Scales practice -- any tips?

[PussinWellies]

Right. My 10-yr-old son has a Grade 4 exam looking horribly imminent (end of this month). He's keen and generally does pretty well on his pieces but barely scrapes through the scales and sightreading.

He seems to have a LOT of scales to practise this time round.

I don't always 'hear' when he's getting them wrong especially minor scales. DH (who is musical but generally gets home too late to listen) heard him yesterday and said, 'Oh god, he's miles away from knowing these scales properly.' So any tips for making best use of practice time? He'll have three more lessons before the exam.

Make an incredible scales boardgame and play it as often as possible. It's a clever idea that helps you target the ones you need to work on.

Alternatively, forget scales entirely, make you're best attempt at them in the exam for the minimum (?7 marks) and write off the remaining (?14) marks. A distinction is still just about doable.

your not you're

That boardgame looks brilliant - would definitely give that a go.

If he's not keen on that, I would suggest setting aside a fixed amount of time at the beginning of each practice and focussing on 1 group only per day for the next week: so Monday is B and Bb day, Tuesday is C & C# day etc, (including any contrary motions, arpeggios and chromatic scales starting on those notes). With only a few to focus on each day, he should aim to be able to play each day's scales accurately and in time, (but slowly) by the end of the session - ideally 3 times in a row with no mistakes - and then work on building up speed in the following weeks.

Can you incorporate bribery into this in any way?

So, looking at the Grade 4 requirements (can you tell I'm bored this afternoon?) it might look like this:

Day 1:
B and Bb major scale and arpeggio;
Bb contrary motion;
chromatic starting on Bb
Bb major broken chord

Day 2:
C and C# minor scale and arpeggio;
chromatic starting on C#

Day 3:
Db major scale and arpeggio;
D minor contrary motion

Day 4:
Eb major scale and arpeggio;
E major arpeggio;
chromatic starting on Eb

Day 5:
F minor scale and arpeggio;
F major arpeggio;
F major contrary motion;
chromatic starting on F#

Day 6:
G# minor scale and arpeggio;
G minor contrary motion
G minor broken chord

Day 7:
Ab major scale and arpeggio
chromatic starting on Ab

I'm a piano teacher and have a few tricks up my sleeve - here are my favourites-

Write out every scale you have to play, chop the paper up (so you have differnet bits of paper saying F minor, G minor etc). Put all the bits of paper into a bowl. Pull out a piece of paper, play that one. If it's Ok, it comes out of the bowl, if it's rubbish, it goes back in. Scale practice is over once they're all out of the bowl. They will progress really quickly with this method.

Altenatively, packet of small sweets. eg Smarties, skittles. You call out a scale. If he plays it with no errors, he gets the sweet. If he makes loads of mistakes, you get it! The downside of this is, the better he gets, the less sweets you get to munch!

You really won't get good marks overall with rubbish scales, though if the rest is fantastic, you should pass OK. I would say that it's worth persevering. If I think of any more I'll post back later!

We do all these things and it works. My daughter's also taking grade 4 piano. We have until February though. Which pieces is your son taking, PUssinwellies?

Wow, thanks all! I'll try some or all of those. I think he needs some fun injecting into it to give him heart, as he gets pretty despondent about just slogging away at them.

I realise I should have said he plays brass rather than piano (so thank goodness, no contrary motion).

Must go and light sparklers!

oops - don't know why I assumed piano.

Have fun and good luck to ds.

I think the same ideas will still work, splitting it into tongued/slurred notes rather than left/right hand. We'll give it a go anyhow.

Snorkle: we've made a Scales Game and will try it this week, thanks!