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Can not say I disagree with this. However, in order for you to be able to read music, you must be able to put the visual to the learned scale. If you see a Bb scale, you instinctively know to play the Bb scale, so it is a good idea to practice scales some while reading the notes. IMO.

as long as there is the knowledge base of how it's supposed to sound AND how it's constructed, I agree. But, that basis has to come from somewhere, and not everyone has the innate ability to figger it out for themselves.

I don't necessarily disagree with the reading bit either, because we all know there are lines in almost any piece which can be identified, and simplified, as a scale or part of a scale. Seeing the scale is important for that aspect, IMO

In junior high school, we were required to play five major scales as a seating audition. Everyone in the band played them for everyone else.

Being lazy, I did not learn them at home. But being a tuba player, I was one of the last in the band to have to play them. By the time it came to me, I had them memorized, from first watching the trumpet players, and the ghosting along with the baritone players.

Being lazy, that was my last attempt to learn scales, until many years later. I was in the San Antonio Municipal Band, and the conductor had us play an exercise--playing all 12 major scales by going around the circle of fifths.

Nope, I didn't know how to do it.

But the next week, I did. I learned them just the way your daughter did, by just figuring them out based on how I knew they were supposed to sound.

I never referred to written scales when I learned them, but (and here is something mysterious but important) learning them improved my reading ability immeasurably. I didn't know them by sight, the fragments that came up in the music were still built into the fingers, and the key of the piece was already in my head, and the right scale fragment comes out on its own more often than not.

I keep thinking I'll learn the rest of them, but I'm lazy.

Rick "who might someday be as good as Bloke's daughter was at age 12" Denney

I have a beginner student right now who walked into his first lesson and ripped out a 2 octave F scale. This was about 2 months into the school year, and the class have only learned the "5" notes at that time (Bb, C, D, Eb, F). He said he was getting bored, looked at the fingering chart, and figured it out. Granted, it sounded like a 6th grader trying to go too high and too low too quick, but all of the notes were there, and it was pretty fast!

At first, I was like

Then his mother told me that he has been taking piano lessons for some time, and he knows all of the scales on piano quite well. After hearing this, I was like

He is now doing very well, completely destroying students grade levels ahead of him. His tone has improved greatly, and makes an almost nice sound (which for a 6th grader is amazing in my opinion).

I recently sat down with the best trumpet player at the school where I teach (a K-8 school, where we have a 4-8 band program.) This kid is also in 7th grade, and has only been playing for a year. He is a natural when it comes to air, and sounds about as good as the best high school players in our district (I also teach lessons at the high school once a week). I asked him how he was doing with his major scales, and he basically knew one--the Bb major scale. So, rather than drill him on scales, I chose to give him the tools he needed to accurately figure them out. I wrote out the circle of fifths for him (explaining things as I went along), then explained the order of sharps and flats in a key signature (and wrote it down). By the end of the lesson, he was able to play any major scale I threw at him, because he had the right tools at his disposal.

So, yeah, I tend to agree. If you really want your students to get their major scales down, just give 'em the tools to figure it out.

bloke wrote:
' your opinions...??

My opinion is that very few valid educational theories are based on an N of 1.

My second opinion is that if I want to know how to learn to hit a baseball, I study Billy Martin and not Mickey Mantle. Mickey could certainly hit - but he had very little insight into how to do it. Sometimes raw talent gets in the way of understanding.

My third opinion is that learning happens through repetition, and that IT DOES NOT MATTER how you motivate the repetition. Some students require a nice story; others need to be told "just sit down and do it, or else", and others just need to be left in the band room by themselves for 20 minutes.

Come back when you have taught 10,000 students to play scales.

Please remember that you *did* ask.

I don't disgree with sloan, but based on my experience of learning and teaching my kids, and observing others learning (and the other comments in this thread), I think there is some support for the 'let em figure it out' school. That said, it's not a cure all for instrumental literacy. And the motivated student will always learn faster, and figure out more on his/her own.

sloan wrote: My opinion is that very few valid educational theories are based on an N of 1.

Is that N or n?

Many years ago, my mentor reminded me that since music is an auditory art, we should begin by teaching by rote. Listening comes first.

