Playing scales is an integral part of learning how to play any musical instrument. Unfortunately, scales aren't everyone's favorite thing. So once in a while, I like to push my students into practicing scales a little more seriously and keep it fun at the same time.
In October 2020, I arranged an online event for my students called Scales Competition (click on the link to read more about it)
(This was inspired by a similar event we organized at Studio Meraki a few years ago)
Students were divided into 3 categories and had to learn scales according to the syllabus.
It was a success and it got the students really excited about scales. I wanted to plan something similar but wanted to make it more exciting for the participants.
May 2022 Scales Tournament- The preparation started a few weeks ago with the planning of the event. Each student is learning at their own pace and is at different levels of learning the instrument. Some are absolute beginners, some have been playing for years.
It can be a little unfair to divide them into only 3 categories.
So this time, I designed a separate syllabus for each student. It was designed so that the student won't get intimidated by the amount of work, but they had to push themselves to learn new things and get them up to performance level. Here's a sample syllabus.
The Tournament- An online event was arranged on Zoom on Saturday, 14th May 2022. The students had to go through 3 rounds of testing.
Scales Round- they played scales that were required in the syllabus,
Challenge Round- I asked them to play 3 scales that were not a part of their syllabus. They had to think- How can this scale be constructed? How will it sound? What is the theory behind it? - in just 30 seconds of prep time
Q&A Round- Questions based on basic music theory.
Results- Later in the day, the students got a report of their performance in the Scales Tournament with remarks from the teacher, with suggestions on how they could improve their performance.
Here's an excellent article from www.classic.fm which explains why scales are important:
Let Aimee Nolte, a YouTube educator, explain to you how to practice scales:
Conclusion- Ideally, I would want the students to practice their scales regularly- as rigorously as they did for the tournament. Is Scales Practice boring for you? Well, it doesn't have to be. Make it interesting.
Here's how you can do it:
Play your scales at different tempos,
change the dynamics, articulations,
understand the theory and sound,
transpose the scales, challenge yourself to learn new scales
Explore new sounds (modes, altered scales, whole tone scales, diminished scales, etc.)
Improvise (my personal favorite) over a new scale to get a hang of the sound of the scale
I greatly developed my understanding of scales when I started learning jazz music. So improvise, create music. Because scales are a building block of music.
I will leave you with this 8-minute video clip of Oscar Peterson playing C Jam Blues. I think he practiced his scales really well. What do you think?
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