Why do I need to learn scales on the piano?
If you made it to this page, you may be struggling over your scales and resentfully Googling “why scales are pointless,” “why do I need to learn scales,” or “do I REALLY need to know my scales???” I know, I know - lots of students just don’t like to practice scales. But let’s get right to the point. Scales are important! They’re good for you!! There are a variety of reasons that scales are a great addition to your practice routine, whether you’re on your 10th day of piano learning or your 10th decade.
Scales are foundational and help you get familiar with key signatures and common patterns. Scales are just a collection of notes that make up a given major or minor key. If you know all of your major and minor scales from memory, navigating key signatures within repertoire becomes much easier. Looking at a B major key signature (5 sharps) may be overwhelming without an understanding of what notes make up the key. On the other hand, if you’ve practiced and memorized the B major scale, you know exactly where each sharp is located with no problem. Similarly, you already know the right fingerings for various scale passages and patterns that will pop up in your music.
Scales help with technique, coordination, and control. With beginner students, one reason I assign scales is to help with basic finger coordination and technique. Crossing over with the third finger and crossing under with the thumb is a big challenge for many beginners, and learning this pattern early on makes it so much easier to tackle once it comes up in musical context. Simply playing scales with curved fingers and relaxed arms helps to reinforce correct technique. Hands together scale playing is another great challenge that provides a head start to good hands together coordination. For more advanced students, scales are a simple pattern that can be manipulated in a variety of ways. Having trouble controlling 16th note runs hands together? Work it out with scale practice and your metronome. Can’t get your left hand to play at the same tempo as your right hand? Try playing your scales LH over RH.
Scales are great for establishing solid rhythm. Having a good sense of steady beat is critical to becoming a skilled musician. Many students really struggle with this, especially early on when learning rhythm alongside complicated musical repertoire, where there are multiple factors to focus on to create an ideal performance. Once you know the notes of your scales well, you can use them along with a metronome to work on maintaining a steady musical pulse and dividing the beat easily in your head. After all, rhythm is just how we divide the beat. If you can easily play your scale in quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets, and sixteenths, you gain a more comprehensive understanding of rhythm that will aid you in your repertoire playing as well.
Scales help with improvisation and playing by ear. We already know that scales can help us within music notation, but they’re also super helpful when improvising or playing by ear. Imagine trying to learn a song by ear without knowing what key it’s in - maybe you’ve done this before. Unless you have perfect pitch, you would probably fumble through the black and white keys trying to plunk out the melody or chords with limited success. Now imagine that you know the song is in A flat major. You’ve practiced this scale a thousand times and know that the flats are B, E, A, D. The entire melody has been demystified by this magical knowledge. While accidentals and key changes are still a thing, you can be pretty sure that the majority of the melody notes and chords are going to fall within that A flat major scale. And since you know your scale patterns so well, it’s easy to improvise over a basic major/minor chord progression because you know which notes will fall within that key.
These are just a handful of reasons why your teacher might assign you scales and tell you to practice them more. Still not convinced that scales are important? I would love to hear your thoughts!
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