Prescription for Scale Sickness
I could totally relate to this comment that Mindy left on Monday’s Teaching Scales post and I’m sure that many others can as well!
But truth be told, I am sick to death of teaching scales. It’s not that I don’t think it is important, I do. I am just lacking incentive to go at it again with my students. They are in shock! Perhaps I need to rethink my approach and we will all be more successful. I’d take any incentive ideas you have for getting through all the scales.
So I thought maybe we could do some brainstorming and share ideas of ways to make learning all the scales more exciting. I’ll start with a few that come to mind:
* For starters, I include this scale and chord progress chart in my students’ assignment books each year. This helps us at least keep track of what scales they’ve learned.
* Plan a fun Olympic event centered on scales. Give the students a designated number of weeks to learn as many scales as possible and then place them on teams and have them compete against each other in a scale relay. You can watch a video from one of my piano camps where we did this. Here’s a post with a more detailed explanation.
* Make several sets of scale blocks and focus more on the theory-side of constructing scales for a while. You could teach the major and/or minor scale patterns and then have them close their eyes and draw out a block from the jar. Then time them to see how fast they can construct that scale. You could post the times or just record them in their assignment book to see if they can improve their times from week to week.
I’m sure there are tons of ideas that can help us incorporate scales into lessons in a way that we don’t become sick of them. Feel free to leave your ideas below or post them on your blog and link back to them! This should be fun!
Thank you, Natalie. After I posted that, I was afraid I sounded like I was whining. I’m anticipating reading all the ideas.
My daughter’s teacher posted an all star scales chart in her studio and had the students move their “baseball player” around the bases for each group of scales they learned. She was really motivated by the competition and was excited one of the first to make it “home”.
I also found the Olympic approach to be very effective. One of my students was even more interested in passing off scales then learning her songs.
I think too much time and energy can be wasted in either ‘convincing’ students that scales are important and/or creating sneaky interesting ways to include scales in a lesson plan.
Scales can be done as an ear training exercise (call and response) or as a warm up. In these ways, they don’t seem like the main emphasis of a lesson or add any undue ‘pressure’ on students.
Natalie,
Do your students “get” the fingering of scales, or are you not concerned with that? I worry that, by losing the scale books, my students will use incorrect fingering…they struggle with that now, when they have it right in front of their faces!
Keyboard skills – scales, chords, arpeggios – are a given, the first item on the student’s assignment sheet. ‘Completed all assignments’ is an item for composer bucks in my studio. Students understand why we study scales (or pentascales) when they can identify them in pieces they play. IMO the best way to excite students about scales and chords is to teach them within the context of a piece they love.
To make scale study interesting and a lot more useful:
1. Play scales like music: vary tempo, articulation, dynamics, note values.
2. Play as duets with another player (imitate, play in canon, etc.).
3. Play different scale lengths – why should you only practice octaves?
4. Express something. Use the scale to depict a mood or emotion, animal, object, landscape.
5. Add accents: duple, triple, 2+3, 3+2, 2+2+3, 3+2+2, 3+3+2, etc. Play with another player who is playing a different accent pattern, e.g. you play duple, they play triple; you play 2+3, they play 3+2.
To make scales more fun I incorporate scales with the modes idea of a chord makes the sound and the sound can be a mode enhancer.