Memorizing scales?

[jonalexher]

What would you recommend when it comes to scales? What's the best way of practicing them and how many should you memorize? All majors and minors?

Thanks in advance!

[ceapaire]

You need to know all the scales, major and minor (melodic and harmonic). They are very very easy if you know your key signatures inside out (and you can learn them in an afternoon with ease). Having this very basic knowledge of music theory makes it much simpler to recognise and repeat patterns in music, as well as being able to predict what might come next.

I think it's worth looking at modes as well, as they're quite fascinating, but if you don't know your major and minor scales yet I'd stick to those for now

[roseamelia]

Yes you should do all of them but not every single one in one day. Try doing 2 scales if it's to much work and if it's not maybe even all of them like:  minor then major then minor.

And do them back and forth. hope this will help you!

[keypeg]

I don't know whether "memorizing" them is the right way to go.  You should be aware of patterns and then you can recreate them.

First off: all major scales have the same series of half steps and whole steps:
WWHWWWH

Secondly, if you go along the circle of fifths, you'll notice that the sharps or flats repeat themselves, and you keep adding one
G --- F#
D --- F#C#
A --- F#C#G#
etc.

To get at the order G, D, A, E for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. sharps, just count to 5.  G is 5 above C,  go up 5 from G and you hit D, 5 more and you hit A.... since you have 5 fingers you can get that physically with your hand.  Look up "circle of 5ths".

Third there are some patterns of piano keys.  Fingering isn't something to be memorized: it involves the fact of higher set back black keys, lower longer white keys, and your middle fingers being longer than the outer fingers.  You'll find basically three fingering patterns that the major scales tend to fall into.  When actually playing music it depends on the music.

If you know a principal then you can always recreate facts which you might forget when memorizing.

[nyiregyhazi]

I don't disagree with understanding scales by interval at all- but I do feel it's important to go beyond that quickly. You cannot execute rapid scales by thinking about locations of tones and semitones. You have to just know what the notes are. Whether you derived them yourself or not, the key is to have a definitive mental map of black keys for the entire first octave. For speed, this has to almost entirely replace intervallic thinking. Before fingering a scale, make sure you can play one octave slowly and thoughtfully with one finger. Build up until the whole first octave can be visualised as one entity. It should be as clear as if the right notes were a different colour to the other keys. Think of each black key as as a departure from the corresponding letter/white key and remember that every letter is included once and only once. It's basically a waste of time to start fingering a scale before you have a full mental conception of the notes.

From there it's all about knowing fingerings properly:

https://pianoscience.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/scale-fingering-made-easy.html