Practicing Scales vs Practicing Keys
Practicing Scales vs Practicing Keys
Scale and Key fluency are essential for any musician, but they are not the same. Many musicians practice their major scales and consider themselves to be fluent in every key as a result, but this is not the case. There is an important distinction to be made—keys are made up of scale patterns. Because these scale patterns tonicize different notes and require different specific tuning adjustments, they all require fluency to be key signature fluent. A musician like the one mentioned previously would only be major scale fluent which would make it more difficult for them to execute minor, modal, or atonal tonalities at the highest level. Their brain has not carved the neural pathway for non-major tonality even though they are comfortable seeing every key signature in their music.
It should be standard teaching to refer to keys by their main major/minor name when out of context. A simple display of flats B Flat, E Flat, and A Flat on a staff should be described completely as E Flat major/C minor (as opposed to just E flat Major or just C Minor) for example. While more tedious to describe and type, it is far more accurate and communicates the flexibility of what the key signature tells us. This is especially important particularly for younger and developing musicians. It teaches them to look for contextual clues in their music, differentiate with their ears, and think critically about what is on the page.
Scale fluency is easier attained than Key fluency mostly because it covers a smaller area. For example the Key of E Flat Major/C Minor encompasses the scales of E Flat Major, C Natural Minor, C Harmonic Minor, C Melodic Minor, and all of the modes of those scales. True key mastery is attained by mastering all of those different scales and being able to apply them in context—actual music.
I would suggest that most musicians pursue Scale fluency slower and in tandem with another element of their playing—my personal choice is control of soft attacks. For that there is no better exercise than “Soft Touch“ from “The Brass Gym” (see below). Because of the slow pace and the amount of time you spend on each note, you get to fully process what the next note is from both a mechanical and mental/audiological standpoint. In turn this helps you build better intonation throughout the key as well as the mechanical fluency. This can then be applied for any scale/mode in the key and. once that level is mastered, scale/mode in 3rds. While rather time consuming, the mental demands on this exercise are what make it simply immense—particularly because you can build control of soft attacks and resonance at soft dynamics at the same time. Slow, methodical practice is the key to rapid growth. I can speak from experience on this too, because this was the way I learned to be comfortable after switching to C tuba.
“Soft Touch“ exercise
For building key fluency a great starting spot is, of course, is the Herbert L. Clarke Technical Studies because it weds the scale/key fluency and building technique at velocity so well. I think it would be unfortunate for musicians to pursue their fluency only through this method, however, because it can become easy to just be following the demands of the music on the page rather than building the legitimate fluency in the key. What I would suggest—whether you go the Clarke Studies route or not—is to find a few simple tunes in Major and in Minor (or even some that effectively use both), write down their solfege, and learn them slowly by ear in all twelve keys. Not only does this build superior aural skills, but with no music on the page and only solfege to guide you, it builds your key fluency through solely mental processing. When applied with the pursuit of scale fluency through the method explained above, progress is absolutely rapid, and allows you to be more comfortable in situations where there may be no sheet music present.
A soap box I tend to get on as a teacher lies in the deficiency of many State’s All-State band scales requirements to actively help students improve scale/key fluency. The one I’m most familiar with, as a result of where I competed and now where I teach, is the ILMEA scale sheet for Illinois (see image). It is notorious here for being fairly difficult for that age group, being much more an etude than a scale sheet, for encouraging students to think that faster means better, and encouraging them to learn the page rather than be fluent in their scales/keys. Students must tongue every note and complete the page in under 3 minutes. While I enjoy that this sets a high bar for students, the diminishing returns of encouraging them to learn scales this way frustrates me because it results in students being able to play the sheet (often flawlessly), but not being able to execute their scales at a high level without it—and their keys much less so.
Students should be evaluated based on their key mastery and not their scales. While I still think that scale fluency is a must for building key fluency and that using scales as a benchmark for necessary assessment/evaluation in the classroom still has merit, at the festival/honor band/solo and ensemble level measuring fluency by key would demonstrate much more about the student’s actual musical abilities. A simple standardized version would supply a set of simple tunes in major and minor—Happy Birthday, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Take Me Out To The Ball Game, Old Wayfaring Stranger, Greensleeves, We Three Kings, etc. Students would be required to pick one from each category (major and minor) and prepare them in all twelve keys. On the day of evaluation/chair placement/auditions they would be asked to perform each selection in two randomly selected keys. This would not be difficult to implement, and would likely take almost the same amount of time as something like the scale sheet without many of its negative emphases. I timed myself playing “Happy Birthday“ and “Greensleeves” each in two different keys, at a moderate tempo, with about 15 seconds between each key and finished after 3 minutes 6 seconds.
As a result I find it unconscionable that key fluency isn’t evaluated this way more frequently—if at all. There is so much more students can learn and understand about music by mastering their keys this way as well as developing a greater fluency with them at an earlier stage. Advanced musicians could learn a great deal from pursuing/maintaining fluency this way also.
What methods do you use to develop key and scale fluency? Do you think this method would help reform the current system and provide an even stronger foundation for young musicians?