A rich collection of learn by doing lessons that teach you how to think about, hear, study, and practice Scales like a real musician…
Table of Contents
Prerequisites
Basic music reading… LOVE of music… and the discipline to study and practice.
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Why Study Scales?
The study of Scales, done right, is essential to understanding how an enormous amount of music works. Studying and practicing them the right way…
- Prepares you to recognize a scale when you hear it.
- Prepares you to recognize a scale when you see it in written music.
- Elevates your music reading from “painting-by-number” to deep understanding.
- Enables you to internalize music based on meaningful patterns, not brute force note by note memorization.
- Deepens your visuospatial awareness of the keyboard.
- Develops your piano technique.
- Expands your ability to play by ear.
- Broadens your scale vocabulary for composition and improvisation.
- Enables you to transpose like a pro.
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What is a Scale?
- A Scale is a collection of pitches that work together in order to achieve some melodic-harmonic purpose.
- There are many kinds of melodic-harmonic purposes; there are many kinds of scales.
- Each scale type has a unique personality.
- Each scale type sounds different.
- Each scale type feels different.
- Each note in a scale has a particular musical function. Some notes establish the key center. Some establish the tonality. Some notes create melodic-harmonic tension. Some provide melodic-harmonic release.
- Think of each scale as a distinctive palette of musical sound-colors that work together to create a certain mood or feeling. Never think of a scale as an unbendable or unbreakable rule.
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Scale Structure
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Melodic Analysis using Solfege
How to read, think about, and hear melodies like a musician: in functional melodic/harmonic terms, not as strings of unrelated and random sounds…
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Pentascales
Major Pentascale
Minor Pentascale
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Major Scale
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Minor Scale (Natural, Melodic, Harmonic)
Any interest in the same study for other keys?
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Modal Scales
Mixolydian Scale
Dorian Scale
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Pentatonic Scales
Major Pentatonic Scale
Minor Pentatonic Scale
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Blues Scales
Minor Blues Scale
Major Blues Scale
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World Music Scales
Middle Eastern Scale
Japanese Scale
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Chromatic Scale
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Key Signatures
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How to Transpose
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