Scales

Each string teacher I know focuses on different things in their teaching. One of the things I concentrate on is teaching my students scales. By the time they get to 5th grade they can play at least 3 scales rock solid. There are so many great reasons to do them and I like to have fun with the kids when we do them. My hope is to help them make connections between the scales we learn and the songs we are playing in lessons and orchestra. And ultimately...show them how to use their knowledge of scales to help them figure out notes and fingerings in a given piece of music.

Last week one of my 5th graders randomly said (very enthusiastically) in the middle of his lesson, "I love doing scales!" It was rather amusing because this is the same student, who, as a 3rd grader in one of my music classes played a harmonic minor scale instead of natural minor because that was what he was taught in recorder. (i.e. when we were playing the a minor scale on the keyboards, he started throwing in the G# because that's what his ear was used to hearing). So...I explained to him the difference between natural and harmonic minor as a third grader. The "scary" part is that he understood it.

Also last week, one of my more advanced 4th grade viola groups came in and started bugging me to learn how to do the A scale. I usually don't teach the violas this scale until later in the year because the finger pattern is different from our normal finger pattern. But they were not liking the fact that they had to sit out during that scale in orchestra. So we changed the lesson plan a bit and I showed them. After that one of the kids goes, "That's it?" "Yes," I replied. "Well, we thought it would be really hard." Go figure!

Playing the A scale on the cello is a whole different story, and I don't even broach the subject unless I've got an advanced player. So it's the one time in orchestra where they get to just sit. For the most part they find it quite humorous. Many days I'll have a cellist say they want to do the A scale just because they find it so funny.

Ok, that's enough technicality for one evening!