Do NOT read this post.

This one gets me in a lot of trouble with members of the dark guild.  If you are a member, please read no further.  Better yet, go away.  Yikes!  Pardon me!! That was rude.  Um, I ... uh...meant...um click this: EXTREMELY IMPORTANT AND AMAZING STUFF YOU SHOULD SEE RIGHT AWAY!! 
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Oh.  You're back!?!  That's uh, nice!!  
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*-----whistles idly----*
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*-----glances furtively----*
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*-----more idle whistling----*
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*-----smiles falsely----*
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You do realize that if you are a member of the dark guild and you're not telling me, no good can come from your presence here.
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*-----more idle whistling, furtive glancing, & false smiling----*
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Alright, I guess you're not one of them.  Good.  They frighten me.

*----removes flame retardant suit----*     

OK, first things first.  Definitions:.

play   /plā/    v.  To engage in an activity for enjoyment and/or recreation
work   /wurk/   v.  Mental or physical effort done to achieve a purpose
tor-ture  /ˈtôrCHər/   v.  Inflicting pain as punishment or to force compliance

The agreed upon verb for manipulating a musical instrument is: play.  I don't believe that verb would ever have gained traction in music if its earliest adopters were experiencing, "work on your scales!"  Scales are neither enjoyable nor recreational.  Scales are not play.

'Working on scales' doesn't really qualify as work either.  It only fits the definition of work if playing a scale can be characterized as having a purpose.

Now this is the point when members of the dark guild usually chant in a creepy lockstep unison THE CATECHISM:

Music doth be made of scales and 

Scales doth be the way of all technique.

'Twas ever thus, and ever thus shall it be.   

Not that the catechism is true.  It isn't really.  Neither of it's tenets holds up under dispassionate scrutiny.  And it certainly wasn't 'ever thus.'  But we'll get to that.
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*-----Awkward pause----*    Are you sure you're not a member of the dark guild?  You just gave me a look that I've seen before from many of them.
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Ahem.
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Failure to communicate
No, the truth is scales are neither play nor work.  Scales are, by definition, torture.  Mild certainly, but torture nonetheless.  Watch a bit of the classic film Cool Hand Luke.  As punishment for his escape and as a way to force him into acquiescence, Luke is required to dig a large ditch, then fill it in again, and then continually repeat the process until he screams. It's torturous not so much for physical harshness, but more because it's so purposelessly circular.

Scales are like that.  When one practices a scale what is uniquely accomplished is that scale.  And when you think you're finished, it's time to dig into another, then another, then another until you want to scream.

Scales fail to communicate because scales have no musical meaning and thus nothing to communicate.  Also nothing is accomplished technically through scales that cannot be gained in other less onerous ways and everyone instinctively knows this.  Certainly our students intuit these truths very quickly.

Scales are not play.  Scales are not work.  Scales communicate nothing.  They are purposelessly circular, and thus lead nowhere.

Scales are torture.
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*-----Zzziiiiinggg!!! A sword is drawn.----*
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Yaaahhh!!  I see that you are indeed a member of the dark guild!!  Please do not hurt me!!  I have a secret!  I am one of you!    I'm a, ...a...MUSIC TEACHER!!   
***----cue dark guild music:  Duhn dun daahhn!!----***
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And I don't mean to blaspheme, but I've just been thinking a lot lately and I've noticed that some of our dogma just doesn't don't hold up under scrutiny.  Haven't you noticed?  Haven't your students?  Haven't they, in their innocent attempts to understand the world, questioned our unquestioned catechism?
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Do we dare to?  
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*-----The sword is returned to its scabbard.----*
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Thank you.  Here it comes...
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Like that sword, our catechism is double-edged and cuts down many a strong person.  Both of it's razor sharp ideas--music is made of scales, & scales are the way to technique--are wrong, or at best wildly exaggerated.  And, taken in too deeply, they can be deadly.

Allow me to try to explain.

Arpeggios in Disguise
We've been told. and we've told our students (and likely even scolded ourselves) to practice our scales because, as we all know:  music is made of scales.

Except that it isn't.  It's a myth.

Music is not made of scales.  That part of the catechism is simply untrue.  Music is not made of scales, music is made of arpeggios in disguise.  The disguises come in many varieties:  passing tones, escape tones, appoggiatura's, neighboring tones, etc., and they certainly make it look like music is made of scales.  The disguises are robustly convincing.

