Does working on scales seem like walking an imaginary tightrope, with no real idea of how things are supposed to be going?
Here’s a genius way to turn that around!
… you can thank me later :)
I’ve taken a cue from the singers in the world and their pianists, and it seems wonderful since both singers and string players have very similar troubles with correcting intonation, the reason being that we don’t necessarily understand what to compare our intonation with, since we’re most often working on our violin technique alone! Now, to be fair, if you’re already taking lessons with me, you’ll have been introduced to my system of not only checking the important structural notes with open-strings for intonation, but also the tricky in-between notes that don’t seem to have anything to lean on. The operative word here is: seem. And all that is a fantastic way to tune not only our fingers, but our ears too, since we’re obviously not robots, and even our senses need a good fine-tuning every now and then.
This, here, is something else entirely. It is meant to develop the courage to start and finish a scale without the usual dilly-dallying that often comes with beginner’s insecurity. And all that is completely normal! This, I think, we can consider to be Step 2: playing through the entire one-octave scale, with increasing confidence, and the thrill of being accompanied by a (ok, it’s a robot) … ‘pianist’, and getting it all right!!! And the best part? You get to set the playback speed and practise it as many times as you’d like, in the privacy of your own time. And then all that’s left is to show of the fruits of your labour and to get a standing ovation from me the next time we meet.
Sound good?
I’m excited!!!!
So, go ahead and look for the scale, or even better, the scales you’re working on, set a comfortable speed, and give it a go! It’s going to be so much fun :)
