iternabe wroteBesides your point of scales being not the best time spent by beginner for most productivity, would you mind to elaborate on the danger, too? What kind of harm can be done practicing scales as beginners, especially without a teacher? If, and how, that can be avoided?
Sure.
A very small point first of all, Chopin's idea was that we made it sound as though all five fingers were of equal strength but anatomically they are not. More strength is not as big a deal as more control. We need to use more of our arm when playing 4 & 5 than we do for thumb and index fingers. This implies that we must use our ear more when practising, for listening - not pressing the keys 🙂.
In any precision motor activity (where speed is a valuable asset) the priority is posture, i.e. freedom from excess tension by keeping the body in skeletal balance as much as possible while effecting movement using the largest muscles that get the job done and using the smallest muscles only when necessary. Excess tension can lead to tendinitis or arthritis as well as creating speed walls or lack of dynamic range.
Once the hammer has been released from the jack it is in free flight but there's a small amount of key travel left. It is in this small amount of key travel that we have to release any tension in our mechanism and prevent excessive key-bedding. A teacher may be able to spot excess tension, seeing it or hearing it, and provide exercises for getting it under control. The 'flying pinkie' and excessive action noise are examples of excess tension.
Place all fingers on the keys, play one finger, relax, allow the key to rise still in contact with the finger, keep the finger on the key while the next finger plays.
The Bruce Lee one-inch punch is a relaxed mechanism until just before the point of contact, full tension on contact (in this case of the whole body) and relaxed again just after the point of contact. This is what we're trying to achieve when we play a key (but only using enough tension for the note required so hands and fingers for light notes, shoulders and back for louder notes).
As with all drills, think about how to play an exercise, play it once, consider how we did then sleep. Repeat the next day. The brain will improve how we next play while we sleep. Play it again without sleeping and we begin to ingrain a beginner's method. As our thinking time reduces and our playing mechanism improves we can begin to add repetition.
The player's mechanism needs to be well rounded before concentrating too much on scale practise that drills the same movement every day. So many beginners use scales for building velocity but they can't transfer that increase to their pieces because the velocity comes more from using adjacent notes than typically occurs in pieces where flexibility of thinking is involved, playing one thing while preparing mentally for a pattern change.
Practise not for speed but dynamic control and articulation. Speed will come once the brain has acquired the technical control. Very fast scales are not true legato. They use what's known as jeu perlé. There's a very slight gap between each key press, long enough between adjacent fingers to match "passing the thumb under the fourth" (which in very fast playing is actually moving the hand along) and still sounding even in time and tone (does that make sense?). The sooner you practise that the better: legato, staccato and jeu perlé.
The stronger fingers are worked the most in scale playing, the 4th next and the 5th finger least so five finger exercises might be better for the beginner. If scale playing is going to figure in one's future a good starting point might be five finger scales, tonic to dominant, starting and finishing on the tonic but using different finger patterns and all five tones in between, e.g. 123454321, 132435421, 142535241, etc. Include phrasing and dynamics.
As each key is mastered begin the next set of exercises (the next day/week/month) on the dominant from the previous exercise gradually working around the circle of fifths, always with thumb on tonic, RH, 5th in LH). Notice on your way that the first four notes in the next group complete the scale in the previous group so the notes used in a scale can be learned before starting full scales and the order in which black keys are added becomes ingrained. Later, when you begin full scales, you might start with B Major (RH) and gradually remove black keys as you go back down the circle of fifths but keeping the fingers on their preferred homes. The Left Hand starts on Db Major and progresses up the circle, again removing the black keys as we move towards C Major. (Chopin's idea, not mine.)
In short, (oh, if only...) aim for finger control over finger strength so practise phrasing, the dangers are from excess tension, the enemy of speed, causing technical difficulties with respect to speed and dynamic control and inflammation in the hand and finger joints with respect to physical injury, and practise while being consciously aware of tension and release until it's part of your playing mechanism. Does that cover all your questions?
Animisha, I was hoping the difference between us wouldn't be so obvious (!) but in our pieces we approach notes from different directions, over different distances, with different fingers, different dynamics and with different articulations from note to note and our pieces also vary over time. We have to consider how we’re playing much more than in scales where we’re using adjacent fingers on adjacent notes, often with the same dynamic, and we can easily go faster than our control mechanism is really ready for and we bang things home with a hammer instead of guiding them gently into place with greater care and precision. Is that reasonable?
It's five, I must leave, there's no exception to the rule...