For my students, I used to get 12 3x5 cards and write the name of the 12 major scales on them. We make a game out of it, never knowing which scale(s) we'll work on during the lesson. We write the performance tempo on the card to keep track of speed. Gradually I add cards for the natural minor, melodic minor, harmonic minor, whole tone an blues scales as the student progresses. We use these cards in conjunction with Arbans written exercises.

When I practice my scales, I sometimes use Arbans or one of the other methods, but most often I close my eyes and visualize the scale while I play it.

Good thread, Bloke.
Amazing how two bright people in the same household have such a different approach to learning.
My six year old grandson is big into skateboarding. He sings endless hard rock songs at us and knows all the lyrics. He likes to jam. I told him he may as well learn to play drums and sing at the same time on these fun songs because it would save time and be more fun.
I work with him on two tunes at a time because we can switch off to the other one if either of us gets bored.
His first efforts with tunes by AC/DC and Motorhead yielded pretty good lead vocal from him and not much drumming. We play along twice with the C.D. and then see how much we can get on it with just the two of us. My old fingers can get the rhythm guitar line but we have to scat sing the lead guitar parts (usually four bars each).

I have to make him quit when I hear him starting to get hoarse (groaty Casey). We are only able to jam about once every two weeks. His dad made him a C.D. of these and his other favorites. He must be thinking a lot about this because his progress on drums and vocal is enormous.
Dennis "proud Poppy" Gray

In the abstract, the idea of teaching students (whether it's your daughter, the neighbor kid, or a room full of 6th graders) by having them teach themselves is fantastic; however, I don't think that the scale teaching is the most appropriate place for it. This was touched on briefly in a couple of the earlier posts. For me, scale learning, for non jazzers, essentially serves two purposes: theory and sight reading--sight reading being the more important of the two. Being able to cycle through all 12 iterations of every mode by memory is a great thing to be able to do, but it doesn't mean a whole lot unless you can tie this abstract exercise to something more concrete. When students learn scales just by "figuring it out," they are learning the patterns and sounds (something that essential for the jazz-oriented), but they are not making the visual connections that tie scales to sight reading. Learning your C major scale by ear doesn't really help much when you are tossed into a community band rehearsal and have to sight read the opening to Russlan and Ludmilla (this happened to me when I was a freshman in high school) or when the all-state judge asks you to turn over the sight reading sheet or, heaven forbid, when you're at a military band audition and the proctor hands you the sight reading sheet.

From reading bloke's posts over the years, I gather that his daughter is an immensely talented musician; however, I don't necessarily agree with the the application of the teaching strategy in scale situations.

Kyle

I wonder - how many band directors here think that the job is to produce a single excellent ensemble of 25 students, and how many think the job is to teach music to ALL the students (including the unmotivated, untalented majority)?

What would the school board say if the math teacher said "95% of the students dropped out of math class and failed the exit exam - but those that stayed won the state Math Competition"?

Perhaps the question is: "Is the job 'Band Director' or 'Music Teacher'?"

a2ba4u wrote:For me, scale learning, for non jazzers, essentially serves two purposes: theory and sight reading--sight reading being the more important of the two. Being able to cycle through all 12 iterations of every mode by memory is a great thing to be able to do, but it doesn't mean a whole lot unless you can tie this abstract exercise to something more concrete.

For me, learning the patterns without music help immensely with reading music (as I wrote before). Whether that transfers to others, I can't say. But I can say that it had a strong effect with me. It even helped with playing scale fragments that were not the ones I had learned (because they were in different modes). I suppose my brain had more room to handle the exceptions to the built-in pattern than to handle the sequence as it was written.

Thus, the exercise was, for me, anything but abstract.

And I absolutely suck at playing jazz. It did not help there at all, though if I spent time with jazz scales it might. Most people who learned jazz organically (such as those who grew up playing Dixieland in Nawlins) learned it as tunes that were built into their psyche. I wonder how many traditional Dixieland performers who were never formally trained could play a blues scale if you asked them to. But if you asked them to play an ascending riff in E, they would be right there. The main reason I suck at playing jazz is that I have listened to it careless and insufficiently. Bloke's previous advice on learning melodies and words perfectly addresses that topic. That's how those traditional players learned it.

