Creative Ways to Practise Scales

A thorough knowledge of scales and arpeggios is essential for all musicians, and yet practising them is often associated with boredom and drudgery. How do we motivate ourselves or our students to practise them, and do we need to keep practising them once we’ve learned them and been through the exam system? Once mastered, we might continue to practise our scales as part of the daily warm-up (many concert pianists do this, but many don’t) or use them use them as vehicles for learning other skills.

Why are scales and arpeggios important?

In addition to being the only technical components in many examinations, fluency with scales and arpeggios is important for several reasons: 

• Basic musical literacy (developing familiarity with all keys)
• Keyboard geography, and a tactile as well as aural and theoretical understanding of all keys
• As the basis for developing other pianistic skills

How to make scale practice engaging

Mindless practising is not only boring but also very inefficient, but fortunately there are many imaginative ways to bring scale practice to life. By adding variety and creativity to your practising, you will get much better results as you enjoy the process. The following are some ideas:

• Practise with a variety of different rhythms, using accents and groupings (click here for more information on a recent workshop on using rhythms and accents)
• Organise scales and arpeggios into groups so that practice doesn’t feel overwhelming. By mixing it up you can avoid practising the same scales in the same order each day, and you’ll be able to cycle through them all over the course of several days. A random generator is a helpful way of testing yourself out (see resources below for a tool), and using the Circle of Fifths can also help you come up with different sequences.
• Playing with a range of different dynamics, including crescendo-dimuendo effects helps to make scales and arpeggios more meaningful and engaging.
• Explore different touches and articulations. It’s particularly effective when you ask one hand to do something different from the other!
• Playing one hand twice as fast as the other is a very good test of coordination and concentration. Try a scale using a two-against-three cross rhythm if you want a challenge!
• Try using the Russian scale form which contains elements of similar and contrary motion and is an excellent way to add value to scale practice (click here to view a video demonstration).

Tools and resources

Given the importance of scales and arpeggios, I have developed numerous resources and tools to help making practising them more interesting and productive, in addition to giving advice on solving the technical challenges they present. The following is a listing which you might find useful: 

• Elementary Technique – Fundamentals of Scales & Arpeggios – this module from the Online Academy’s technique library provides suggestions and exercises for mastering technical challenges, such as thumb passage and gaining speed in playing scales and arpeggios. 
• Preparing for an Examination – Scales & Arpeggios – Three-part video lecture series from the Online Academy’s collection of piano examination resources exploring imaginative and creative ways to teach scales and arpeggios or integrate them into a practice routine.
• Practising the Piano Multimedia eBook Series – Part 3 – the third part of the Practising the Piano eBook series is a comprehensive guide to scales and arpeggios featuring numerous video demonstrations, exercises, practice suggestions and resources from the beginner to advanced levels.
• Scales Generator (Beta) – Our “scales generator” is a practice aid which randomly selects scales from a prescribed list and gives instructions for playing them. It also gives you the option to score your attempts and view your results afterwards to see which scales might require a bit more work! Click here to find out how to access it.

There are many further resources on scales, arpeggios and related topics in the Online Academy’s scales & arpeggios section. Click here to view an index of available resources.