Piano Video Lesson: How Much Should You Practice Scales?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin. Today the subject is, what is the law of diminishing returns with scales? Now, there are some teachers who insist that their students practice scales for hours a day.

I hear about some teachers who just have students working on scales and exercises and no music at all. And I think that is a real shame, to put it mildly. In fact, they could turn somebody off to the piano completely if all your work is devoid of music. Now, my feeling about it, I'll get to it at the end, but let's discuss a little bit about what types of scales are necessary to learn. Well, the first order of business is to learn all the major and minor scales, the minor scales, both harmonic and melodic. And the next step is to gradually increase the speed of them. So you might start off, for example, learning how to play all the major and minor scales, and arpeggios, by the way, which we'll get to.

It really goes hand in hand, literally.

And that is being able to master all of them, let's say, all the scales at 72 at four notes to the beat, all the arpeggios at 60 four notes to the beat. And that is a great starting point. Is that all you need to know? No, that's the beginning of a journey, a lifetime journey with scales and arpeggios. The next thing is to notch it up and maybe do 80 for scales and 72 for arpeggios.

And you keep going through again and again. And here it's a thing, though.

Well, I'm going to hint at this is that because there are 12 different tones on the piano and you've got major scales, two types of minor scales, and you've got arpeggios in the major and arpeggios in the minor, that's 5 times 12 is 60. So if you just work on one scale or arpeggio a week, it will take about a year to do all of them. So you don't have to be overwhelmed with this idea.

So what else can be done with scales? Well, one of the things that I did in conservatory, we all did, was doing scales both in parallel motion and in contrary motion. I have a video on that in the description you can check out.

And that can gain independence of the hands, just like playing scales two octaves apart. Once again, check out the description because I'll have all kinds of resources for you for scales and arpeggios. And that, once again, helps you to hear each hand. And I love being able to play scales with different articulations, maybe one hand legato, one hand a gentle finger staccato. You can also practice scales with dynamics, going gradually louder at the top and softer to the bottom, or one hand louder than the other. Beyond that, though, what else can you do? Well, there's scales in different intervals, scales in sixths and scales in tenths, or scales in thirds. And all of these can enrich you. Now, my sister has a degree in piano performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music, and they had to do all those intervals with all the scales. And she felt it took a heck of a long time. And I'll admit, I never did all the scales at all the different intervals, but did all the major, minor scales and arpeggios, and in contrary motion, and in all the other ways I mentioned.

I don't know if I'm missing much with that, but in talking to my sister, she thought that the time might have been better served working on more repertoire than spending so much time on learning scales.

So I think part of this is knowing how far to go with it. Now, I told you I would tell you my personal advice for scales and arpeggios, which is work on them consistently, but make it only a small part of your practice.

That's key.

Because if you spend too much time with scales and arpeggios, you're missing out on the opportunity to expand your musical horizons, because you'll gain more by expanding your repertoire. Every new piece has new technical and musical challenges. And rather than spending an inordinate amount of time on scales and arpeggios, make it just a part of your daily practice and you will gain the maximum amount for the minimum amount of time with them.

And yes, learn all of them, all major or minor scales and arpeggios, and gradually increase the speed. You can add the contrary motion if you like, or some of these other techniques. But that is the essential first step for developing a virtuoso piano technique, along with some other things like octaves, thirds, and we can get into a whole other video for that. But this is the foundation for great piano playing.

Thanks so much for joining me again. I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com, your online piano store.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-much-should-you-practice-scales/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---