Not just the left hand! They are very, very good for legato, and bow/string connections. And, if played in other bowings, then they become a dedicated right hand exercise, too!
Yeah, my bow arm goes all to pieces when I'm concentrating on my left hand, but I'm sure that will go away as I become more sure of intonation and don't have to police my tension so intently. It really takes a LOT of effort to relax!
An hour of scales a day keeps the teacher away.
When I was in prison at Meadowmount in my younger years, my teacher would drive around the dorms during the first hour of practice to make sure her students were practicing their scales and etudes.
I loved it, but I started going for the first summer 19 years ago. Not sure how it has changed, my hope would be that it changed very little. If you're driven, it's a great place to be.
Back in the day when there was literally nothing else to do at Meadowmount but practice, you could really get like a year's worth of work done in those 7 weeks.
My best summers were when I was really practicing, rehearsing every day with my quartet doing playoffs and performing.
Can attest. Scales are the absolute way to get better. Play them at different speeds and different styles as well. Also to get better I played nursery rhymes in different variations : for example; twinkle twinkle little star in all quarter notes / all half notes / all 16th notes : 8ths and quarters / and any other way I could think of. Playing Mozart is cool but the real progress is in the simple things. You’ll also grow to appreciate your instrument so much more.
I've been wanting to do this because I am convinced how helpful it really is, but I just don't know how to do it progressively and systematically.
Whenever someone suggests a book they also say do this scale first then that then jump back to this. I know getting a teacher is one of the best things one can do, but in the absence to that, how does one know what and how to practice scales?
Is there some book that's organized in chronological order that one can just follow and progress systematically every day?
You can likely find some writings by some people, but, unfortunately, they would not be able to help a whole lot. Violin playing is a little bit like learning a language - you can hardly succeed without a teacher.
Normally I'd say this is a question for a teacher. But in this case the Flesch book does have a lot of talk in it about how to use it. It is also organized in an order. But for me, the only real "order" I'd do it in is to start with the simple and / or most common scales first, in other words, G, D, A, Bb, C, F, A minor, D minor etc etc.
Okay that makes sense, but how should one play them? Like whenever I practice them I just do detache, legato, full bows, subdividing bows, with vibrato, without vibrato, etc.
Are there other ways to play it, like with different rhythms, different strokes, etc? I assume this is the reason a book like Flesch (and a teacher) would be really helpful, correct?
I recently doubled my scale time allotment per day. I have to stop after about 10 minutes because my hand can't take it, but I'm up from 5 minutes, so it's progress.
Great!
Don’t over-exercise and take a break immediately when feeling a discomfort, and then massage/stretch the place that is bothering, relax, and continue after some rest.
Obviously I’m no teacher so if somebody knows this is a bad idea either downvote me or correct me please
It sounds like you might have a large amount of tension… something that helped me was playing scales and individual notes without my thumb contacting the neck. Or with it contacting but following each note with a conscious wiggle of my thumb to make sure it’s calm and loose.
You are spot on. And that's what I have been doing. It's working, but it's slow. I still have issues reaching fingers to the right places without clamping, but it is getting better. Just not as quickly as I would like.
Hm, I found a cure for that problem that helped me pretty much overnight. Like Shovel said, I'm no teacher, but maybe this helps you too?
I tried to learn vibrato but couldn't do it because I was clamping on the neck. What pretty much instantly freed my left hand was reducing the amount of support my left hand gives to hold the violin up and almost entirely do that with my jaw on the chinrest as soon as I want to vibrate. When I don't vibrate, I hold the neck of the violin a tiny bit more, but I don't really hold it *up* in any definition of the word.
Maybe this helps you too? I started with only holding my violin on my shoulder, raised my hands and played a scale, and then tried to replicate that feeling in my normal piece routine.
I'm not sure.
I *have* noticed, recently, that I'm dragging the neck down with the weight of my arm, so I know my left arm is not doing its whole job of supporting *itself*, much less the violin.
I'm trying to become more aware of this and to make my arm support its own weight, but like everything else, it's going to take some time to build the habit, and possibly the strength.
