I agree! I also believe that learning the basic (most common) chord progressions is as important too.Originally Posted by falcon1
By the way, I like this analogy (sp?). ". . . as important as water is for our body." It kind of ties music and Anatomy and Physiology together in a neat way. Very cool! LOL!
Ted
Music and humor are healthy for the soul.
And just as with water music can become tainted with impurities.I agree! I also believe that learning the basic (most common) chord progressions is as important too.
By the way, I like this analogy (sp?). ". . . as important as water is for our body." It kind of ties music and Anatomy and Physiology together in a neat way. Very cool! LOL!
Ted
If you mean when learning piano, I got a shocking answer for you: No! My teacher was "infamous" for not requiring her students to practice a single scale, ever, and many an accomplished pianist came from her class. My humble self includedHow important do you feel learning scales, at least Major and minor, are for new students regardless of how tedious?
My argument is simple; if you don't learn the scales you cannot build a solid understanding of how chords, progressions and all-important technical of music work and are formed. My argument goes further but this morning I am pressed for time.
I'm excited in hearing from as many of you as possible in debate! Let's Rock!Although you have to ask the survivors of my piano recitals to testify to that..
So I disagree that they're important as water to our body
My two humble euro-cents.
Cheers Matt
I will take the risk of contradicting myself here and say that your teacher is right, in a sense. Your teacher (like mine in college who was from Europe) explained that the scales are in the music you learn and perform. Practicing a difficult passage may be exactly built on a scare with variations and articulations to alter, combine and embellish the scale(s). However, I learned scales before entering music college in order to obtain a higher status for lessons (one hour as apposed to one half hour for entry level piano). I also taught myself major and minor cord progressions of basic form. In addition to what my teacher taught, he would show alternate ways of fingering scales that increased speed and dexterity on the keyboard.If you mean when learning piano, I got a shocking answer for you: No! My teacher was "infamous" for not requiring her students to practice a single scale, ever, and many an accomplished pianist came from her class. My humble self included
So I disagree that they're important as water to our body
My two humble euro-cents.
Cheers Matt
Yes, I can see your point yet there can be no denying scales are the building blocks for everything we write in music. Just like the alphabet is for the written word.
I think that some teachers may feel that practicing scales becomes "useless" at a certain point in one's development, and I can see valid reasons for it.
in my case, I started playing piano when I was 5, I didn't start playing scales for a few years, and when I did, they were actually part of my yearly exams. I believe I played scales (in octaves, 3rds, 6ths, 10ths, double octaves) at exams until I was 16 or 17. I don't really remember doing any after that point, concentrating mostly on repertoire.
I've found scales make a nice warm-up. I still do them a bit (despite having left the "concert pianist' carreer behind)
When I was a student many years ago, I was practicing scales over and over. The door bell rings and an neighbor yells: Can't you play anything else but scales. So to get back at him, I started playing the Neilson clarinet concerto, which IMO, is an awful piece of music and I didn't have the ability to play.
I think you'll find few teachers and fewer musicians who will deny the importance of scales. And composers really need to know how to play at least one instrument on a working, professional level. Otherwise, SO much is missed in the understanding of what performance really is.
Not just majors and minors, but all modes and various genre-specific scales should be learned and played until they "disappear" under the fingers. At that point, one doesn't have to woodshed scalar patterns in reading and performing, therefore the immediacy of getting a performance can be very close to first-read.
Buddy Rich used to be famous (infamous) for starting an intro on hi-hats, shouting a chart number from the book, and then counting off the four-count. Not only did you have to find the tune and spread it out in about a bar's time, but if you were new in the band, you had to come out screaming...your first night could easily be your last. There are few rehearsals on that level of gig. You're expected to nail everything you read. So, the last thing you want is to be hung up on low-hanging fruit like scale patterns!!! Learn 'em all, and practice them until you smoke!!!
I'd say both.
Scales make musicians proficient and mundane at the same time.
Some people work really hard at scales and never will build up proficiency and/or speed. Others play scales readily and never will play anything off-the-page. Most of course are somewhere in between.
If it's 'giving advice' to people who are starting out I'd say... practice scales and arpeggios and then do all you can to forget them, in a way.
Too much reliance on the use of scales as building blocks leads to that endless recitation of learned patterns that has some interest for the player but usually makes anyone listening want to fall asleep.
Good point on the difference between "knowing" the scales as theory, and having them "in your fingers". Definitely in the Baroque Era the use of scales for counter point and ornament was developed to amazingly good use, and the use of key signature and scales is, of course, the basis for all the various styles of music.
