Practicing scales creatively

By Vidas Pinkevicius

It's great to play scales, it's exciting to build your technique through exercises for some time.

But eventually the scales get boring and meaningless for a lot of people which means they will stop practicing this valuable type of exercise.

We like to believe that meaningful and exciting music can be created in real compositions only.

But sometimes we can think outside of the box a little and come up with a creative and surprising way to practice scales too.

Have you tried changing modes, rhythms, or a meter of the scale? How about adding a simple chord accompaniment in one hand while another plays a scale? Flipping the hand parts? Creating rhythmical imitations between the parts? A canon?

Now that's just a step or two away from a real composition, isn't it?