On paper, the beginnings of 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' or 'Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" undeniably look like scales or scale fragments.  But that's merely what we see.  As Dr. Edwin E. Gordon wryly puts it, "There's more to music than meets the eye!"

The Nouns and Verbs of Music

Read these, please:

1.  the way the works and subtle

2.  musical mind is complex

While both are non-sentences, one of them does make sense.   Also, when combined, they form a proper sentence that continues, of course, to make sense:

The way the musical mind works is complex and subtle.  

Much more importantly, when making sense out of language, not all words are created equal.  Some words are more important to the sense, the meaning, the gist, than others.  Certainly the bold set above contains the more meaningful content.  It holds the essential nouns & verbs.

So in language not all words are created equal.

Well, in music not all tones are created equal.   Some tones are more essential to the sense, the meaning, the gist of the music.  Arpeggios derived from the prevailing harmonic function are like the nouns & verbs of music.

So, in music not all tones are created equal.  We should treat them as unequal in our teaching.

You see, we teach kids nouns & verbs first because they are essential to linguistic meaning.  And while we're doing that, they learn prepositions, modifiers and conjunctions largely on their own. In music we should teach kids harmonic function arpeggios first because they are essential to musical meaning. And while were doing that they would get busy learning the unimportant notes, such as passing tones (what we might call the prepositions & conjunctions of music) largely on their own.

But why is this so?

Harmonic vs. Nonharmonic Tones   (Important Stuff vs. Unimportant Stuff)

There are two related reasons why some words or some tones are more essential to meaning, and they have to do with how the mind works both linguistically and musically.  Let's look at how it works in language, then later compare it with music. 

Reason #1: We Select & Store Important Stuff Based on Context.

(quickly read this list of words then scroll down such that they disappear off the top of your screen):

BED   REST   AWAKE   TIRED   DREAM   WAKE   SNOOZE   DROWSY
BLANKET  DOZE   SLUMBER   SNORE   NAP   PEACE   YAWN

Which of the following words didn't appear above?  (Don't peek!!)

BED      REST     SLEEP       GASOLINE      

Certainly you immediately and powerfully knew that GASOLINE wasn't there.  But did you--with equal certainty--also know that SLEEP was not on the list?  Probably not.

This is because the mind selects & stores what it considers to be important based on context. SLEEP, in spite of being absent from the list, is treated by the mind as essential due to derived context. Put more simply:  as you read your brain said, "Yeah, I get the gist...it's a bunch of stuff about sleep.''

Reason #2:  We Selectively Ignore Unimportant Stuff Based on Context.
The second reason some words or some tones are more important than others is a sort of inversion of the first reason...

Read the following sentence out loud.  It's important that you don't just do it silently in your head.

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF

SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

Well done!  Now, count how many letter F’s there are in that sentence.  

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Did you count 3 or 4?  There are actually 6.  Count again!
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Still finding fewer than 6?  They're there.  But context causes us to overlook them.  Here's why:  the sound we associate with the letter F is the sound at the start of words like FILES. So, after reading the sentence aloud, the mind ignores the F's in the word OF, because it contextualizes them as V's (the word is pronounced by most of us as 'ov').  Thus, the ear ignores them due to context, making the eye blind to them as content.

Funky.  But what's this got to do with music and scales?

Gist Gestation

The examples above show that our minds invisibly and automatically select & store Important Stuff, and also deselect & ignore Unimportant Stuff based on context.  It works the same way in music, because the brain hardware that does the contextualizing in language is shared in music. Because the biological processors in the brain for context/syntax are shared between language and music, the processes are identical. 

So now let's bring this 'contextualized storing & ignoring' idea to music.  We'll use 'Row Your Boat' and 'Joshua' mentioned earlier to experience the Important Stuff and Unimportant Stuff--what Gordon calls Essential and Inessential content.

Sing this aloud!!

"Row-row-row your boat, gent-ly down the stream."

Lovely!!  Now, ignoring rhythm, SLOWLY sing only the bold bits. Skip over the italicized bits completely, thus:

"Row    row    row    boat    gent    down    stream"

Not too difficult, I suspect.  Those are the important tones which--when boiled even further--reduce to the absolute essentials:

"Row          boat           stream."

Sing that without words a few times.  You're singing an arpeggio that outlines the prevailing harmonic function; in this case, the tonic chord in major.

OK.  Now try the opposite task.  Sing the original aloud again:

          "Row-row-row your boat, gent-ly down the stream."