For me the more formulaic Jazz, where you lay down a chord bed and leave it wide open to endless rambling of scales is where the limitations tend to reveal themselves. Often in music, as in the visual arts, it is necessary to try and defy the technical prescriptions for a "good work" in order to find something new.
Look how music is revived by the novice who expresses themselves free of concerns about theory and such. Style is very seldom changed by the learned.
It is of course now more popular to point out the limitations of the more "naive" approach, but the caveat here, to the obvious idea that you should practice really hard on scales and such, is that while something is gained with all of our learning... something is lost as well.
But you're assuming a negative consequence, which isn't necessarily causal...
First of all, anyone who just lays down scales and licks as a jazz player is a HACK!!!! This is not due to practicing and learning, but in the failure to apply the technique and knowledge in a tasteful way. Such a person would not be a better player without the technique, they would simply be a distasteful player with poor technique as opposed to a distasteful player that has enough technique to spit out endless parrotted licks and chords (a practice where I share your disdain completely, ugh...). It still comes up distasteful in the final analysis. No harm, no foul, as far as the technical is concerned.
To the second point, that style is not usually changed by the learned, I would disagree as well. Two words: Miles Davis. He continually changed styles, sometimes bringing about a primitivism that belied his considerable talent as someone who'd excelled in swing, bop, post-bop, modal/cool, and finally the rock/funk/fusion that he explored until his death.
How about Picasso? Or Paul Gauguin? Before Gauguin painted the outlined, colorful "primative" paintings that would become his legacy, he was most definitely an impressionist, and his technical/representational skills were as outstanding as any painter alive. Some of his impressionist works can stand alongside Monets in their capturing of light and atmosphere.
I just had the very interesting experience of coaching a band, hired to play a pop musical. Three of the players are young jazzers, and one of the very hardest things for me to teach them was that pop was **harder** than jazz to play. In jazz, people are there to see you, warts and all. They want to see you work your way into a musical trap and get yourself out. It's exciting.
But that's not how pop works. Fans of "The Committments" will remember the famous line, "Jazz spirals, pop has corners." The hardest thing I had to teach these kids, in very limited time, was that a two bar solo break in a pop tune is so much harder than playing two choruses of jazz--because every note in it must be the perfect note for the song, the mood, and most important, to kick back into the singer!!!
Finally, I was able to impress upon this group that playing pop was NOT a lesser job than playing jazz, and that it required every bit of the musical effort that jazz requires, only funneled into a much more restrictive and high-stakes form. The moment a player feels he is "too good" to be playing a genre, and begins to take it for granted, then the sound goes right to that excruciating sound of a lounge band playing "tunes" in some hotel bar.
UGH!!!!!!!!!!! Death.
AND...I can see how somoene might take that story and think it reinforces the point that these guys were hobbled by their education and practice. But that is not the case at all. Their ability to voice chords tastefully, learned in jazz, is what ultimately made the band sound great. The problem was not their education. The problem was their prejudice against the gig, and the fact that they were actually NOT EDUCATED ENOUGH as to the real priorities on a pop gig versus a jazz gig.
I've heard Cornell Dupree play some of the most smoking bop guitar on the planet. He can also play the perfect three notes on a solo break with Aretha. Ditto your Larry Carltons, et. al. Better is simply better. There is no fault in the learning, only in the thinking. And that's not the fault of knowledge.
On the other hand, I have had countless encounters with non-learned musicians who truly believe they've invented something--when in fact, they're just repeating history in their ignorance. The funniest example I can think of is this really wonderful drummer (and he IS a wonderful drummer), who is very educated in visual/film arts, but not music. 90% of the time, his visual training crosses over and informs his playing. However, one day he approached me, completely excited because he had "invented" a totally new groove. When he played this stunning invention for me, I had to let him down a bit and explain to him that he was essentially playing a mambo in 5/8. Not exactly the stuff that's going to get you into the Grout.
There is nothing lost by knowing more, practicing more, etc. There is only gain.
The only "loss" is when the technical knowledge is somehow perceived to be of greater value than what I'd call the innate talent. It's not even a loss, it's simply the failure of a person's innate talent to match the technical expertise he is obtaining.
And I am with you 100% there. No amount of practicing will ever improve a person's inherent level of talent. It can only open up the possibilities for that talent to be expressed.
Yet, even a lesser talent will profit from more knowledge and more practice. That "lesser talent" might be locked behind a lack of technique, and be revealed to be a GREAT talent when certain technical barriers are erased, or conceptual ideas are embraced.
I don't want to come off like a fuddy-duddy here. I am the last person (and anyone who knows me will attest to it) that is hung up in the chalky patina of academia. Far from it.
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