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Energizing Your Scales

Acoustic and Electric Guitar
Written by Matthew Warnock

Have you ever found yourself bored with your practice

routine? Ever practice something over and over but can’t seem
to get into it? If you have ever asked yourselves these
questions don’t worry, you’re definitely not alone.

Musicians of all levels and backgrounds have faced these

questions at different points in their development and in my
many years of teaching I have found that they are some of the
biggest roadblocks students will ever face. In this series of five
articles I will tackle these very issues and present exercises and approaches that will
hopefully help to get rid of any monotony you may have in your practice routine. This
first article will deal with one of the most dreaded areas of any practice routine, scales.

As a student I used to find myself spending countless hours playing up and down scales.
Though I found that practicing scales greatly improved my technical ability I would
often find myself daydreaming or “zoning out” when practicing them. Since I was
becoming bored with practicing scales, but knowing that I still needed to work on them,
I decided to try and make my scale practice as musical and enjoyable as possible. In
doing so I found that not only did the emotional content of my playing improve, but I
finally started to feel like I really “knew” my scales inside and out. Here are a few
exercises that have helped me energize my scale practice.

Playing with dynamics. One thing that I find most students lack when they are
playing their scales is dynamics. Instead of simply running up and down a scale try

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playing them with a wide dynamic range, say from ppp to fff. You can play an
entire scale at one dynamic level or add crescendo’s and decrescendo’s as you see
fit, the choice is up to you. The goal should be to make each scale you play as
musical as possible while still achieving your technical goals.

Playing with emotion. When I was studying classical guitar in high school I was
lucky enough to have a teacher that opened my ears and mind to many new
possibilities. One of the exercises she had me do was to change the emotional
context of my major and minor scales. Instead of playing “happy” sounding major
scales or “sad” sounding minor scales she has me flip them around. I had to come
into my lesson and make my major scales sound sad and my minor scales sound
happy. By practicing scales this way I started to become tuned into the different
sounds contained within each scale. How by simply accenting certain notes or
intervals I could change the emotional context of any scale I was playing. If you
don’t like the happy vs. sad idea you can take any emotion and portray it with your
scales, anger, excitement, surprise etc it’s up to you.

Improvising with scales. If you are not accustomed to improvising than adding this
element to your scale practice can be both exciting and a little scary. Improvising
doesn’t have to mean that you completely rearrange a scale or that you create an
entire solo on the spot, it can be much simpler than that but just as effective. The
next time you practice your scales try sliding into a note or two, or add a few slurs
or vibrato here and there. You might want to change the rhythms you use. Instead
of playing straight eighth notes try two eighth notes and two triples or any other
rhythmic combination you can think of. Another great approach is to randomly
change directions when playing a scale. You might play “up’ three notes, then
“down” two, then up five, then down 4 etc. By adding any or all of these
improvisational elements to your scale workout you can find out how well you
really know your scales. Like I tell my students “if you can play a scale then you
have memorized it, if you can manipulate a scale than you have internalized it.”

These are just a few of the ways in which you can inject some fun and excitement into
your scale practice. If you try these ideas out and find that you enjoy them feel free to
come up with your own ideas and approaches. Scales are a fundamental element of any
player’s technical repertoire but that doesn’t mean that they can’t also be a fun part of
our practice routine. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for next weeks article on
practicing chords.

For more information please check out www.mattwarnockguitar.com under the

resources, lessons and blog sections.

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Comments Add New RSS

mississippi |221.190.10.xxx |2009-01-17 17:05:20
Thanks for the great info. Your "Playing with emotion" was powerful
advice.

Look forward to more of your articles and lessons

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