All the Scales (Without Getting Bored)

Honestly, I always hated scales.

But don’t get me wrong — I genuinely love practicing. I could spend hours on repertoire, technique, bow exercises. But scales? They drove me crazy. And when I started teaching, I couldn’t bring myself to assign them to my students — because I was avoiding them myself.

The problem is that nobody can escape them. They’re the most useful tool we have for understanding harmony, training our ear, building muscle memory — and I could keep going until I bore you to tears haha.

You probably already know this, but in every youth audition they ask for a scale alongside the piece. And since my students are constantly auditioning, I decided to fix the problem — starting with myself. To make peace with my discomfort and find a way to actually fall in love with scales. Because if I can’t enjoy them and figure them out, how can I ask my students to?

So I took on the mission: make scale practice fun. I asked a composer and pianist friend to write me an accompaniment for C major — something different. Not the typical I-V-I chord progression. Not in unison. I wanted something harmonically rich and modern, that invited me to listen for the next note — that made me want to keep playing.

The experiment worked so well for me that I started sharing it with my students. They got hooked. They started asking for other keys. And eventually I told my friend: I need you to do this for every single scale.

Everyone can enjoy practicing scales — you just need the right approach.

That’s how this course was born. I recorded it in full so my students could come back to it every time they had an audition — each week picking a different key and practicing it with everything they need:

• PDF with all the scales and fingerings to put on the music stand.
• Video of each scale where I play it so you have an auditory and visual reference, with my recommended fingerings.
• Audio piano accompaniment to practice along to.

I chose only major and melodic minor scales in 2 octaves because those are the ones actually used and requested in auditions — the ones we work with every day.

With this course, scales are going to become your favorite part of practicing. And every time you sit down to work on them, you’ll be developing melodic awareness — learning to listen to the piano’s harmony and respond to it with your instrument.