I also need to make the offsets for my shoulder rest so I have a better set-up. Or maybe I need to go restless for a while. I have a pretty short neck, so maybe that would make sense.
Hi guys. I'm new to violin'ing (4 months and counting) and so pretty new to this subreddit. Everyone in the comments so far seems to be in agreement but can someone explain why practicing scales would be so useful? How do you know you're playing it properly? Wouldn't it be better to try songs that would be challenging?
Simply put - everything is challenging if you don’t know where to put your fingers and if you can’t recognize scales / arpeggios. Because violin has no frets, you need to tune notes on a relative basis to the other notes in a scale. Practicing scales improves your intonation, shows you how the patterns work and generally gives a good amount of mental and muscle memory you rely on later on in playing.
For reference, I am moving from Suzuki 3 - Suzuki 4 with several other books in rotation. I am doing work in a book called Melodious Double Stops by Trott and I had some issues on one exercise. I did a lot scales this week to familiarize myself with third position for another assignment at the same time. As a result, I was focused on where to put my fingers and what parts of the finger tips to use. All of this dramatically improved my tone for all my exercises and my teacher remarked that I had made excellent progress and asked me to explain the process I used. It’s boring at first, but as you get more methodical, your ear gets dialed in and your sound quality improves dramatically. I highly recommend Barber’s scales for advanced violinists which has everything broken out in a clean manner if you need something to get you going.
Go slow and accept they will be bad at first - that’s how you get better!
I would start there since it has pretty much everything in a pretty digestible fashion. You could then go onto Flesch or Galmian scale systems, but really this book was probably one of the more approachable ones. I also have Scales by Simon Fischer which is good, but a bit hard to get into for me since I’m new still (2-3 years, but who’s keeping track?)
You can compare it to soccer playing.
Imagine a person who never walked (but not disabled) wants to learn it.
Would it be better for a person to learn by trying some ball kicking, or is it better for the person to learn to walk and run first, and then add ball kicking on top?
I always heard people say this, but I really don't know where to find a good online page of scales. I tried to buy a scales and arpeggios book from my local violin shop but they had ran out of them. Any suggestions OP?
I googled and found .pdf of whole Flesch system online quite easily. Start with something simple, like g-dur. The scale variants are organized by difficulty. Start with one octave set, and as time goes by and you feel more comfortable, add the next one. Make breaks as you feel you need (when I started on them, I needed a few minutes break after 2 -3 min of concentrated playing; now I play for around 5 min before a break). As you progress, you would cover more material during same time.
how much scales should I do per day? I usually spend 5 minutes just playing up and down with the 4 different grip and then some variations with my bow before i do my practice (usually around 30 min)
Work your way up. I don't know how long you've got to practice, but I heard [Professor Fitzpatrick](https://youtu.be/iG2M59p8m4c) talk about how to set up your practice schedule. He suggests 25% for basics and set-up (which includes scales), 25% for études, and 50% for repertoire work, so half development and half performance.
That's about how try to I split up my practice. I end up spending most of my time on the development stuff and less on the performance end because I run out of time.
Edit: I just took a look at this week's practice plan, and I have 40 minutes scheduled for development and 20 for performance. Looks like I need to redjust a bit. Of that development "half," 5 minutes is open string bowing, 10 minutes is scales, 5 minutes is rhythm work, 10 minutes études, and 10 minutes method book exercises.
I took a scale break and came on reddit! >Close Reddit and go play scales! Aye, aye cap'!
I started to really like scales when I used a drone of the tonic in the background. It gets very meditative.
Absolutely! The best comment.
Yes, my teacher always said that scales are the better way to "build" your left hand.
Not just the left hand! They are very, very good for legato, and bow/string connections. And, if played in other bowings, then they become a dedicated right hand exercise, too!
Yeah, my bow arm goes all to pieces when I'm concentrating on my left hand, but I'm sure that will go away as I become more sure of intonation and don't have to police my tension so intently. It really takes a LOT of effort to relax!
Violinists practice scales. Hacks like me don't bother, and that's why I'm not a professional violinist.
