All The Scales

[fuel925]

Im currently doing approx 100 scales for grade 6 (this is if you count all the invertions). Im just wondering how many there actually is all together? Could someone list all the categories? For G6 im doing:

Melodic Minors
Major Arpeggios
Dominant 7th's
Diminished 7th's
Double 3rds
Major Contary's
Chromatics

What others are there? Is it possible to learn them all? The people on the forum who say that you should practise scales, how many scales do you actually know?

Regards,

Chris

[bernhard]

If you use a comprehensive definition of scales like “the pattern of intervals to go from one note to the next one octave up”, then the number of scales you can generate although not infinite, is pretty close.

Consider the C major scale. It goes from C to C one octave higher using the pattern of intervals: 1 – 1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – 1 – ½. With this pattern and on the piano, you can have 12 such scales (by starting the pattern on each of the twelve different keys).

What if I want a different pattern, say 1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – 1 – ½ - 1? Can you see this is the same pattern as above? But the first interval has been moved to the end. You can keep doing this game and you will have:

1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – 1 – ½ - 1
½ - 1 – 1 – 1 – ½ - 1 – 1
1 – 1 – 1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – ½
1 – 1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – ½ - 1
1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – ½ - 1 – 1
½ - 1 – 1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – 1

and we are back at the beginning: 1 – 1 - ½ - 1 – 1 – 1 – ½ . Because these are just different combinations of the major scale pattern, we can do them with each of the 12 major scales. These are of course the modes. So right, there you have 7 modes for each major scale. This gives you now 84 scales to play with.

But you can actually alter the pattern to, say

1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – ½ - 1+1/2 – ½ . This is of course the harmonic minor pattern. Add the mode rearrangement above and you have another 84 scales.

Why not use this pattern: 1 – ½ - 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 – ½ ? This is the melodic minor pattern. Another 84 scales.

And these are just the three most used in classical music. Then you have blues scales, jazz scales, wholetone scales, bitonal scales, pentatonic scales, you name it. At the bottom of it all is simply a different pattern of intervals between the notes. So, theoretically one would not think of major scales as 84 different scales, but rather as a single interval pattern that can be played in different keys. From a practical point of view it is a different matter altogether, since C major may be theoretically the same as B major, but the fingering and technique to play them will be quite different, so you will need to tackle each in turn.

If you leaf through Nicholas Slominsky’s “Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic patterns” where he provides the scores for literally thousands of scales, you will see that it makes no sense to study scales on a vacuum by themselves. You will simply never finish the task. The scales required in exams are just a laughable tip of a truly huge iceberg.

Does this means scales are useless (like say, Hanon)? Not at all. Scales are the foundation of everything, but any study plan that requires one to learn scales as pre-requisite is doomed to failure. Instead, learn to analyse your repertory to figure out which scales are involved in any particular piece. Then as part of learning/practising/working on your piece study/practise/work on the relevant scales.

As far as classical music exams are concerned, all you will be required to know are major scales, and minor scales (both melodic and harmonic forms).

Dominant sevenths, arpeggios and diminished sevenths are not really considered scales (although they might well be) but chord patterns.

Again such chord patterns are just the tip of the iceberg. There are seven different sevenths, but in exams only dominant sevenths and diminished sevenths are required. Likewise, there are four triad patterns, but only major and minor triads (=arpeggios) are required in exams.

Jazz exams will usually be much more comprehensive and demanding in terms of scales since not only you need to know major and minor scales as well as several other scales, and the modes on top of that.

Ultimately trying to be all inclusive is not a good idea simply because most music does not use all possible patterns, but actually a very limited number of them. Consider the English language. Although the number of ways you can rearrange the 26 letters of the alphabet is probably larger than the number of atoms in the universe, the number of words in English can pretty much fit in a dictionary, simply because no one uses the majority of possible combinations (like “wstaxru” which has no meaning in English).

Finally the way to go about scales is to learn the rules of formation which are very few. Trying to learn all scales is just pointless (and likley to be impossible)

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Ed Marlo]

you can't get much better an answer than that..

[squiggly_girl]

I agree! I feel enlightened