Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum scales or chords?

Obviously both have to be mastered, but which do you, as teachers, enjoy teaching?

I hate teaching scales, love teaching chords...

I'm exactly the opposite: love teaching scales, chords not so much. I love talking about the circle of 5ths. So much so that a student once told me she knew what my favorite number was -- 5!

I like teaching scales, by rote, as coming FROM chords.

I always talk about chords coming from scales! Now what are your views on arpeggios?

Hate to be the odd man out here, but enjoy both. Scales and scale passages add sparkle to music, so they are fun to use, and of course chords add meat to the foundation, so that's satisfying as well!

My teaching routine has changed over the years. Now I work on white key scales and their chords, root and inversions, then add in the primary chord sequence. Finally add arpeggios and inversions of the primary chord sequence. Try to get through the white keys before they are ready to start two octaves, but don't always succeed. If I can get through the white keys, I begin the minors, then add in the black key majors. Save the black key minors for very last, when students are very secure in their scale fingerings.

Obviously both can be derived from both. It's a chicken-egg thing, but when I was young, I always wanted to play very big chords.

That's interesting, John. I too have changed my routine, which is similar to yours in some ways. I have started delaying the black key majors until after the white key minors, too. I used to feel I had to slavishly follow the circle of fifths, but I started to think that introducing the black-key scales too early was slowing progress rather than speeding it up. I introduce scales very early anyway, usually at the beginning of level 1. Most of the teachers I know wait until much later.

Gary, I still want to play very big chords! However, my hands quit growing too soon!

I introduce scales very early on as well, but we might work on the first 3 or 4 (going around the circle of 5ths) for quite a while. I don't find that the black key scales cause any more problem than any others by the time they get there.

Back OT, I prefer teaching scales, as those are the building blocks for chords and melodies. Usually students will do all major sharp and flat keys in scales, then I add chords to the routine (sometimes I add them along the way first time around the circle), and then I add arpeggios. So usually by the 2nd time around they've done all keys, one octave hands together of scales, chords (I IV V I progression in root position), and arpeggios (built on I only). Then we go on to minor scales or 2 octaves.

I'm always impressed with how many routes can lead to the same destination!

I can't say I enjoy teaching either as most of the time it's tough for both teacher and student. Once the meat of the scales have been learned, then it gets fun. Same with chords. Teaching 4 basic chord progressions to undergraduate music majors has pretty much sucked any kind of joy out of it.

Me too. I also use the circle of 5ths to teach chords though. I make them play their majors and minors around the circle. I found the easiest way to teach them is by color coding. C is all white. B is white, black, black. etc.

That's how I teach arpeggios - we go by color groups, then major/minor.

I started on scales, officially, very VERY late. And I would not recommend this path to any serious student. But I was in 9th grade when my teacher, new at that time, simply told me to take home the Hannon book and learn all the standard scales, all keys. The strange thing is that I do not recall having any problem doing that, but that could be because I had already played so much music, in so many keys, and I think the patterns were already about 98% there.

The same thing happened with chords. She told me to learn all major, minor, diminished and augmented chords in all keys, all inversions, also dominant 7 chords, and to play all these in arpeggios.

Everything about my musical development was weird, so I really can't use my own "path" as any kind of norm. Most of my teaching life has been about trying to find ways to get students who don't pick these things up quickly to get there, some how.

I swear I've tried everything!

Right now I'm having even my very young students (as young as seven) play: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, those major chords. Then Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, Bb. I have them continue up and down a couple octaves, but once they have them, I will tell them to play them chromatically, in whole tone scales, in minor thirds, etc., whatever they can follow. Obviously the really little ones are not going to move right to parallel motion, whole tone, but you see where I am heading.

Then I tell them to play major triads at random, root position, both hands, experimenting. The idea is that by not controlling how they experiment, they start to discover how modern composers uses such devices to set moods.

I move from there to minors. I like having students have major and minor triads, the concept, in all keys, because I use chords in all keys very early. The B chord is probably most rare for the young ones, but B minor is not rare at all, Bb shows up all over the place, and I even use a Db chord with a sort of "Neapolitan feel" in a little waltz I wrote in C minor, adding it to the usual primary chords in that key.

Perhaps the bottom line is that our students end up learning, to some extent, the way we ourselves feel most comfortable simply due to our individual personalities as teachers, if they are comfortable with us.

And in the end, if they get really good, they have to know all about chords AND scales any way.

Hi Gary. It was exciting to see your reference to Neapolitan chords because I had just been learning about Neapolitan 6th chords.

It's helpful to have some discussion about a new idea. Helps me to remember it. So for that reason I'll explain a Neapolitan 6th chord. An N6 is a major chord built on the lowered 2nd degree of the scale usually found in 1st inversion. It's used as a colorful substitute for IV. For example in A minor, an N6 would be a Bb chord in lst inversion.

So, in A minor, N6 = D F Bb? Substituting for iv = D F A?

What if you were in A major? Would it still be N6 = D F Bb (flatting the sixth degree of the scale to make the Bb major chord)? Substituting for IV = D F# A?

Any examples of pieces that include N6 chords?

Pianostudent - yes. The bII6 will sub in for a ii6 or a IV. You can alter a chord progression thus:

I-IV6-bII6-V7-I or
I-bII6-IV6-V7-I

An example of use of an N6 is in "A Slow Waltz" op.39, no.23 by Dmitri Kabalevsky. It's included in Piano Repertoire book 5 of "Celebration Series Perspectives".

Is this read as "flat two six"? A Neapolitan chord can also be called a "flat two"?

I have a hard enough time getting my students to play the technical requirements for their CM test (which contains lots of scales and chords/progressions), so I only teach whatever is on the test for the student's level. I will throw in Hanon and Czerny if and only if the student has no dexterity whatsoever, and I don't have very many of those.

I prefer to teach repertoire and theory. I actually find the hands-together scales pretty useless, since you don't find that very much in actual literature.