Life Lessons from Music Practice: Review Your Scales Before Playing

I have a regular practice, no pun intended, of playing the scale of a new piece of music before I actually begin to learn it.  Sometimes I am given a piece of music to play for an event, church service or special occasion that I have never seen before.  I am blessed that I am a good sight-reader [I can play most things without having seen them before] but running through the 8- or 16-note scale before actually  playing the piece is SO helpful to me that I have made it part of my routine.

I always advise even my advanced students, and insist that they do it when they are here, to play through the song's primary scale.  If there are key changes in the piece, then 2-3 scales would suffice as a warm-up.   This gets your fingers warmed up and accustomed to which notes are played on black keys and which are played on the white keys so there is less fumbling around when you see the notes on the page.  Needless to say, some roll their eyes before doing so but always discover that it really does help them master a piece more easily.

Learning scales with their corresponding chords  is such a basic part of playing an instrument.   It enables a musician to play just about anything they come across.  To fudge on this part of one's musical education will leave a huge gap in their abilities to play new songs when there is no teacher present to help them.  There are those that disagree with me but that's OK.  For my students, it is a fundamental element of music.

Many occasions in life require us going back to the basics and remembering what we learned when we were younger.  Excelling in higher mathematics still requires knowing how to add and subtract or what certain symbols mean even if one uses a calculator.  Writing a thesis requires knowing basic sentence structure and good grammar rules.  Persevering when all seems hopeless requires remembering the basics that the Lord is with you and that all things work together for good for those who love Him...[Romans 8:28]

I am reminded of the story of Naaman in the Bible [2Kings 5]  who was told to go wash in the river Jordan seven times to be cured of leprosy.  His pride got in the way and he didn't want to do such a basic thing at first.  When his servants convinced him to do what Elisha told him to do, he was cured.  

Don't let your pride keep you from going back to the basics or from asking for help in whatever situation it is needed.  Sometimes pausing and reviewing the basics enables you to see things in a new light that you might not have before, both in music and in life.