If you’ve been practicing scales for a few years, you might be feeling like it’s sort of a drudgery. It’s something you have to do … but it’s not interesting, and sometimes you’ll just mindlessly go up and down the scale using muscle memory. And while that muscle memory is important, it’s a big help if we can also break the scale into different shapes and feels.
So today we’re going to get into 4 tips for practicing scales, which will freshen up your approach to the topic, while also improving your technique.
Before we get going, you’ll want to check out our YouTube video 4 Tips for Practicing Scales, along with our Technique Combo PDF package, which has a bunch of Chad LB PDF packages—including the Scales for Jazz Improvisation PDF package, which has plenty of exercises in all 12 keys. It’s a great resource to have, because it also has a master list of all the scales you’ll ever use in jazz, along with chords that correspond to each scale.
Now let’s get playing!
Contents
Learning the base exercise
So first we’re going to run through an exercise to get us started. You may even recognize this shape.
What we’re going to do is step up from one to five, then go down two degrees to the third, then jump down to the root.
And that’s the first measure! So now we’re going to continue that shape diatonically up through the scale.
If you want to use the exercise descending, you’ll just step up to the fourth instead of the fifth, so that you end a bit earlier and then walk back down to the original note. From there, we’ll skip down and diatonically enclose the next degree downward.
What’s great about this exercise is that it gives us a practical shape that we use all the time as improvisers.
So now that we have that exercise down, let’s jump in on some ways we can practice it.
Trying the rhythm trick
Our first concept is a trick where we’ll isolate 50% of the motions you use, while putting 50% in double time—then once we’ve done that, we’re going to flip it.
Here’s how it works: we start with the eighth note exercise, but we’re going to turn every even note into a dotted eighth, while we turn every odd note into a sixteenth—giving us the classic figure that you might associate with swung eighth notes.
We’re going to want to exaggerate this rhythm as much as possible, though, to avoid it feeling like a regular swung rhythm. You want to really lean into the dotted eighth and come off the sixteenth. That means our second notes will be as close to the next beat as possible.
To see how Chad does it, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video.
Now let’s flip the exercise—this is going to be a little trickier. We’re going to start with the sixteenth note, followed by the eighth note, repeating through the exercise.
Finally, we’ll take the eighth note exercise in double time—which will really work magic for you in the harder keys, like F# and Db. It will help iron out a lot of the kinks. You’ll be surprised how this exercise helps you transition to taking a phrase in double time.
Keeping your fingers in check
This next tip is something that is really simple, but something people forget to do. We’re going to keep our fingers as close to the key pearls as possible, while making sure that we’re curling our fingers as well. Let’s play through it again, but this time keeping close and curled.
This is going to help you play a lot cleaner in general, and will help big time as you increase your speed.
Focusing on articulation
In general in jazz, whenever you’re going up, you want to actually articulate the offbeats. This is contrary to the popular myth, where you articulate upbeats.
For jazz playing, you can use the “dooden doo” articulation while ascending. The reason it’s called this, is because you’re going to “dooden” on your reed, the same way you would as you would say it from the roof of your mouth.
So for the offbeat, you end up sort of ghosting the note by putting your tongue on the reed and muting the note a bit. So you really want to push from the diaphragm to make sure that the note still speaks.
Now when you descend, you actually are going to do “dooden doo da oo da dooden.”
Your last note is an “en” sound, so this helps articulate the downbeat of the next bar. When people ask Chad about how he articulates when he’s playing fast lines—the reality is he’s articulating the same as when he plays medium-tempo lines, but maybe lightening up just a bit.
You’ll find that if you practice this, your lines will groove more and just sound a lot more crisp.
Getting the most from your metronome
When you think of using a metronome, you probably think of having it on every beat, as a kind of steady guide for the overall tempo.
This can help when you’re just starting out with a tune, but it’s best to get away from the every beat metronome.
In fact, we recommend dividing your metronome in half, maybe using it just on beat one and three, or maybe even on just beat one. This way you’re relying more on your internal time and consistency. Better yet, try setting your metronome to the beat one of every two bars, or one every eight beats.
Chad does an awesome job of staying locked in on our video, so that you can see how it’s done. You’ll notice just how much you’re rushing or dragging when the metronome comes back around.
We hope these tips are helpful for spicing up how you play your scales. If you want to give it a bit more variation, try checking out our Technique Combo PDF package, which has plenty of exercises in all 12 keys to bring your technique to the next level.
We’ll see you next time!