Exercises for Changing Scales (Jazz Piano Exercises)

February 1/19 edit: Now includes a section at the end called “Practice Goals” which includes exercises that are a good summary of the entire article. Also includes a simple chart for keeping track of progress. 

Dec. 19/18 edit: Updated the images to include anchor points (clear note heads)

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Up to this point, we’ve mostly covered stepwise motion in our scale. There are still many more ways I’d like to explore this scale, but for now I think it’s important to write about a method to combine scales. 

For jazz musicians, different scales mean different chords, so practicing can be more relevant to playing tunes.

Before trying these exercises, I highly recommend having at least two scales under your fingers. This means practicing all the hand positions, being fluid in all of the previous exercises and being comfortable improvising using stepwise motion. 

For demonstration, I’ll be using two scales that can be used for a G7-CMaj7 (C6) chord progression. 

For CMaj7:

For G7:

As in previous exercises, chord tones are always played on strong beats and approached from the chromatic tone above or below. 

There are three main variables that these exercises are structured around:

• 1. Rate of change
• 2. Approaching the first chord tone from above or below
• 3. Logical sequences of chord tones

Rate of Change

Rather than organizing these exercises in relation to some meter, it’s easier to change scales based on the number of chord tones. For example, changing scales every 2nd chord tone would look like this:

Every 3rd chord tone: 

The slurs show the duration of each scale (including the chromatic approach to the first chord tone). A few observations on these two examples:

Firstly, there are definitely alternative fingerings (right hand staring on 3 for example).

Secondly, as seen with the double Bs in the first example, when switching scales, sometimes the last chord tone is the same note as the first approach tone. While this can be interesting to practice, it can also feel awkward. The exercise can be changed so that the first chord tone of the next scale is approached chromatically from above (discussed below).

Lastly, and more importantly, the 1st example isn’t a very interesting exercise. The points at which the scales change are the same every time. After eight notes, the sequence of notes, fingerings and hand positions are repeated an octave above. This 8-note loop may be a good place to start practicing and exploring these scales, but it has very little depth, and doesn’t touch on the range of possibilities inherent in switching chords and scales. 

When creating your own exercises, it’s important to observe and control the frequency at which an exercise loops. Shorter loops are easier than longer loops, so adjusting a loop’s frequency is key to skill development.  By contrast, if I wrote out the second example to its end-loop point, it would be a 36-note loop spanning four octaves. 

Approaching the First Chord Tone from Above or Below

As mentioned, the first chord tone of the next scale can be approached from above or below. In the above exercises, the first chord tone is always approached from below. To create variation and avoid repeated notes, you can approach the first chord from above:

These variations beg the question: Why not vary approaching ALL chord tones from above and below? I’ve played through a few exercises like this, and it increases the difficulty significantly. Eventually, I’ll compile a collection of advanced exercises that include this variation. For now, I’d like to maintain a more gradual pace of increasing difficulty. 

Logical Sequences of Chord Tones

Using the notation from the previous article, we can simplify these exercises as a sequence of chord tones. Changing scales every two chord tones:

Changing scales every three chord tones:

This notation helps us in two ways: For one, when a player becomes more fluent in these exercises, I believe it represents a simplification that happens on a higher order while improvising. Especially at faster tempos, lengthy passages of notes need to be visually and physically chunked to points of stability (chord tones) in relation to harmony and meter. Secondly, as I demonstrate below, creating patterns of chord tones at this level of abstraction opens up an extremely wide variety of exercises. 

It’s also important that these chord tone patterns follow a certain logic of motion that determines how they will unfold. This eliminates improvisational possibilities so that the player can focus on refining physical gestures and practicing scale transitions at every point. Incorporating improvisational possibilities into practice structures can follow logical rules as well, but for the sake of brevity and clarity, I’d prefer to leave them out for now.

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With these three variables, we now have a check list for designing new exercises. Below are four examples. I realize that the exercises as notated below look overwhelming and complex, but I assure you that they look (and sound) harder than they are. The physical gestures required to play them are simple, especially if the player has already practiced the exercises from previous articles. Here’s the first one:

• 1. Changing scales every two chord tones
• 2. Approaching the first chord tone from below
• 3. Using the following sequence of chord tones:

The above exercise is a good example of short loops that can occur in fingering (exercise loops aren’t restricted to a sequence of notes). In the right hand, there is a 4-note fingering loop of 1-3-4-2 that occurs frequently. Below is an alternate fingering that is more complex and difficult, but ultimately, more elegant. 

