Timeline for What exactly does practising scales teach?
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| Mar 22, 2022 at 11:58 | comment | added | AlyoshaKaramazov | @Dom Leaning is a ladder, me move forward building up skill and knowledge as we move along. Programing doesn't require the constant daily writing of trivial programs, and driving doesn't require a daily ritual of abstracted "high frequency movements", they're naturally part of the practice. But these are bad analogies. Practicing scales everyday will of course help you play scales passages, the question is whether the benefit of this is proportional to the time spent doing so, given these patterns will be learnt and reinforced by daily practice precisely because they are so ubiquitous. | |
| Mar 21, 2022 at 23:18 | comment | added | Dom♦ | @AlyoshaKaramazov what's the benefit of learning anything with that mindset? Don't teach someone how to program, just tell them to do it. Don't take lessons on how to drive, just get behind the wheel. They'll learn the patterns soon enough. If you don't see the problem with that, then I don't know what to tell you. People practice basics in every skill and the basics are building blocks are important. Not having foundations in things like scales can make simple things much harder. | |
| Mar 21, 2022 at 22:18 | comment | added | AlyoshaKaramazov | @Dom This of course begs the question that if whatever given pattern appears with a given frequency in the literature, it will of course be learnt in the process of learning the literature, so what benefit is gained from "front loading" that learning? Is the time and effort required to build and maintain an entire repertoire of scales proportional to that benefit? Given the time and effort also comes at an opportunity cost to learn more of the literature or other skills. The answer isn't clear, and without such clarity how can any rational person recommend scale practice? | |
| Mar 21, 2022 at 17:21 | comment | added | Dom♦ | @AlyoshaKaramazov like it or not, scales are the building blocks of many pieces as outlined by this answer. I can name many, many songs that pretty much just walk up and down scales. Over the Rainbow is popular example. If you did not have building blocks like this, it would take longer to practice those 1 measure pieces as each time you approach a new arrangement of notes and don't have a pattern or building block, you need to internalize it. | |
| Mar 20, 2022 at 9:10 | comment | added | AlyoshaKaramazov | It's interesting that you acknowledge that "You can get a lot of the same benefit by going through an entire piece of music 1 measure at a time". I'm sure most of us work on pieces in segments, not just looping through the full score, so as it's "interesting to work through as scales are" doesn't this make scale practise redundant? Without scales we're also killing two birds with one stone, building repertoire and technique at the same time. It seems most answers start with the conclusion that scales are good and then try to rationalise why. | |
| Feb 13, 2015 at 16:50 | vote | accept | Mr. Boy | ||
| Feb 10, 2015 at 19:59 | history | edited | Lii | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Feb 10, 2015 at 18:04 | history | answered | Lii | CC BY-SA 3.0 |