How to practice scales?
Mon, 06/06/2016 - 20:19
Hi, David:
How, and at what point, should I start making scale practice a part of my daily routine?
Is it enough to be able to play the scales up and down? Should I regularly put time into playing scale patterns (like the "leapfrog" exercise someone brought up a few days ago)?
Or should I continue to focus my practice time on learning songs and developing vocabulary?
To anyone who may be reading and may want to contribute: I am currently working on LOA-9, and have been playing harmonica for about three years.
Thanks, Dave.
Good morning Marc.
I don't personally practice my scales any more, they're pretty ingrained in me. It did take me some effort over a couple of years though where I practiced them pretty regularly until they were that way.
Start with playing the scale ascending and descending as a warmup.
Leapfrogging (creating unique patterns from the scale) is a good idea.
I personally spent most of my time improvising with the scale. I recommend you take a range, like holes 1 through 3 for example, and work them for a while to a jam track... being careful to stay in the scale (play slowly of course). If this is one of your main practice elements, do this every day for around 10m for about three days and then change your range.
As time passes you'll start hearing licks that use the blues scale and you'll learn them and catalogue them as being that way in your mind so that when improvising when you decide to be IN a solo scale those licks are more likely to be waiting for you.