SCALES

Every day your scales provide your first opportunity for megatasking, the realm of the professional musician. You should put on a drone at the second octave of the tonic and set the metronome to 60 (for D Major, this is D4, same octave as the open D string). Imagine the metronome and the drone are two colleagues and your scale exists to support their musicianship. While you listen to the drone for perfect intonation you must also listen to your other colleague the metronome to make sure you play with her. At the same time, you will be listening to yourself, making sure your sound is beautiful and your intervals ring on your instrument AND with the drone, while you make sure your shifts are from 1-1 up and down the scale and perfectly reliable, and your right hand is managing the micro-changes of string crossings and tracking movement toward the bridge as you move up the strings AND up the instrument (and the reverse on the way down!), all while you groove to the beat. While you do all of this physically with your viola you must also check in with your gestures and release tensions and imbalances where you find them. I often need to release my calves and feet, stop standing on one leg, roll my head from side to side to make sure my neck isn’t tight, swing the viola and bow away from each other a little bit while I open my collarbones up and engage the large muscles of my back. This is also known as not slouching. You might need to stop clenching your jaw by yawning, or blink to soften your eyes, or swing your left elbow to find the sweet spot for your posture, or breathe deeply to release your tailbone, or…

Scale practice is an opportunity to engage multiple techniques at once in a musical and consistent way. Your pitch must be METICULOUS, CONSISTENT, PREDICTABLE, and COMFORTABLE, your sound must be gorgeous, your shifts must be reliable and comfortable and imperceptible, your timing must groove, and the whole thing should sound easy!
Most of the time people think scale practice is about learning how to get up to the top octave of the scale. This is true but WOEFULLY INSUFFICIENT. Learn one whole scale, up and down, gorgeously and comprehensively, and see where your playing is—you will be dazzled and delighted!

Important scale principles:

Hand frame: 4-1 on the way up should be beautifully in tune with your drone. First the perfect fifth down from the drone, then the perfect fourth below, then matching the drone (both a perfect fourth hand frame) and then the WWW hand position with the leading tone 4th finger to the tonic first finger starting the third octave, then the 2nd finger must be exactly the same on the top five notes when you go up and reach 4-4-4 and come back to that 2. If you can make all those 4s and 1s in tune, match the pitch of your tonic at the top of the scale and then come back down to a second finger that is stabilizing during that reach at the top, and then all the 1-4s on the way down, you can probably play 2 and 3 in tune the rest of the way. This is the start of your scale being in tune. Perfection is the enemy of the good in regard to hand frame. Look for the most stable 1-4 hand frame you can with the perfect fourth/octave hand position, and then the most reliable rocking motion for the WWW hand position (which doesn’t feel like a hand “frame” to me because I must allow the fulcrum to move in order to play both in tune). You will have engaged the hand frame that is stable but not rigid in your left-hand opening warm-up.

Ear training: Of course, you must use your passionless ears while you play to check if you are ACTUALLY IN TUNE. As in tune as if you were tuning your instrument. Really, really, actually in tune. This is a wonderful opportunity to engage what is actually happening and develop your reality based listening, which is so very difficult to engage while we are playing more complicated content. Try to set your feelings about your level of success to the side and learn how to listen more accurately all the time. This does not mean to criticize yourself. Criticism is passionate and can be very counterproductive. Evaluation is useful. Set aside criticism, take the long view, evaluate whether you’d think your instrument was in tune if the thing you heard your finger play were an open string, find the simplest way to replicate the pitch over and over perfectly in tune (this references your left-hand opening warm-up exercise in one position—learning how to repeatedly drop your finger in the same place). Notice: the 4s and 1s are not just pitch matching but interval tuning—this means you are making perfect intervals with your drone—not perfectly in tune—”perfect fourths” type perfect intervals. Making sure your perfect fourths and perfect fifths and perfect unisons and octaves are in tune augments your skills inside your ears and brain. Don’t waste this opportunity in your practice to become a better listener!

***This sounds a lot like the hand frame paragraph, right? You get to think about intonation from an ear training angle and from a hand position angle and reap the benefits of your elevated consciousness and consistency in multiple arenas. You are doing one thing and many things all the time with the viola. Your focus moves around, but your playing should sound consistent and coherent—this is megatasking!***

String crossing: Throughout the scale your sound should be beautiful and consistent with a musical arc to the top of the scale and a musical conclusion down to the bottom. I find the very first string crossing from C to G to be a wonderful litmus test (scale! tool of assessment!) of my right hand control and flexibility for legato playing. Every string crossing in your scale should sound smooth and supple. If at first you do not hear that, engage it while you are developing your scale skills. Your right hand’s ability to float all the way up the scale without adding any bumps to the sound is vital to scale success. You will use this fliesender quality in your right hand all the time. Master the extremely active left hand, extremely legato (not bumpy tenuto!) right hand contrast. You will notice there is a difference between changing the bow smoothly and supportively (using right hand to support left hand/overall pulse) while the sound is floating and uninvasive, and using your right hand to push along your left hand. Using your right hand to push along your left hand is very rudimentary alternate-hand supportive and should be considered a stepping stone to the much more artistic contrasting left and right hand activity alternate-hand support.

