Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum will practicing scales benefit my playing ?

Hello everybody,

I've been playing the (digital) piano for a few years now and I'm taking lessons in an official music school in Belgium.
My level is not too high, and though a realise I'll never be a high-level player(don't really mind), I still want to improve at least a little bit.

I've always played pieces and never really practiced scales. ( I've been playing studies but they are rather melodic e.g. Pianostudes from Mike Cornick universal edition )
Last months I became aware that I'm still rather "clumsy" at the keyboard. In order to learn a new piece I have to make a very big effort and I make many mistakes when practicing ( pieces are not too difficult at sight) .
It's almost at the point that when I finally master a piece I've "completely forgotten" the previous one. So I don't really have a repertoire...

I'wonder if practicing scales could help me with this "clumsy" problem. (Recently bought Piano Essentials from Berklee Press ) On the other side practice time is -like all adults- limited and when I'm practising scales I can't practice the rest...

Can you help me with this...

Denis

To answer your question--YES!!! But it's HOW you practise the scales to gain the benefit from doing them. In addition to acquainting you with every position on the keyboard it also helps develop your sense of tonality which, for the most part, is the basis of Western Music. Many compositions include scale or scale-like passages and being familiar with the fingerings and patterns facilitates learning the piece. Your instructor at the school should help you with that and you do not have to do them all at once or all of them every day. Talk to students at your school who do the scales and see what benefit they seem to acquire by doing them. There are those who consider them a waste of time and some who are serious advocates for learning them. I'm in the latter group. Judicious selections of exercises would help with what you call 'clumsiness' as well. And, as exercises, they call for some more intense concentration and exertion than merely running through them lightly.

Everything you mention Denis, is really weird. Just kidding, everything you say is absolutely normal. I am still going through the "forget to play it" syndrome. It's mathmatical, I think, for every hour you memorize, it takes 1 minute to forget.

Scales. You will get a bunch of different opinions, from some very good players, about practicing scales. I don't really know, but for what it's worth, I think they have value. Here's why:

1. You can play as slow as you need to, practicing the exact same fingering every time, and will start to learn "feel" for the keys, and smooth hand position changes, and develop an even clean sound as you move from note to note.

2. You train your ear to "hear" the scale and start to recognize notes.

3. Hands together practice helps the hand independence skills to grow.

4. Knowing the scales starts the understanding of how the notes go together to make chords and melodies. This really helps as we get more and more pieces in our heads. If we can't quite remember what's next in a piece, think about the key and scale. The "missing note/chord" seems to come faster because you have built the basic understanding of how music works.

5. They are , really, no kidding, fun.

They also help build rhythym, counting, beat awarness, patterns, flow, etc etc etc.

There are some excellent players on this forum that do not practice scales and do very well, but, I lack the "feel" for music they possess, so, I must build it from scrach.

Mike

Dear Denis, Hello and welcome to Piano World. Wonderful to hear you are in a school of music now. Embrace scales and theory as the more you learn the less and less "clumsy" you will become at piano performance. Why? You will read music much faster and perform with much ease, more and more, as you advance in your academic knowledge . You will learn how music notation is put together. As you advance in these areas and hopefully composition too later, when you read music you will analyze, not looking at small sections, but, larger sections of the sheet music, in general. You are on a wonderful productive journey in music to become less "clumsy". You are on the right path to be the best you can be at piano performance. Sandy B

Thanks for the reactions so far ( and don't hesitate to post new ones).

Seems practising scales can be very useful. I've already noticed - when looking at a piece_ that pieces often use "scale figures" but when I'm actually playing I seem to "forget" all of it . Maybe that's because I only know them in theory and they are not really in my fingers.

Is anyone familiar with this book from Berklee:Piano Essentials ( Subtitle :Scales, Chords, Arpeggio's and cadences for the Contemporary Pianist ? )Is this a good starting point in order to resolve "my playing problems" ?

