Why practise piano scales? … and arpeggios!
What are benefits of scale practice, and what are the best ways to practise scales? The Aristocats knew: "Every truly cultured music student knows, You must learn your scales and your arpeggios"
Benefits of scale practice
- Scales and Arpeggios are good warm ups, to get the fingers working. "Rattle up and down a few scales to get moving".
- They encourage ease in rapid figurework
- Improve strength of 4th and 5th fingers (which are naturally weaker)
- Give the student familiarity with different keys, what different keys feel like.*
- Scale and Arpeggios give a template, a formula, for scale and arpeggio patterns in pieces.* You don't need to invent every fingering in every piece from scratch, because you know the fingering from your scale work.
How to play scales
- Use the same fingering every time - preferably the one in the book
- Aim for even-ness
- Play legato - join the bottoms of the notes together
- Think of the notes in groups of 4 semiquavers
- Slow and even is better than fast and uneven, at least for the time being. However, in the long run, slow scales aren't helpful
- Give the scales shape
Variety in scale practice
Apparently the part of the brain that is engaged when you make music is switched off when you practise scales - they aren't music, they are motor rhythm exercises, therefore, intrinsically boring. Therefore, try and make the scales more musical. Vary your treatment:-
- play staccato
- play left hand only
- play dotted rhythms
- play triplet rhythms over 3 octaves
- play contrary motion
Speed in scale practice
- Slow and even is better than fast and uneven, at least for the time being. However, in the long run, slow scales aren't helpful
- Practise scales as follows:
- play two octaves in quavers, and immediately go into three octaves in triplets, and then four octaves in semiquavers.
A note on the Stocken Method I use the Stocken method with some students who are more visual - they like pictures! I find it helps their learning. However, I find that the benefits above that I've marked with an asterisk (*), are better served by a traditional scale book.