I remember reading Hindemith's book on beginning music, where he spent a great deal of time dealing with pitch hearing abilities. And Jacobs famously said (approximately), "There are no shortcuts. But if there is a shortcut, it's solfege." These are hearing skills primarily, but both Hindemith and Jacobs were describing them in the tradition of written music and not jazz.

It seems to me that learning to read music is a matter of applying a basic vocabulary on the basis of written instructions. As Mitch wrote a few days ago, we learn basic language by listening and speaking, applying the written form only much later. And for that educational theory, n is much greater than 1, heh, heh.

And we have to keep reading in context. Music is not a reading activity, it is a performing activity, whether it's classical or jazz. Without producing the sound, there is no music. Back to the language analogy: I know many highly experienced readers (of language) who have considerable difficulty speaking clearly. When asked to speak, for example, to a group, they often mumble, slur their words, ramble, and get lost in their own muddle. Yet they can often write beautifully and read stuff others can't fathom. Unlike language, music has no life without being aurally presented at some point. The musicians we think of as good readers are not just those who can see a fifth marked on the page and hear a fifth in their heads, etc (though even "hearing it in their heads" is a matter of producing sound, even if it is imaginary; I don't have to vocalize words in my head when I read words--their meaning is clear without it). They are those who can then play that fifth accurately and musically in context. The performance of what they read defines their reading ability more than anything.

From that point of view, it seems to me sensible that teaching reading skills should be done in the context of performing and aural skills. But, having no skills and no students, I'm writing theoretically with only fragments of my own experience to back it up. Now, those who teach music successfully can tell me where I'm wrong.

That said, I agree with Dr. Sloan that repeated exposure to material is what teaches it. I have never understood what people meant when they said a test was a "learning experience". It is not. The learning experience comes from studying the material in a variety of ways. The test is the method by which the teacher can evaluate whether the learning has taken place. I don't teach music, but I am an experienced adult education instructor and in my experience what counts is repetition and variety of presentation. As a music (and non-music) student, I learned most when I was given the roadmap and pointed along the path, with repeated and various reminders as to the path and the direction. That's how I teach, using words, pictures, problems, workshops, and arm-waving.

As to Dr. Sloan's argument concerning unmotivated students, I submit that this is off-topic. Bloke was addressing readers of Tubenet in general, and readers of his thread (titled "secret to learning scales") in particular. Anyone who reads the thread has already demonstrated motivation with respect to the topic, so the advice can be reasonably tailored to the motivated. Had it been titled "secret to teaching scales", which it morphed to become, then Ken's statement is more relevant.

Rick "who saw learning theory, not educational theory" Denney

Rick Denney wrote:

Rick "who saw learning theory, not educational theory" Denney

Just as there are many ways of teaching, there are many ways of learning.

Not only among different people, but with the same person at different levels of development.

Piaget would have a field day with the testimonials presented here on "how I did it". Most people don't realize how quickly things go from "challenging" to "obvious". It's at the heart of most "sophomoric" behavior.

My earliest training in scales and moving patterns (pianists will recognize the name "Hanon") was punctuated by the stern lecture I got from my piano instructor. He loudly objected when I played the exercises from memory, and *insisted* that I put the music up and *look* at it while playing. Eventually, I figured out what he was talking about - and put the advice to good use when re-training on the tuba (and again now that I'm adding Eb to my toolbox). I *can* play all the scales without music in front of me - but personally I think that doing it that way is inefficient; I'm missing out on the opportunity to fine tune my eye-ear-mind-hand co-ordination. Practicing scales is a woodshedding activity, and I want to get the most out of it. Picking out a new melody or just playing some of my favorites from memory is a more productive use of my time away from the printed page.

Music lives simultaneously in many different houses. Rick says it's all about the sound - perhaps a predictable attitude from a tuba player. If that were the case then we could simply follow Prof. Henry Hill's "THINK SYSTEM". I think it's more complicated (and richer) than that.

In my opinion, no *single* approach is ideal for "learning scales". Playing "by ear" is good; reading is good; writing them out is good. I suspect Rick would say that being able to read or write the notation for all the scales you know is a nice parlor trick - but if your sound sucks then it's all useless. Others might counter that being able to play them all brilliantly without being able to read or write is the musical equivalent of an illiterate speaker of English who can't even *spell* "college", much less profit from one.