Here’s another:

• 1. Changing scales every three chord tones
• 2. Approaching the first chord tone from below
• 3. Using the following sequence of chord tones:

• 1. Changing scales every four chord tones
• 2. Approaching the first chord tone from above
• 3. Using the following sequence of chord tones:

• 1. Changing scales every two chord tones
• 2. Approaching the first chord tone from above
• 3. Using the following sequence of chord tones:

Creating exercises with these three variables opens up a wide range of patterns and exercises for switching scales.  Though the above only use two different scales, it’s possible to apply these variables to three scales, a chord progression, or an entire tune.  The most practical progression from these two scales would be to incorporate a scale for Dm7, and then A7, but incorporating more unconventional harmonies would be beneficial as well.

Practice Goals, Black Holes and the THREE TRIALS!

There are two skills I’m trying to refine with these exercises: 1) changing direction at any point in a scale, and 2) changing to a different scale at any point in the current scale. Even with only two scales (V-I), the possibilities are significant. This makes it difficult to create one “final” exercise that acts as a good summation of the skills acquired from the exercises above. Further, any exercise that tries to accommodate all the possibilities has overly complex logic that’s difficult to internalize and is unreasonably difficult at fast tempos (quarter note = 150+).

What’s the difference between reasonable and unreasonable difficultly? 

I love difficult challenges, but as I mentioned in the previous article, each of these concepts and exercises are their own little black hole. Practicing exercises that are unreasonably difficult is akin to going too deep into the black hole, where skill acquisition suffers from diminishing returns, practical relevance and possible burnout.  This is why achieving clear practice goals is important - it gives permission to “leave the black hole” and move on to another challenge. It’s also important to remember that learning isn’t always linear. Black holes are mysteriously connected to other black holes. Moving on to focus on other skills could actually be beneficial to learning previous skills.

After wrestling with this for a few months, I’ve settled on three exercises (three trials!) that focus on stepwise motion through a V7-I progression (motion that includes skips will be explored in another article). I’d also encourage using these exercises on ii-V and I-VI7 progressions.  Tempo goals are the same, quarter note = 120, 150 and 180 for one, two and three stars.

The first exercise uses the following sequence of chord tones:

Pros: 

• Very logical. 
• Sequence of chord tones are easy to internalize. 
• Chord tones of a scale are “arpeggiated” ascending (measures 1-4) and descending (measures 5-8)
• Encourages the visualization of all chord tones in a scale

Cons: 

• Changes in direction and scale always coincide at the same point. 
• Chord tones are always in grouped and arpeggiated in four. 

The next exercise solves the two cons in the previous exercises. Chord tones are grouped 4 + 3, and ascend & descend within a specified frequency range – in this case, between two C’s, two octaves apart: 

Pros:

• Lots of variation ascending and descending
• Easy to create variations (groups of 3 + 4, different frequency ranges) 
• Encourages the visualization of longer stretches of chord tones

Cons:

• Very difficult to internalize
• Easy to get trapped in shorter loops where ascending and descending is the same every time

The last exercise is to IMPROVISE! When practicing, improvising isn’t a good way to acquire new skills, but it can be a good way to observe certain tendencies and bad habits. A few questions to ask yourself:

Tendencies:

• Do you generally move and change direction over small or large distances?
• Do you always change direction at the same times and the same places?

Visualization and Planning

• How ‘far ahead’ do you plan your lines?
• Are you visualizing the chord tones of a scale before you play them?
• Can you improvise using these scales with your eyes closed?

Technique

• Why do you stumble?
• Do you always stumble in the same place?
• Are you using the best fingering?

At the time of writing this, I’ve been practicing V7-I in a variety of keys, designing these exercises, and playing them over tunes. Even after 2-3 months of solid practice, obtaining three stars (quarter = 180) is monumentally difficult. Admittedly, 2-3 months isn’t very much time in the grand scheme of things. But I’ve given myself permission to move on with one star. I’m hoping that as I spend more time with these scales, practicing them in different ways, in different keys and over different tunes, I’ll start simplifying and chunking these exercises on a higher order, allowing me to play at faster tempos.