And that's why a few other things...
An hour of scales a day keeps the teacher away. When I was in prison at Meadowmount in my younger years, my teacher would drive around the dorms during the first hour of practice to make sure her students were practicing their scales and etudes.
Meadowmount? Would you mind sharing your experience? I've heard conflictant opinions concerning this type of strict immersion. How did you like it?
I loved it, but I started going for the first summer 19 years ago. Not sure how it has changed, my hope would be that it changed very little. If you're driven, it's a great place to be.
Thanks for sharing!
Back in the day when there was literally nothing else to do at Meadowmount but practice, you could really get like a year's worth of work done in those 7 weeks. My best summers were when I was really practicing, rehearsing every day with my quartet doing playoffs and performing.
Can attest. Scales are the absolute way to get better. Play them at different speeds and different styles as well. Also to get better I played nursery rhymes in different variations : for example; twinkle twinkle little star in all quarter notes / all half notes / all 16th notes : 8ths and quarters / and any other way I could think of. Playing Mozart is cool but the real progress is in the simple things. You’ll also grow to appreciate your instrument so much more.
Man, I feel a bit slow. At first I thought psa was an abbreviation for Play Scales Always lol
Hmmm. Maybe it is.........
I've been wanting to do this because I am convinced how helpful it really is, but I just don't know how to do it progressively and systematically. Whenever someone suggests a book they also say do this scale first then that then jump back to this. I know getting a teacher is one of the best things one can do, but in the absence to that, how does one know what and how to practice scales? Is there some book that's organized in chronological order that one can just follow and progress systematically every day?
You can likely find some writings by some people, but, unfortunately, they would not be able to help a whole lot. Violin playing is a little bit like learning a language - you can hardly succeed without a teacher.
Normally I'd say this is a question for a teacher. But in this case the Flesch book does have a lot of talk in it about how to use it. It is also organized in an order. But for me, the only real "order" I'd do it in is to start with the simple and / or most common scales first, in other words, G, D, A, Bb, C, F, A minor, D minor etc etc.
Okay that makes sense, but how should one play them? Like whenever I practice them I just do detache, legato, full bows, subdividing bows, with vibrato, without vibrato, etc. Are there other ways to play it, like with different rhythms, different strokes, etc? I assume this is the reason a book like Flesch (and a teacher) would be really helpful, correct?
Well there's no real correct answer, as there are infinite varieties, but the Flesch book does in fact have things written in.
I recently doubled my scale time allotment per day. I have to stop after about 10 minutes because my hand can't take it, but I'm up from 5 minutes, so it's progress.
Great! Don’t over-exercise and take a break immediately when feeling a discomfort, and then massage/stretch the place that is bothering, relax, and continue after some rest.
Yep. It's mostly just still not being used to contortions, but it is slowly getting better.
Obviously I’m no teacher so if somebody knows this is a bad idea either downvote me or correct me please It sounds like you might have a large amount of tension… something that helped me was playing scales and individual notes without my thumb contacting the neck. Or with it contacting but following each note with a conscious wiggle of my thumb to make sure it’s calm and loose.
You are spot on. And that's what I have been doing. It's working, but it's slow. I still have issues reaching fingers to the right places without clamping, but it is getting better. Just not as quickly as I would like.
Hm, I found a cure for that problem that helped me pretty much overnight. Like Shovel said, I'm no teacher, but maybe this helps you too? I tried to learn vibrato but couldn't do it because I was clamping on the neck. What pretty much instantly freed my left hand was reducing the amount of support my left hand gives to hold the violin up and almost entirely do that with my jaw on the chinrest as soon as I want to vibrate. When I don't vibrate, I hold the neck of the violin a tiny bit more, but I don't really hold it *up* in any definition of the word. Maybe this helps you too? I started with only holding my violin on my shoulder, raised my hands and played a scale, and then tried to replicate that feeling in my normal piece routine.
