
What I Learned When I Fell in Love with Piano Scales - cj
http://tumbledesign.com/what-i-learned-when-i-fell-in-love-with-piano-scales/
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tommynazareth
I 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.

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mrcsparker
Guitar player?

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tommynazareth
Yeah. 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.

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willhf
Scales 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>

~~~
yayitswei
I 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>

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nandemo
Very interesting. As much as I love the piano, sometimes it feels pointless to
struggle just to play chords and arpeggios.

I see that the Chromatone costs "only" 190k yen now (~=U$1700),

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MaysonL
actually, more like 2200 $US these days...

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noname123
Uhh, 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.

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cj
Coming 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.

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Andys
Another 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.

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tumblen
I 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!

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alaithea
If you really enjoy getting to the heart of "what sounds good," you would
probably enjoy adding more music theory to your study. Make sure not to stop
at scales, and move on to intervals, chords, and the circle of fifths. :)
Eventually, instead of just the "what" of what sounds good, you start learning
the "why."

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tumblen
Hey, absolutely! Actually, I started learning chords prior to scales. And only
wrote about scales because they seemed to be the meta-skill that many others
are derived from.

I'm still figuring out how precisely the circle of fifths is useful, someone
feel free to chime in.

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johnl87
Everyone 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.

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BrandonFletcher
Anyone know any helpful sites for scale practice (on piano)?

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tomlin
"Over many years, I grew frustrated with teachers, their methods and their
curriculums." hits home.

