This is a book meant to help and give tips to other young musicians that I've gotten from both academical and personal experiences. It doesn't matter what instrument you play or if you're a vocalist, hopefully this will help anyone.
In this chapter I'll tell you about some tips and techniques for learning scales.
- The Slur Two Tongue Two Technique This technique was taught to me by my band director. You basically just play your scale but you slur the first two notes, then tongue two, and you keep cycling through that until you've finished your scale. This technique helps with both learning scales and articulations.
- Practicing Your Scales Wherever You Go No matter what instrument you play you should be able to practice your fingerings on an invisible/imaginary instrument. For instance, in P.E. when I jog I like to do the fingerings for my scales as well.
- The Shuffle And Draw Technique For this technique you just need to write down your scales on small sheets of paper, put them into some kind of container, shuffle them and then draw a random scale to play. I use this method to help me prepare for auditions in particular, and it helps with memorizing your scales.
- How To Identify An Unknown Sharp Scale To identify an unknown scale that has sharps in it, look at the last sharp(the one farthest to the right), and move one half step up. For example look at this picture of A Major:
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We notice that the sharp farthest to the right is G#, and one half step above G# is A. So this is A Major.
- How To Identify An Unknown Flat Scale To identify an unknown scale with flats in it, look at the second to last flat. That is the major scale. For example look at this picture of Bb Major:
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The second to last flat is Bb, making this Bb Major.
Remember: Sharps and Flats cannot be in the same key signature.
Thank you to my band director for teaching me the Slur Two Tongue Two method.
