Full-range scales and arpeggios

ByBret Pimentel

My students at the university are subject to a department-wide requirement to pass a scale exam, in which they must demonstrate mastery of major and minor scales. The format of the scales, however, is left up to the individual studio professors.

Most of the studios require scales to be played in octaves, but I prefer a different approach. To the chagrin of my students (oboists/clarinetists/bassoonists/saxophonists), I require that they are played in this format:

  1. Start on the first scale degree, in the instrument’s lowest octave.
  2. Proceed upward in an even rhythm (such as even eighth notes) to the highest note in the instrument’s “range” that falls within the scale (according to an upper range limit that I set).
  3. Proceed downward to the instrument’s lowest note that falls within the scale.
  4. Proceed back upward to the starting note.

So, for example, an oboe student’s E-flat major scale goes like this:

I also require arpeggios, following the same rules:

Here is why I insist on full-range scales:

  • It develops practical technical fluency. A major reason to practice scales and arpeggios is to condition fingering patterns that will appear frequently in music. Composers, in my experience, don’t seem to be interested in restricting scalar or arpeggiated patterns to an instrument’s most convenient octaves.
  • Likewise, composers can’t be counted on to time a scalar passage so that the first scale degree always falls on a strong beat, nor to give that note an agogic accent. Full-range patterns in even rhythms encourage learning scale and arpeggio vocabulary in a more meter-agnostic way. (A more complete way of doing this would involve practicing scales and arpeggios in duple and triple rhythms and perhaps others, and starting the scale at different places in the metric pulse.)
  • Full-range scales develop tone, response, familiarity, and confidence in the instrument’s extreme ranges. For example, a clarinetist playing major scales in octaves will likely play the altissimo G exactly once (in the G scale, assuming an upper range limit of G). Using the full-range method, a clarinetist will reach that note in seven different scales, and will reach the nearby F-sharp in the other five.
  • For instruments with smaller “standard” ranges, a full-range approach gets students playing scales in more than just a single octave, such as perhaps the G, A-flat, and A scales on saxophone and oboe.

You’ll notice that I like everything slurred. Articulation studies do of course have their place, but with scales and arpeggios I’m mostly looking for good finger movement and consistent tone, and tonguing can hide some problems.

One issue with this method is the question of how to handle the “turnarounds” in melodic minor scales. For example, consider C-sharp melodic minor on the bassoon, with an assumed upper limit of B-sharp. For the ascending version of the scale, the extreme notes of the scale are low A-sharp and high B-sharp, but for the descending version the extreme notes are B and B. My (admittedly somewhat arbitrary) solution, to give students a uniform way of approaching melodic minors, is that the highest note of the scale is taken from the descending version and the lowest is taken from the ascending version:

This is, to my ears, the least awkward way to play melodic minor scales full range, but of course a thorough technique-building regimen will ultimately require mastery of all possible turnarounds, regardless of awkwardness.

Happy practicing!

Similar Posts

  • Oboe reedmaking resources

    ByBret Pimentel
    One of mine.
    One of mine.

    There’s no way around it—if you’re going to be a serious oboist, you have to learn to make your own reeds. Even fine handmade reeds purchased from an excellent reedmaker can’t compete with reeds made to your own personal specifications, suited to your highly individual combination of embouchure, instrument, playing style, and performance situation. A reed is in a constant state of change, from initial scraping until eventual retirement, and needs the daily ministrations of a skilled reedmaker to keep it playing at its best.

    Woodwind doublers who take up the oboe as a secondary instrument will need to learn at least basic reed adjustment techniques in order to have reeds they can count on in professional situations. But if you’re going to learn the mysteries of fine-tuning “finished” reeds, you’re most of the way toward learning the whole process—consider at least learning to tie blanks from cane that you purchase already gouged and shaped. Starting from tube cane gives you even more control over the finished product, but requires the use of gouging and shaping equipment ($1200+, all told).