Great sound: The scale also invites you to get to know your tracking points on your strings so your bow doesn’t skate or skid or grind or grate. You are invited to make a musically consistent sound from the low C string all the way up to the high A string. You will notice you must operate your bow with finesse. You will also notice patterns in how the strings need to be handled and how the position you are in demands you handle the bow. There is a matrix of bow positions for different strings and different positions. The changes are subtle, but they are consistent. They become three-dimensional when you add in changing the sound quality or dynamic to your playing. However, be sure to master one consistent sound on your scale before you add more sonic dimensions. Practice your scale sometimes by looking at your contact point and observing patterns. This knowledge will provide a shortcut in your repertoire practicing. You will also get the opportunity to learn places you need to manage with even more finesse, notably up high on the A-string. The top fifth of the scale should sound as gorgeous as the rest of your scale and it will! Keep asking it of yourself.

NB: While we do not usually practice a scale with open strings, it can be useful to notice the unique demands of those open strings on the bow to get a consistent sound. I do not engage this in my 3-octave scale practice, but you are welcome to use open string scale practice to learn more about your bow if that delights you.

Metronome skills: Of course, you can practice scales without a metronome, but it is an early scale skill to use one. In addition to cultivating flexibility and great rhythm, using a metronome is an opportunity to engage your physical well-being while you play. At least every bow change (two clicks) you should release your neck, shoulders, left hand, right hand, both biceps/triceps, and any other place you hold tension while you are playing without disrupting the scale. Releasing musical energy and physical tension should be incorporated into your practice of serious repertoire, and the skill is developed during scale practice. Your metronome affords you a chance to release at different places in the scale, on different digits of your left hand, and to develop your ability to change sub-pulses (rhythms!) immediately and perfectly. Being able to switch between 1.5 notes per beat up to 8 notes per beat encourages sophisticated subdivision—every great musician’s best rhythmic tool. In scale practice, where suppleness and release are paramount, you have the opportunity to cultivate excellent subdivision skills. Additionally, you have the chance to think about relative weightiness of more or less important notes, and on different notes of the scale as you change speed. This musical tool, seemingly simple, is vital to communicating rhythm to your audience and colleagues, and it is actually quite sophisticated. In the scale, it is particularly important to have light musical value on many of the down-shifts. By the time I am playing six notes per click, the scale down has two shifts in one click that need to be completely inaudible, masked, musically non-eventful. This is a wonderful opportunity to develop very useful invisible shifting skills, useful all over the place in your professional playing.

In summary:

Apply the principles of playing in tune in first position. Apply the principles of shifting. Apply the principles of buttery sound and delicious string crossings. Make sure your fingers are able to drop no matter where you are in the scale and land in tune. Make sure your sound in the top octave, particularly the top fifth, is supple, warm, and deep. Make sure you can switch between rhythms immediately when you change rhythms. Don’t waste your warmup by assuming it is about physical waking-up. Make your warmup more efficient and useful, and don’t watch TV!

NOW MASTER ONE SCALE:

Master your D Major scale. Learn the best fingering and notice the subtleties that lead to success with the left hand. In this version you will always play 4th finger instead of an open string. You will also start your scale on the first finger, as you so often do in your repertoire playing.

Your first job is to play D in tune with your D drone (same pitch as open D), an octave below the sounding drone. Can you play the first note in tune? Do not assume the answer is yes. Listen and find a way to play that first note in tune reliably. There are notes of the scale that are more important than others. Make sure they are all excellent. Of course, once you play them reliably in tune you will be able to play the rest of the scale in tune very quickly. The scale looks like this:

You will notice that the first red-fingered notes on the C and G strings are first fingers and fourth fingers: HAND FRAME. These notes must ring and be comfortable, and your string crossings should be buttery. If they are correct, the rest of the notes in between tend to sort themselves out because you have solved your hand’s best hand frame in a perfect fourth and octave. Focus on these notes, and don’t just think of 1 to 4, but also 4 (G) up to 1 (A) as a really great opportunity to have a hand frame that works across strings. The drone will illuminate everything. Make it as in tune as you make your open strings when you tune them each day.

You will then notice that the next red-fingered note is your first shift. This is useful to be familiar with (you will meet it again at the top octave), but it is not foundational like the first two strings of your scale were in WW1/2 with perfect fourths between 1 and 4. However, shifting perfectly in tune to the G is very important, and this is your first opportunity to use your second finger as a pivot finger for the most open hand frame: WWW. It must be in tune alongside the others. (When you encounter the A on 2 up an octave, it becomes a VITAL anchor for the top of the scale.) Of course the tonic 1 on the A string must be in tune, but it is also a shifting finger since all shifts are from 1-1. This finger must stay down while you play 2 and 3, and then you must REPLAY 1 to learn the shift up to the G, also a first finger perfect interval note. This shift must be perfect as well. The A that follows has a unique job in the scale, serving as an anchor finger not only for the most open hand frame, but also for the extension of that large hand frame up to the tonic D at the top of the scale.

