Challenge yourself! Join me for 31 days of 31 different ways to approach scales. New posts go up every day in January 2023. Start from Day 1 here.
Today, I’m doing scales upside down: starting with the highest note, down to the usual starting note, and then back up. (See below for a notated example.) It’s a small change … but makes things feel surprisingly different!
The idea for this came from Earl Carlyss, a former violinist of the Juilliard Quartet. We were talking about hiking in the mountains, and also scales ... and that they’re both harder coming down than going up. We didn’t come up with a solution to the hiking part, but it was obvious that starting scales from the top (instead of the bottom) would be a big help. And since then I’ve heard about others who practice and teach scales this way. So it was definitely worth a try.
While practicing my scales this way today, I was struck by how different this version feels … yet it’s familiar at the same time. Getting started at the top: definitely different! Once I got going: very familiar. And I felt the same in my double stops.
But it’s in the arpeggios that things got really interesting. My fingers (and mind) are really not used to changing from one arpeggio to the next at the peak. It took a lot of concentration to move from one to the next. Which is exactly the kind of challenge I’m after this month!
This is definitely one I’ll be revisiting after the month is up.
Do this in any key, and keep your usual fingerings, bowings, rhythms, turns, tempo, metronome, etc. Just start from the peak and let the fun begin!
tomorrow:
I’m a violinist and private teacher in the Chicago area, and in a previous musical life I was in a professional string quartet. Teaching violin and chamber music are dear to my heart. Send me a note or leave a comment on a post — I’d love to hear from you.
If you’ve tried today’s scales, I’d love to know what your experience was like! Just post a comment below.