    There’s no real substitute for learning reedmaking at the feet of a skilled oboe teacher, but here are some of my hand-picked favorite guides and tutorials online. These can serve as a good introduction for a beginner, and more experienced reedmakers may like to cull a few new ideas from the wide variety of opinions and approaches represented here. Read More “Oboe reedmaking resources”

  • Reed adjustment checklist

    ByBret Pimentel

    Problems with your clarinet or saxophone reeds?

    1. If you buy into the myth that there are only two or three “good” reeds in a box of ten, you are buying the wrong reeds. There are many, many options available to you. When I’ve got the right brand, cut, and size of reed for my mouthpiece and embouchure, easily eight play respectably well right out of the box. Within 15-20 minutes, I can adjust nine or ten to play quite well, and maybe three or four of those at recital quality. I use the steps below and nothing else.

    2. Um, no.
      Um, no.
      Don’t waste time and cane messing with the topography of the reed’s cut. With all the variation in reeds, the cut is the one thing that is really quite consistent. If you don’t like the cut, shop around some more. If you own a diagram like the one shown here, with elaborate instructions on which tiny sectors of reed you should sand, I recommend that you throw it away.

    3. Make sure the reed is flat. Many aren’t, and one that was flat yesterday may not be flat today. A piece of 600-grit wet-dry sandpaper held against a piece of glass is the perfect tool for this. Concentrate on the part of the reed that contacts the mouthpiece’s table. For $2, I had a local glass shop cut me a 3″×4″ piece of ¼” glass, with the edges ground smooth. You can also use a mirror or window pane. A flattened reed will respond better and squeak less.
    4. Balance the corners. This is the one exception I make for changing the reed’s cut. Well-balanced reeds have a nice clear tone and respond reliably throughout the instrument’s range and at any dynamic level. I find that balancing the corners can correct for much of the asymmetry of a typical reed. Even a reed that already seems pretty good can often be improved. Tom Ridenour’s method is dead simple and strikingly effective—required reading.
    5. If absolutely necessary, clip the tip using a high-quality reed trimmer. I do this to maybe one in twenty reeds. I do it to make a reed feel a little stronger. Clip off the tiniest possible amount at first—a little clip goes a long way. It’s very rare that I clip off more than a tiny bit, and if I do, it rarely works out well.

    That’s it!

  • Hercules stand clip modification

    ByBret Pimentel

    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

    I made a small modification to my Hercules instrument stands so I could clip them onto my instrument cases for easier carrying.

    The stands all have this same yellow sort of teddy-bear-head piece on the bottom:

    Remove the nut from the center of the bear’s forehead:

    I bought a handful of these. They are almost the right thing for the job:

    …but they don’t quite fit: the holes are too small. The metal seemed fairly soft and not too thick, so I managed to open up the holes a bit with a handheld drill and a 1/4″ wood-drilling bit. It would probably be safer and more precise to use a drill press and a proper metal-drilling bit.

    Or, even better, can anyone recommend a premade part with two 1/4″ (65mm) holes about 1″ (3cm) apart, no thicker than about 1/16″ (1mm), preferably without sharp corners?

    Anyway, with the holes slightly enlarged, put the part in place and replace the nut.

    Add a small carabiner.

    Done:

    This worked well on all my Hercules stands, with a minor modification for the bassoon/bass clarinet stand. The “forehead” bolt was too short to get the nut back on with the extra piece in place, so I installed it off-center. It works fine.

    I’d be curious to hear about your favorite equipment modifications in the comments.

  • Fix fixable problems now

    ByBret Pimentel

    Just about every day I have a student show up for a lesson with an etude or repertoire movement they have been working on for a week or more, and there are little, silly problems that haven’t been fixed:

    • A spot where a fingering choice needs to be made, but hasn’t.
    • A page turn in an awkward spot.
    • An unfamiliar foreign term that hasn’t been looked up.
    • An ambiguous accidental that need to be double-checked against the piano part.

    It’s easy for them (or me) to ignore or procrastinate small but easily-fixable issues while busily drilling technical passages. But I know they—and I—are doing our best work when those details don’t slip through the cracks.

    It’s not worth it to spend a week practicing something in an incorrect or compromised way because you haven’t gotten around to fixing the fixable problems. Would any of these help you solve those issues more promptly?