Denis

If you really think through what you are doing, pay close attention while reading the fingering of scales and do it over and over, it will become automatic to you in time. Piano is not fast or easy to learn but worth all of your time as look what you will have when you complete your journey. Another thought is you can practice away from the piano. One teacher taught me this and I do this often. Before sleeping I would practice in my mind only. It was fun afer a time. Keep a postivie attitude too as this really will help you. Instead of I cannot do this. The attitude I will do this in time will serve you for a lifetime. Cheers, Sandy B

Hi Denis,

gmm1 has already said everything I would have said, probably better, so I won't repeat it. I use a book from Alfred called the Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences. I find it's perfect for what I need, and going from the title, I'd say your book is probably very similar.

I've found my playing has improved considerably since I finally got to grips with double octave parallel motion scales this summer.

my teacher would have said a definite 'YES' to the question. but i don't practice much scales myself, due to lack of time in practicing. i would occasionally practice some scales related to the pieces i'm working on.

denisthepianoman,

As a piano teacher, I think the benefit of learning scales is beyond measure. It prepares you to pick any piece and "GO!" with it.

Scales teach us conjunct (stepwise) movement with established fingering requirements (not to make us miserable, but to pave our effective and efficient paths around the keyboard).

Fingering skills, touch, tempo, reading by distance and direction, being able to access every key easily are benefits - making an accomplished musician of you!

Scale playing takes time and effort, leads to chords and inversions and arpeggios. In other words, the complete and essential (get those words?) "Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences" by Alfred or similar collection.

The fascinating thing once you start and "get" the groups of fingerings correctly, you realize you were worried about nothing, and the results you get in reading music and fingering it can't be achieved so skillfully in any other way.

Why would you NOT want to do it?


Betty

My view on scales is that they are mainly
an exercise in finger crossing, which is
a technique needed in playing. And since
the finger crossing motion in all of
the scales is similar, one might get by
with practicing only one of the scales.
And since the C major scale is the most
difficult of them all--since a run on
all white keys is the most difficult thing
to play on the piano, there being no black
keys to give tactile reference and support
to the fingers--one might logically chose
it as the one scale that you practice. The
C maj. scale and the C maj. arpeggios
(root position, and the 1st and 2nd inversions)
should give you all the technical workout
you need. I've become skeptical of
technical studies such as Czerny, since they
aim to be as similar as possible to actual
pieces, so why not just play actual
pieces?

I'm also skeptical about the benefit of
many repetitions of scales every day. This,
in my view, can be actually harmful, because it
trains your hands to expect the next note to
be a scale note, but in actual music this
is rarely the case. So too much scale
practice might lead to a tendency to
make errors in playing.

In my experience, the best way for a person
to improve is to play material that is way
above your level, such as the big concertos
and other virtuoso pieces that the top
concert pianists play. Of course, if
you're a beginner or intermedate level
player, you'll have to play such pieces
very slowly, note by note, at a pace of
maybe a measure or even less per day.

But suppose you're beginner or intermediate
level, and you try to play a movement of
one of the big Romantic Era concertos
(4-hands version played as a solo). You
might be able to struggle though only
the first measure of it on the first
day, after which you'll be physically
and mentally exhausted. This is okay,
in my view. Stop and work on your regular
pieces, and then pick up where you left off
on the concerto the next day. You might
then make it through just the 2nd measure.
And so forth. This might seems like
futility, but even one measure
a day adds up, and before you know it
you will have finished the first page,
then the 2nd, etc. And, wonder of wonders,
if you keep at it like this, you'll
eventually work through the whole movement,
and without straining yourself. Look
what's happened: you've "played" a
movement of one of the big concertos,
something that you thought was impossible.

When you've finished working through
it for the first time, go right back
to the start and continue as before
(don't even think about working on "the
most difficult sections" first, since
there will be nothing in it that is
not difficult). This time around you
might find that you've gained enough
strength and experience from that
first time through so that this time
you can do two measures a day--that cuts
the time needed to get through it
a second time in half. And so forth.

If you keep at it like this, the day
will eventually come when you have gained
enough strength, experience, and knowledge
so that you can play the whole movement
though in one sitting, although at a
slow tempo and with many mistakes. When
that day comes, you've arrived, so to
speak, because now this overwhelmingly
difficult piece has now become essentially
just like the ordinary pieces that you can
play all the way through in one sitting
and then practice over and over until
they are up to speed.