Playing scales is one of the most fundamental skills that we, as pianist, must develop. Yet a complete, unadulterated scale will hardly ever appear in a piece of music. More commonly, fragments of scales, or scale-like passages will occur. The common method of practicing scales by playing them whole, ascending and descending, is useful, as a start; it does, for instance, enable us to learn our signatures. It will not, however, allow us to gain complete mastery of scale passages by itself.
How we practice the piano is at least as important as what we practice
The first thing we should understand if that faster is not necessarily better. Part of the purpose of playing scales is to develop our finger transitions. That is, we want to develop a smooth movement of the thumb under the hand and the fingers over the thumb. Further, we want a clear, legato, and even tone. If we speed up before we are ready, our playing will become uneven both in dynamics and rhythm; our scales will become blocky and when we use our thumb, it will stick out like, well, a sore thumb!
For this reason, let us begin by playing the C major scale slowly and carefully, ensuring that each not is the same length and the same volume as every other note:
After we can play the scale ascending with an even and clear tone, we should play descending as well. Note that the specified fingers always play the same notes; thus, finger 3 will always play E and 4 will always play B, whatever the direction.
After we have mastered this fundamental skill, we can try playing the C major scale in different ways. For instance, we can play only one half of the scale using a dotted-rhythm, or one hand legato and the other staccato:
Alternatively, we can play the whole scale using a dotted rhythm:
After it has been mastered one way, try inverting the rhythm and starting on the short note.
Be creative with scale practice
Besides not being optimal, practicing scales in the same way over and over again is quite dull. In addition to these suggestions, be creative. Invent different rhythms, play with the dynamics, practice playing crescendos and decrescendos.
Above all, we should use variety, not only to prevent boredom, but to prevent dull and monotonous playing when we see scale passages in real pieces of music. The more variety we can inject into our practice, the better prepared we will be when we learn pieces for performance.
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