    • Print an alternate/trill fingering chart and keep it with your practicing stuff, or bookmark an online one on your phone.
    • Put a few dollars on your copier/printer card/app so you can photocopy a page when needed.
    • Keep a good music dictionary in the pocket of your instrument case.
    • Keep your piano score and solo part together so you can always use them in tandem.

    Consider what other easily-fixable problems you haven’t bothered to fix, and ask yourself what you can do to remove friction so they get solved right away next time you practice.

  • Doubling reed tip from Lawrie Bloom

    ByBret Pimentel

    Lawrie Bloom, solo bass clarinetist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, starts this video talking about his reed break-in process, but spends some time toward the end (start at about 2:45 to cut to the chase) talking about his strategy for doubling clarinet and bass clarinet in a symphonic setting.

    Mr. Bloom recommends using slightly softer reeds than usual to compensate for the fact that the reeds will be somewhat drier than optimal, and using a mouthpiece cap whenever possible. Read More “Doubling reed tip from Lawrie Bloom”

  • Experiments with electric woodwinds

    ByBret Pimentel

    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

    I’ve been having fun with woodwinds enhanced with pickups or microphones. (If you’re interested in natively-electronic instruments like wind controllers, I’ve written about those elsewhere.)

    I still have a lot to learn about working with electronics. But here are a few observations in case anyone finds them helpful.

    Which instrument(s) to use? I find lower-pitched instruments to be more fun, since they can provide convincing bass lines. Electronics can pitch a high instrument down, of course, but I haven’t had the success I would like making this sound good. So far I’ve installed pickups into a bassoon bocal, a bass clarinet neck, and an English horn bocal. I’ve used microphones for other instruments.

    Which gadgets to use? I’m personally using the Little-Jake pickups, a looper, and a multi-effects unit. When I started getting into effects pedals, I found it alarmingly easy to accumulate quite a few. This was a good and inexpensive way to get started. But I quickly discovered that it was becoming unwieldy to try use use more than a few in performance (I literally had to walk back and forth across the stage to get to them all). A multi-effects unit turned out to be much more practical, with a few foot switches I can configure to operate a large number of effects. (I’m currently using one by Boss.) It takes a little more advance setup than individual pedals, but greatly simplifies the onstage footwork. And I was pretty easily able to sell off the individual pedals to fund the purchase.

    Which effects to use? I think the best-known guitar-type effects are distortion, delay/echo, and reverb. Those are fun to play with, but I’ve become more interested in ones I can use to give my instruments new capabilities, rather than just give their sounds a little grittiness or echo. For example, smart harmonizers (which add harmony lines based on a selected key) and pitch shifters (which add harmony lines based on selected intervals) make my instruments polyphonic, a significant upgrade for a woodwind player. And a looper, or even a cleverly-used delay, can create counterpoint.

    Here are a few examples of my experiments:

    There are eight audio tracks here, but each one is performed “live.” I’m trying to somewhat replicate sounds from the original song: two vocal parts, two guitars, piano, electric piano, and electric bass, plus various synthesizer lines that I’ve consolidated into one. I’m using harmonizers and pitch shifters on the “guitars” and “keyboards” to perform chords in real time. I’m also pitch shifting the “bass” to let the English horn play much lower than its natural range.

    I’m using a harmonizer here similarly to how I used it in the English horn video, but you can get a better view of what that involves footwork-wise. I’m using several carefully-programmed footswitches to change the harmonizer’s parameters as I go, in order to get the chromatic harmony that I want. On the A sections of the tune, I’m also using a pitch shifter to double the melody up an octave. The separate bass part that starts at about 0:28 uses pitch shift to drop the sound down an octave.

    This is an example of using a looper (the red unit) to layer multiple lines, while using the multi-effects unit (black) to do real-time harmony and some other things. The “bass” part, shifted down two octaves, isn’t as convincing as I would like (you may have to use earphones to hear it).

    Here’s a live-performance example using looper plus multi-effects unit.

    Here I’m using the multi-effects unit to perform the melody “call” and harmonized “response” (unfortunately distorted and too soft), and using the looper to provide backing for an improvised solo.

