Tips for Pianists no. 4: Scales

I can almost hear the groans at the mention of scales. So many students think of scales as that very boring part of learning a musical instrument that you only really do to get through the music exams! However, scales are actually a tremendously important part of learning any musical instrument. Below are just a few advantages to practising scales:
1. Most pieces of music are either in a major or minor key so practising scales will help you to have a greater understanding of the different keys you may need to play in.
2. Scales are useful for building up a good technique. They make great "warm up" exercises and are good for getting the fingers moving around the piano before attempting to play pieces.
3. Scale patterns appear all the time in pieces so learning to play them fluently will help with performing pieces of music.
4. Since melodies are often based on scale patterns a good knowledge of scales should enable you to improvise or compose melodies more easily.
5. Scale practise will help with sight-reading as you will have a great understanding of keys.

Those are just a few points - I'm sure there are many more! So how should we practise scales and how can we make them more interesting? Well while a grade one piano exam might ask you to play C major scale 2 octaves hands separately at a tempo of around two notes per second and at a mezzoforte dynamic I would suggest that it is useful to practise scales in lots of different ways. When you think about it you rarely see a straight forward two octave scale at mf in a piece of music. Often the scale will begin and end on different notes, involve some changes in dynamics (eg. crescendo or diminuendo) and perhaps have different rhythm patterns. Therefore try to be inventive and practise scales in lots of different ways. Here are some suggestions:
1. Practise at different dynamics - f, mf, p... crescendo, diminuendo....
2. Practise beginning and ending the scales on different notes.
3. Practise at different speeds but never so fast that the scale becomes inaccurate or uneven.
4. Practise using different rhythms eg. dotted rhythms.
5. Practise feeling the scales in groups of 2s, 3s, 4s...
6. Practise with different articulation eg. staccato, legato...

More advanced pianists might also try the following:
7. Practise scales with hands crossed over.
8. Practise playing triplet rhythms in one hand against 2s in the other hand. You'll begin the scales 2 octaves apart and end one octave apart.
9. Practise different dynamics, rhythms and articulation in each hand.

Above all try to be inventive and play the scales in lots of different ways. This will enable you to tackle scale passages more effectively in pieces as well as improve your scale playing for music exams.

Hope this is helpful. Let me know any thoughts or comments.