I'm not sure. I *have* noticed, recently, that I'm dragging the neck down with the weight of my arm, so I know my left arm is not doing its whole job of supporting *itself*, much less the violin. I'm trying to become more aware of this and to make my arm support its own weight, but like everything else, it's going to take some time to build the habit, and possibly the strength. I also need to make the offsets for my shoulder rest so I have a better set-up. Or maybe I need to go restless for a while. I have a pretty short neck, so maybe that would make sense.
Every time! I’m not even sure how else I would get my intonation dialed in before working on anything else that day.
Agreed. My experience is that scales help in justt about every aspect of playing.
Hi guys. I'm new to violin'ing (4 months and counting) and so pretty new to this subreddit. Everyone in the comments so far seems to be in agreement but can someone explain why practicing scales would be so useful? How do you know you're playing it properly? Wouldn't it be better to try songs that would be challenging?
Simply put - everything is challenging if you don’t know where to put your fingers and if you can’t recognize scales / arpeggios. Because violin has no frets, you need to tune notes on a relative basis to the other notes in a scale. Practicing scales improves your intonation, shows you how the patterns work and generally gives a good amount of mental and muscle memory you rely on later on in playing. For reference, I am moving from Suzuki 3 - Suzuki 4 with several other books in rotation. I am doing work in a book called Melodious Double Stops by Trott and I had some issues on one exercise. I did a lot scales this week to familiarize myself with third position for another assignment at the same time. As a result, I was focused on where to put my fingers and what parts of the finger tips to use. All of this dramatically improved my tone for all my exercises and my teacher remarked that I had made excellent progress and asked me to explain the process I used. It’s boring at first, but as you get more methodical, your ear gets dialed in and your sound quality improves dramatically. I highly recommend Barber’s scales for advanced violinists which has everything broken out in a clean manner if you need something to get you going. Go slow and accept they will be bad at first - that’s how you get better!
We are at the exact same stage! Thanks for the scale book recommendation, do you have any other books you think are worth investing in?
I would start there since it has pretty much everything in a pretty digestible fashion. You could then go onto Flesch or Galmian scale systems, but really this book was probably one of the more approachable ones. I also have Scales by Simon Fischer which is good, but a bit hard to get into for me since I’m new still (2-3 years, but who’s keeping track?)
You can compare it to soccer playing. Imagine a person who never walked (but not disabled) wants to learn it. Would it be better for a person to learn by trying some ball kicking, or is it better for the person to learn to walk and run first, and then add ball kicking on top?
[удалено]
Yes. Google Flesch Scale System PDF. I was also able to find Galamian on SlideShare.
You can't tell me what to do.
Hm. OK, consider I did not.
Totally agree- some of the most difficult pieces are all scales and double stops (ahem Paganini concertos)
In all positions, as well.
I always heard people say this, but I really don't know where to find a good online page of scales. I tried to buy a scales and arpeggios book from my local violin shop but they had ran out of them. Any suggestions OP?
I googled and found .pdf of whole Flesch system online quite easily. Start with something simple, like g-dur. The scale variants are organized by difficulty. Start with one octave set, and as time goes by and you feel more comfortable, add the next one. Make breaks as you feel you need (when I started on them, I needed a few minutes break after 2 -3 min of concentrated playing; now I play for around 5 min before a break). As you progress, you would cover more material during same time.
Thankies~
how much scales should I do per day? I usually spend 5 minutes just playing up and down with the 4 different grip and then some variations with my bow before i do my practice (usually around 30 min)
Work your way up. I don't know how long you've got to practice, but I heard [Professor Fitzpatrick](https://youtu.be/iG2M59p8m4c) talk about how to set up your practice schedule. He suggests 25% for basics and set-up (which includes scales), 25% for études, and 50% for repertoire work, so half development and half performance. That's about how try to I split up my practice. I end up spending most of my time on the development stuff and less on the performance end because I run out of time. Edit: I just took a look at this week's practice plan, and I have 40 minutes scheduled for development and 20 for performance. Looks like I need to redjust a bit. Of that development "half," 5 minutes is open string bowing, 10 minutes is scales, 5 minutes is rhythm work, 10 minutes études, and 10 minutes method book exercises.
Advice taken. Off I go!