    Here’s an attempt to replicate one of Paul Hanson’s incredible electric bassoon “hocket” performances (I fell a bit short). The technique uses a delay to create a single well-timed echo, with the result being that I’m only playing every other note you hear; the in-between notes are echoes of previously-played ones. To get the full effect, check out Paul’s video.

    This one you can actually buy sheet music for; the arranger, Melissa Keeling, provides parameters for using a harmonizer and a delay (which could be separate pedals or functions of a multi-effects unit).

8 Comments

  1. WONDERFUL post, Bret. I cannot even begin to attest to how much full-range scales have helped me out with technical dexterity, especially in the upper register of the horns! My poor students cringe when I have them do these – but, man, it pays off.

    Reply

  2. Great post, Bret! I’m also a fan of full-range scales, and execute them in pretty much the same way. Regarding your solution for melodic minor scales, do you have your students practice all minor variants, or only melodic? I’m just curious.

    Last semester, I happened to teach one of my students the fake/multiphonic low A fingering on bassoon. I was delighted when she came into her next lesson and had added that note to the bottom turnaround of her D minor scale!

    Reply

  3. Thanks, Bret – that’s an excellent post.

    What’s there is exactly how I did my scales when I did my both of my degrees in clarinet. Having been through it all I feel that it’s a very good approach, but I believe that there are things that need to be considered a bit more if one decides to go this route. For it’s worth, here’s my opinion:

    (1) I wouldn’t have my first or second year undergraduate students do this. For many, learning all of their scales is complex endeavor and just getting the correct notes and fingerings at a moderate tempo is enough – the extended ranges only complicate the process and adds to the confusion of it all. More isn’t always better, especially at the beginning. Yes, it’s a good way to go eventually, but only AFTER they can do all of their scales accurately in two octaves.

    (2) If you do decide to do this with your students, please give them a written out set – don’t just give them an example of one or two and say ‘now go figure out the rest’. For me, that really did nothing but increase my stress level and slowed down the process of actually the scales ‘into my fingers’. And anything that might have been learned by ‘going through the process’ of writing it down, was soon forgotten and long gone after a semester.

    Reply

  4. Makes sense to me.

    Another thing I try to do is run scales in different modes, i.e. play a C scale beginning and ending on the 2nd degree and so on, to get away from root-based thinking.

    Anyone else out there thinking like that?

    Reply

  5. John, I too play through all of the modes in all of the scales. But I do like extended range scales and find them more practical.

    Reply

  6. As soon as my students can play their scales and know their fingering I start incorporating full range scales. They are so important for all the reasons you mentioned and for my jazz improv students – you never want to be limited by your fingers what your mind hears and want you to play. :)

    Reply

  7. I also use this method and was expected to do this in any scale exercise in University. It’s exhaustive sometimes, but effect for sure!

    I recommend playing a given scale through the cycle without stopping. 4ths, is usually the go to, but 5ths, MA3rds, mi3rds, Chromatic, whole tones are all an option.

    Another permutation to the full range scale exercises I like to is set your metronome to 40-50 bpm.

    Then play each scale using different beat structures over the 40-50bpm pulse. Eg. half-notes, half-note triplets, quarter notes, quarter note triplets, 8th notes, 8th note triplets, 16th note, 16th note triplets, 32nd note, (32nd note triplets if you get really excited about it LOL) … by the time you are done you’ve just played the scale 8+ times in most of the common beat structures you would encounter.

    Sometimes I even use the same 40-50 bpm for whole notes and use that as part of my long-tone exercises.

    Once I get the basic full range scale under my fingers, I start working on every permutation of scales I can think of full-range… obviously STILL working and probably will always be working on it LOL

    3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, 7ths, octaves
    Triads,
    4 note chords, 5 note chords, 6, 7

    Then you add to that by playing each one…
    UP, UP
    DOWN, DOWN,
    UP DOWN
    DOWN UP

    Add taking each permutation through the cycles and you have a whole new set things to work on.

    Happy Practicing, Everyone!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments that take a negative or confrontational tone are subject to email and name verification before being approved. In other words: no anonymous trolls allowed—take responsibility for your words.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.