Personally, I think that "playing by ear" time is much better spent on noodling around and playing familiar melodies. The C major scale is only a useful melody at Christmas time. And, warm up time is the only time they let me play melodies at band rehearsal; I'll be damned if I'll waste my warm-up time playing scales.


Of course, on alternate Thursdays I think that there's only one scale we need to woodshed - the chromatic scale. From that point of view, the major/minor/etc. scales are just "melodies" that we should be able to play in any key.

Finally, remember that as we develop in music we learn everything at the same time, over and over, forever. It's just not feasible to first develop a world class sound AND THEN learn how to read music. And vice versa. Learning one depends on/reinforces the other. It's only after we've achieved a fair mastery of all of it that we can take Pat Sheridan's advice and look for tightly focussed practice room exercises to improve specific skills. Before that, *everything matters* and we ignore the approaches that we don't like, or think don't work, at our peril.

Rick Denney wrote:I have never understood what people meant when they said a test was a "learning experience". It is not. The learning experience comes from studying the material in a variety of ways. The test is the method by which the teacher can evaluate whether the learning has taken place. I don't teach music, but I am an experienced adult education instructor and in my experience what counts is repetition and variety of presentation. As a music (and non-music) student, I learned most when I was given the roadmap and pointed along the path, with repeated and various reminders as to the path and the direction. That's how I teach, using words, pictures, problems, workshops, and arm-waving.

I believe you are absolutely correct. The arm-waving would seem to be optional, however.

Rick D. wrote:
I don't have to vocalize words in my head when I read words--their meaning is clear without it

Veering wildly off topic....WHAT? I vocalize words in my head when I'm reading, that is, I hear them in my mind, probably in the same Indiana twang that I would speak them in. You have just blasted out of the water my main explanation of what "reading by pitch" is (as opposed to reading by fingering, which is the way most brass players do it; piano players, OTOH, read by location.) I explain it by using reading English as the example, saying, "when you read the word BOO! you hear the sound BOO! in your head, right? Well, reading by pitch is the same way; you see the note on the page and you hear it in your head just like you hear the words on the page when you read them."

Say it ain't so, Rick!

It would explain something that has been beyond me to date, though, and that is how people who are deaf ever learn to understand and use language. How they do it is as far from my understanding as my reading by pitch would be from theirs.

MA

Back on topic: I happen to be trying to learn the instrument that Bloke's daughter has done so well on (the oboe.)

Every few weeks I abandon my assigned lesson in Barret and do just scales and arpeggios; I know from past experience that the vast majority of music I'll be faced with if/when I get good enough, will resemble these quite a bit. Since I already know what the notes mean when I see them (violinists have more notes than oboeists, I think) it's the finger patterns that I need. However, I will still take the time to read the scales with lots of sharps and flats, to get the brain connection going between what's on the page and what the fingers are supposed to do. That came about because I saw a D# (in one of my own duets, no less) and didn't readily come up with the "Eb" fingering for it. So I see benefit in both....rote physical practice and music-reading practice of scales.

MA, who is going to take that duet to a lesson and see how her teacher does reading it a half step down

Back in the early 1950s my father remarked to one of his better high school band kids that he would "give her a medal" if she could figure out how to play "all 13" scales. (He chose to count Gb and F# as two separate keys, so the kids would have to play that one twice.) She accepted the challenge, and pretty soon other kids were asking for similar rewards. It got to be an annual ceremony at the spring concert, when he would award 20 or 30 such medals, which he made out of tin can lids.

I always ask my students what sports they are into, and what sort of warm-up exercises they use. Whether it is karate, ballet, swimming, or football, they all have daily routines. I tell them the scales play the same role; they are the basic moves, and they must become automatic.

Ken,have you listened to Bloke's solos from his audition recital on acid planet?HE's got my attention more than any of your college professor lingo.Sorry...

MikeMason wrote:Ken,have you listened to Bloke's solos from his audition recital on acid planet?HE's got my attention more than any of your college professor lingo.Sorry...

Then I trust you'll follow his advice and "just figure it out for yourself"

Well,if I can imitate a little of his(and many other good players)good playing qualities by just listening and experimenting,then yeah.