Tag Archives: scale practice

Serious noodling

Posted on March 15, 2016 by jazzpanflute

The whole point of having an intuitive instrument is to be able to follow the promptings of your Inner Ear without having to stop and think. Which scale is this? What note am I starting from? And much less: which … Continue reading →

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The Philosophy of Fingering

Posted on March 1, 2016 by jazzpanflute

Many moons have passed since I was last on speaking terms with film composers, so I was unable to ask John Williams if he was aware that his Imperial March for the latest Star Wars movie uses one of those … Continue reading →

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Chunking down on Scale Practice

Posted on November 2, 2015 by jazzpanflute

Chunking down into N chunks reduces practice required by a factor of Nx where x is the number of possible chunk flavours Paul Hirsh (@jazzpanflute) Why do we need full-length scales? Or: why do the scales we practise always need to … Continue reading →

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Why can’t music learning be as simple as LEGO?

Posted on December 8, 2014 by jazzpanflute

The other day my 6-year-old son decided he wanted to get rid of all his toys, except his LEGO. Not quite. When the moment came to pack them up, he decided he couldn’t part with his Bakugan brawlers either. You … Continue reading →

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Scales can lead you astray

Posted on November 15, 2014 by jazzpanflute

OK so you want to play faster than you can think. Scales are the way to go! You can vary them a bit by playing them in thirds (up two down one) and keep going (up three down two…). Then … Continue reading →

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Ethiopian groove

Posted on August 11, 2014 by jazzpanflute

Anyone interested in exotic scales should definitely listen to the Ethiopiques record collection, copiously shared on youTube. They were re-mastered from recordings rediscovered after being buried in the vaults during the 18 years of Ethiopia’s repressive Mengistu regime, which tried to … Continue reading →

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Working the Boogie Woogie scale

Posted on July 29, 2014 by jazzpanflute

A while back I commented on some of the scales that have seen a lot of use in the past hundred years but don’t seem to have been incorporated into scale practice routines – yet. Maybe this is a good thing, … Continue reading →

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Musical Chromosomes

Posted on June 24, 2014 by jazzpanflute

Working with whole tone panpipes has for me been a liberating experience, a shortcut to what they call stage 4 competence in NLP or what I call “mindless playing”. For those unfamiliar with Romanian panpipes, I should explain that the semitones are obtained … Continue reading →

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