On the way down the same notes tend to be important in the same way they were on the way up, but you will shift all the way down on the A string instead of splitting it up like you did on the way up. The top of the scale will never be in tune if your 2nd finger A is not properly anchored and able to pivot for you. If A is not in tune on the way down then it is not useful. Of course, the top of the scale (C#-D-C#) should be in tune, but A is more important to master first. When you execute the first shift down, from G to D (1-1) and then place the F# 3rd finger, be sure you leave 1 down. The same is true for the subsequent shift from D to B. Your first finger must be down and you must hear the lower note in tune before you put down your 2.

I recommend all slow scales include the real shifts, using helper notes, through two notes per beat. (By three notes per beat you will be moving too fast for it to be fluent with the helper notes, but your first finger should stay down.) The scale looks and sounds like this:

All the helper notes happen in a slur with the shift. If you are playing the scale with one note per bow, your first shift would be E to G both on the same bow, with an audible slide.

You can also practice the most important parts of the scale by themselves in a scale/arpeggio hybrid. This arpeggio occurs in my favorite arpeggio series, but with a different fingering. Consider this arpeggio more like the bones of your scale, rather than a separate arpeggio amongst arpeggios. It looks like this:

When you practice this arpeggio, continue to apply the principle of the-shift-belongs-to-the-new-note in your bowing decisions. Use slurs to unmask anything untidy in your placement of fingers or string crossings. Everything you play should work as a double stop under that slur. Repeat notes any time it is useful to allow for a slur, particularly on shifts, but also on string crossings. Without the rest of the notes of the scale you should be able to use that top A as an anchor note for the very top of the scale. If you find that it is tough to keep it down in the full scale, be sure to keep your 3 down as an anchor note for those moving 4s, and be sure the A is perfectly in tune when you replace the 2. Continue to consider if it is possible to leave that 2 down as you develop your excellent scale skills.

Once you have raised your level of awareness on these structural moments in the scale you will be ready to raise your awareness of the rest of the notes. These notes all have murkier definitions than the perfect intervals/perfect shifts have. Seconds, thirds, sixths, and leading tones do not scream out if they are not in tune the way perfect intervals do. However, you are now ready to apply the principles of hand frame, reliable, recreatable finger-dropping technique, and a decision about what you expect to hear in your scale. Additionally, there is a “usual suspect” lurking in the D Major scale, and you must vanquish it: the ever-too-sharp F#. Almost any time a violist plays F# it is too high. Listen carefully to it with your drone, with your open D while you play it on third finger on the A string. Train your ears to hear that F# where it belongs. This comes in handy as a viola skill since most of us play too sharp (another usual suspect!) when we are not vigilant or if we get nervous. Partly this is because it is easier to hear when we are slightly sharp (many soloists tune sharp and play sharp of the orchestra as a rule so they will be better heard in the audience) and also because when we are scared we have the impulse to move inward physically to protect our vital organs, which on the viola means moving your left hand up the fingerboard a bit. If you know about this physical reality you can ward it off with mental and physical preparation.

For a warm-up exercise that uses the same finger on every metronome click, think of that finger as the only other dancer on the floor. All the other fingers are released and subordinate to the finger you use on the click. For Ševčík op. 1 part 2, #1 (which I have used daily for the better part of 20 years) this would be 1 on the first three lines, 2 on the next three, etc. By the time you’ve played the whole page, each finger has been the priority repeatedly and in many patterns. Alternately, for a scale, you invite all the fingers onto the dance floor one by one, depending on how many notes per click you are playing. By keeping the metronome still and increasing the number of notes per click, you change which fingers get invited to the dance floor and which ones do not. Learn which finger is on the click for each iteration of the scale. Learn which fingers fall too heavily when they are not on the beat and find a way to blend them into the background. This allows each finger to become the important finger being perfected in the scale, changing as you switch from 3 notes per 2 clicks all the way up to 16 notes per two clicks, but it also encourages the camouflage of ever more fingers, ever more fluently. To facilitate your groove and release, and to integrate your left and right hands, think of your right hand releasing every two clicks on the scale, which is when you are changing your bow. While you change bows, the sound should be seamless, not kicked for emphasis. Your bow changes start before the click pops; the sound of the new bow must release with the metronome. Elevated awareness of your right hand can help your left hand feel easier. Think about right hand pulse and rhythm to have more reliable pulse and rhythm overall, and to redirect your mind (from untangling your left hand) to simple and meditative bow changes every two seconds.