Overview
Scales don’t have to be torture. In fact, a lot of my students devote whole practice sessions to scales because they know how to have fun with them.
Here are some mini-scale warmups you can do with simple four and five note scales. They’ll help you coordinate the hands, mind and ears. Once you get the basic idea, you can port the variation to other keys and scale forms.
These can be extended in lots of creative and challenging ways, depending on your skill level…and how much fun you want to have.
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Learning Steps
All the exercises are in D Major. Once you can easily do it, start it on another string. If that’s easy for you, then start it on a scale with a different fingering, like F or A Major lower octave.
- Pick one of the four left-hand patterns.
- Practice slowly with flow.
- Choose your adventure.
Practice Variations
- Add the metronome at 60 bpm
- Speed it up to your fastest tempo
- Add variations (Slurs, Rhythms, etc)
- Transpose to other keys
- Transform to other scale forms
If you’re focused on increasing your speed, then do this on a daily basis and track your speed.
I recommend starting with the basic patterns before adding variations.
You can apply multiple variations to these simple patterns.
Sheet Music
Warmups For Hand Coordination – annotated
Further learning
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