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THE SCALE OF THINGS

What’s the point of playing scales and arpeggios? Students often respond that they need to learn scales and arpeggios because examining boards assess them. So why do examining boards test them? The answer to this is not, as one student facetiously opined, to abuse candidates. It is because scales and arpeggios help to promote good fingering habits, improve evenness in both tone and rhythm, develop coordination, enhance one’s sense of keyboard geography, and elevate understanding of musical keys. Scales and arpeggios have been used by pianists for hundreds of years to reap these benefits, and their appearance on exam syllabuses reflect their importance as a core part of one’s technical education.

Two of the most widely used examining boards – and – publish their set of scale/arpeggio requirements in contrasting ways. ABRSM have individual books by Frederick Stocken, for example, which is based on the new ABRSM syllabus and available up to Grade 5, eliminates the process of reading musical notation by laying out each exercise graphically, i.e. by printing the fingering of each exercise on the keys of a fouroctave keyboard. Bypassing the notation enables quicker learning for many people, particularly in the lower grades, but surely there would be no downside to including the notation somewhere on the page to mentally relate and fix the physical patterns.

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