure a teacher should need to practise scales to be able to do this.

Indeed!

Its not good when some dont know about leading notes..

I suppose that we all get mental blocks at the end of a busy week though. I certainly do, but I tend to consult a book rather than post here where my pupils may read it.

Phew, thank you for that. I was beginning to think that the request to go and play in someone else's sandpit might have to be taken seriously .

No it isn't full - I put you on "message ban" after the rude and personal comment you made about me on another forum.

More unsubtle jibes, I see.

It has been an interesting thread though, for someone who is on the fence about scales!

Does this mean that in another four posts we'll reach reason #101?!

Curiouser and curiouser.
I've only mentioned you on another forum once. It wasn't a particularly rude comment, was a response to a question, referred to facts which you would know anyway, and was not out on an open discussion, but in a private one.
It's okay, I'd wanted to be polite and reply to your post discreetly, but can as easily do so here:

Perhaps, just perhaps, I was mistaken in having exactly the same perception in the opposite direction then - namely that the pro-scales lobby think themselves so very superior to the inadequate musicians like myself who have never managed to get on with them.
My initial responses in that thread had been merely with humour in mind, but I admit that the ensuing run of posts got my goat for just that reason. I will now do the sensible thing and block posts which annoy me, as I have long since done for snhs.

It doesn't look very likely at the moment....

We obviously have different ideas of what constitutes "rude". I, for instance, think it's rude to use an emoticon of a pile of **** when referring to posts by somebody else, but clearly you don't.

At least you've now tacitly admitted that your later posts weren't actually a desire to help others "see a different way" as you tried to make out earlier - they were intended to be a wind-up, which is what I suspected.

Why do you go in pro-scales threads if they "get your goat"? You've made a snide comment in one of the other current scales threads, and you couldn't even keep out of the I Love Scales Club You don't *have* to go in pro-scales threads if they wind you up, any more than you have to go in the humorous threads started by "the usual suspects". You seem to be irrestistibly drawn to threads which wind you up! Me, I'd rather have fun in the tavern!