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What I Learned When I Fell in Love with Piano Scales
- willhf 16y agoScales are nice. Too bad most people must learn twelve per mode. I encourage all to renounce the normal piano's inefficiencies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janko_keyboard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janko_keyboard
- alextgordon 16y agoThat's the Scheme of musical instruments if I ever saw one. Nice in theory, but problems with practicalities overwhelm any advantage you could possibly gain by using it.
- kranner 16y agohttp://www.c-thru-music.com/cgi/?page=prod_axis-64 http://www.c-thru-music.com/cgi/?page=prod_axis-64 is an alternative. There are many others like it if you look around. I dinked around with a prototype iPhone app for this before the iPad was a twinkle in Jobs' eye. Someone's probably got out an iPad app for this by now.
- moultano 16y agoI'd prefer we just discard the concept of sharps and flats entirely, and name each of the 12 notes as an individual.
- alaithea 16y agoThis completely ignores the fact that the chromatic note relationships in different keys are not the same. F# is not the same pitch as Gb. In fact, I find thinking about notes in terms of a moveable do solfege (not as static names at all) to be by far the most effective system, since it really manifests the relationships in the key that you're playing in. When you realize those functional relationships, along with the requisite tensions in pitch, which you can emphasize on a non-justified instrument, music making becomes a lot more fun and easy.
- moultano 16y agoThere's nothing special about sharps and flats in that regard. Depending on your tuning system C could be different in every scale. That doesn't make it something you want to encode in your notation.
- alaithea 16y agoYour point about the "white keys" is well taken, which is why I mentioned moveable do solfege. The absolute pitch of "C" takes on a different name in every key, which respects its relationship within that key. However, there's a reason that scales like the melodic minor are written with sharps (or "sharped flats"/naturals) ascending and flats/naturals descending. Sharps emphasize rising pitch and flats emphasize falling pitch, and can thus be bent slightly higher and lower, respectively. You would lose that with fixed chromatic note names. (And as an aside, recognizing when a note in a scale has been modified from its normal position, and in which direction it was modified, is yet another reason to practice your scales!)
- moultano 16y agoThat only works for music that sticks to a western scale though. What if you are playing blues or jazz or indian classical music?
- alaithea 16y agoWhich is exactly my point. One size fits all doesn't work. The scale or notation system should be appropriate to the music. AFAIK, Indian classical has its own way of doing things, and most blues and jazz isn't notated the same way as classical music, either. Going to a fully justified/chromatically-based system is just sweeping the intricacies and nuances under the rug. Plus, naming "all twelve" tones doesn't even begin to address what you would do with microtonal music.
- yayitswei 16y agoI bought one from Japan a couple years back, and I like it a lot. I see it more as the Dvorak of piano keyboard layouts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82xaEGgiiRs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82xaEGgiiRs
- noname123 16y agoUhh, as a guitar player, let me just say that I hate scales. I know that they are a necessary-evil to learn if you want to learn how to solo, figure out chord structure, etc. But the whole thing sounds as fishy to me as someone saying you want to learn programming, learn Theory of Computation/Turing Machine etc. Perfecting the scale and learning it at faster clip, to me is a good warm-up routine and gets your fingers fast enough to be able to play really fast licks. But to play and improvise good music, you just have to play. You don't learn how to hack via Turing Machines; you learn about Turing Machines after you spend long enough time hacking around, that the theoretical stuff becomes obvious to you after awhile. Same thing with music and language, you can pour over the grammar and the circle of fifths you whole life and never be able to play/speak fluently until you immerse yourself in the idioms & the rhythm and just play what you know sounds right and not play what you know sounds wrong, naturally.
- cj 16y agoComing from someone who has taken piano lessons for 3+ years and never bothered to learn scales, I can attest that scales have not become obvious to me. Piano is different than guitar because (from my limited knowledge) guitar songs are mostly based on chords while on the piano the chords are often broken up into individual notes, eliminating the need to memorize/remember specific chords/scales.
- Andys 16y agoAnother piano player here. My take is that you don't need scales to enjoy music. But you will also never be at the level of the greats.
- tumblen 16y agoI mentioned this briefly in the post, but I think this logic, again, puts scales on a pedestal. I don't want to be a great pianist, I just want to be decent at expressing myself in musical form. For awhile, I thought this meant scales weren't really for me. It turns out that, on the contrary, they are ideal for me because they quickly get me up to speed on what tends to sound good. Ultimately, you're right, but scales may be worth a glance even if you're somewhere in the middle!
- tommynazareth 16y agoI told my girlfriend today that I couldn't tell her what or how to learn, but that all of my knowledge and skill is the result of following my interests. When you follow a thread far enough, you eventually untangle the entire knot and see the thing as a whole. Music theory is very much like this. Practicing scales makes no sense without a certain perspective on music theory, but if you follow your interest in music you will eventually internalize melodic and harmonic patterns. If you want to internalize melody and harmony, practicing scales is a (relatively) quick path. Improvisation does not happen by 'just playing', that is a joke. You can get there if you 'just play' for long enough, but Charlie Parker didn't reach his incredible level of skill by noodling around aimlessly. Woodshedding is vital to developing real chops. If you're interested in obtaining ability, you will wind up in some kind of formal practice eventually. You can avoid intentional practice if you want - have fun noodling your way into a successful business or exceptional development skill.
- mrcsparker 16y agoGuitar player?
- tommynazareth 16y agoYeah. I'm not a great instrumentalist, but I feel comfortable picking up any instrument and playing - brass, woodwind, whatever. Guitar and keyboard are the only instruments I've actually studied, though.
- BrandonFletcher 16y agoAnyone know any helpful sites for scale practice (on piano)?
- tomlin 16y ago"Over many years, I grew frustrated with teachers, their methods and their curriculums." hits home.
- johnl87 16y agoEveryone is talking about how much they practice their scales in their "daily practice." If it's a chore to you and has no practical application, don't waste your time, play something you like. The only reason I know a few minor and major scales is because I like to improvise. When it comes time to solo, I know what to play because I know what notes are in the scale. If I didn't know any scales, I'd be lost. It also make a lot more sense if you practice with some backing track/chords cause then you can figure out what sounds good. This also applies to playing piano, lets say I want to play some minor sounding progression, I'd most likely play A minor because all the white keys are in the A minor scale which makes it easy to create a melody.