Four months in, ten minutes of scales at the start of every session, mostly C, G and D major, hands together, two octaves. I can play them and they are getting smoother, but I cannot point at a single thing in the pieces I am learning that is better because of them. Trying to work out whether the payoff is further away than I think or whether I am practising them in a way that never transfers.
Ten minutes is a sensible amount, do not increase it. Add arpeggios though, because those show up in real music at least as often as scales do and they are where the awkward hand shapes live. Broken chords in the left hand accompaniment of half the repertoire you are about to meet are literally arpeggios.
Arpeggios also expose an uneven hand far more honestly than scales do, which is unpleasant and useful.
Honest dissent: I dropped scales entirely for a year and practised the hard bars of real pieces instead, and my playing improved at least as fast. The transfer argument is real but it is not the only route, and for an adult with forty minutes a day, spending a quarter of it on exercises has a genuine cost. If you enjoy them, keep them. If they are why you skip practice, drop them without guilt.
Fair, and I would only push back slightly: the piece by piece route works well until you meet a key you have never played in, and then the bill arrives all at once. Somewhere in between is probably right for most people.
Six months for me, and it was specifically fingering. I stopped having to work out which finger goes where, because the scale had already decided it.
@chapter_cass · 2w ago · 3 replies
They transfer when you stop practising them as scales and start practising them as the specific thing you need. Running C major up and down twice in the same way every day for a year will not transfer, and you are right to be suspicious of it.
What to change. Give each session's scales one job. Today: absolutely even tone, listen for the thumb being louder. Tomorrow: the thumb crossing under with no bump and no gap. The next day: dynamics, quiet up, loud down. The day after: a rhythm, dotted, then reversed. Same ten minutes, but you are now practising a skill rather than a pattern.
The moment it clicked for me was reading a piece with a run of eight notes in it, recognising the shape as a scale I already had under my fingers, and playing it correctly on sight with the right fingering without working anything out. That is the whole payoff, and it arrives suddenly rather than gradually.
At four months with three keys, I would expect that moment somewhere in the next few months if you add keys steadily. Add one new key a fortnight and keep the old ones in rotation.
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@etym_elliot · 2w ago
Giving each day one job is the difference between practice and attendance. I did scales for three years as attendance.
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@question_jar · 2w ago
Ten minutes with one job instead of ten minutes of repetitions. That is a completely different exercise and I have never once done it.
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