Dear Friends,

I hope you’ve been doing well these past few weeks. I haven’t sent an edition of Notes From the Piano Prof in a while. It’s been a busy time: I went to Hungary for the Chroma festival and to central Wisconsin to play chamber music at the Music in the Shed festival - both were amazing experiences!

I’ve also been hard at work finishing up The Art of Piano Scales, my scales course for pianists who want to review or level up their scales, which is coming out next Thursday. (You can still join the waitlist here.)

Lately, I have, obviously, been thinking (a LOT) about scales. In addition to (or perhaps because of!) this course I'm working on, I have been noticing them appear all over the place. For example, last week I performed Brahms G Minor Piano Quartet, which is full of scales and scale patterns. The other night we went to a concert at the Peninsula Music Festival, with Stuart Goodyear performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, K. 488, which is a real workout for scales!

As I was in the process of building this course, several hundred people filled out my scales course survey; I have found it illuminating to hear from many of you and read what you have to say.

One response jumped out at me. Somebody mentioned that he truly hates practicing scales, because he doesn’t see the point of it. However, in the next sentence, this same person listed out all of the Bach inventions he plays by memory.

This struck me as ironic, because the Bach inventions contain many, many scale patterns. This person is practicing scales every day but didn’t make the connection: he hates scales but plays them constantly in Bach.

This is surprisingly common: students who play scales in their repertoire but see scale practice as pointless and like drudgery.

I think one reason for this is that we are taught as students that practicing scales is one thing, while practicing music is a completely different thing.

“Scales” are for warming up.

“Music” is the repertoire you practice and learn, and (maybe) polish, memorize and perform someday.

But if you eliminate this distinction and approach everything as “music,” scale practice suddenly becomes more meaningful.

Since scales appear everywhere in our repertoire, practicing scales becomes an opportunity to practice and polish (essentially, to "pre-learn") parts of pieces we are playing.

Viewed through that lens, scales don’t look as much like a chore anymore! Instead, they are a prudent investment to make everything you play a little bit easier to learn.

So this week, look at a piece or two that you’re working on and see if you can find the scale patterns embedded in it. Once you start looking, you might be surprised how much of your music is built out of scales you already know.

If you do that exercise and find scales, write back and let me know what piece it was and what measures the scales are in. I’d love to start making a list of some of these examples.

I hope you have a great week of practice! I'll be practicing right along with you, working on the first 3 movements of Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen, which I'm planning to perform at the end of September.

👋 Happy practicing,

Kate

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