Yep, still lovely!! :-)   Now, ignoring rhythm, SLOWLY sing only the italicized bits, completely skipping the bold bits, so you'll sing only:

                              "your            -ly             the "

Really, REALLY difficult, right!?!  To find those tones at all, you must first mentally re-hear the more important tones.  You see, the italicized bits are the unimportant tones: passing tones, escape tones, etc.  What are ultimately known as non-harmonic tones.  You know, the scale stuff.  

Those tones are just like the invisible letter F's in the earlier language example.  They are unimportant due to context, so the mind selectively ignores them.  They become 'musically invisible'.

Try the same exercise again, but this time in the minor mode.  First the sing the opening phrase:

" Jos-hua 'fit the bat-tle o- of Jer-i-cho " 

Next, in a rhythm-free slow staccato, sing the bold bits only, thus:

                        " Jos-    'fit    bat-   o     Jer    -i   -cho "

When simmered to the bone, even the repeated harmonic tones at the end fall away.  The Important Stuff remains; this tonic minor arpeggio:

                                 " Jos-      bat-      Jer- "

Now lastly, after singing the original again, try to sing the italicized bits only, thus:
               
                               " -hua        the      -tle      -of  "

I've never met an honest person who can pluck the italicized non-harmonic tones of  '-hua  the, -tle  -of'  out of midair and sing them accurately.  Whereas the harmonic tones (Jos-,  bat-,  Jer-) are easy to recall because they were selected for storage in the first place.

Of the eleven original tones, which undoubtedly LOOK like a minor scale, only three are deemed important enough by your intelligent musical mind to be selected for 'deep storage' because in this context that particular arpeggio is where gist is gestated.

There's that idea again:  'context.' Admittedly it's a fuzzy concept.  Artificial intelligence researchers call it 'syntactical understanding.'  Linguists call it 'contextual comprehension,' and the Greek guy up the street just calls it 'Greek Style' as you try to play along with Yerakina or Tria Paidia Voliotika.

Calling something 'Greek Style' might be helpful in selecting a yogurt, but it gets us no closer to why Konstantinos up the street emphasizes certain tones and de-emphasizes others!! These specifically musical decisions are all outcomes of contextual comprehension.  And since we can't momentarily switch brains with him, our next task is to make 'context' more concrete as is it relates to, nay, underpins music learning,

Contextual Comprehension is Crucial in Comedy

     What: Weight-Watchers Weekly Meeting

     When: Friday, Sept. 25th @ 7:30pm

     Where: Haagen-Daz Ice Cream Shoppe, Dubai Mall

Contextual Comprehension is also Crucial in Music

“Without the necessary readiness…of context, teaching content precludes the possibility of desirable musicianship, forcing students to assume the role of dutiful robots.”--Dr. Edwin E. Gordon writing in The Aural/Visual Experience of Music Literacy

Dutiful robots.  Presumably not what we want for our students.  And context is described as a necessary readiness--a prerequisite--to teaching the content of music if we want desirable musicianship.  Sound huge?  It is.

Plays Well; Lacks Expression
Without contextual comprehension, one of the myriad weaknesses our students will have is an inability to sense why this note or that phrase must be emphasized.  And so we often paste-on our phrasing to give the music a semblance of interpretive expression.

However, if we guide students to a strong inner ownership over musical context (modes & meters), expressive performances begin to spring naturally from them as a result of a more gestalt structural understanding.  And this is only one of many virtues that a strong sense of context engenders.

Mental Modal Models & Mental Meter Models.
The alliterative phrases above are my simplest definitions of what contextual comprehension is.  To develop to our fullest tonally we must carry in our heads a sonic structure--a mental modal model--of how each tonality typically behaves.  Likewise, to develop to our fullest rhythmically, we must carry in our bodies a kinesthetic sense of how each meter typically feels; a mental meter model.

Extending these ideas (& their tongue-twisting), a minor mental modal model is a must before we ask kids to do much performing of music in minor keys*.

Or, to put it another way, before we can engage in musically intelligent listening or playing with a tune like Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond's 'Take 5', our ear must know how Aeolian mode typically behaves, and our body must know how quintuple meter typically feels. Absent these contextual comprehensions, Brubeck & Desmond's artistry will elude us (particularly in their improvisations).

 *BTW: mental modal models are emphatically NOT learned by working on scales!    

Weighing Scales

As stated earlier, for reasons of musical gist, some tones are more important than others.  Now think of our impressionable youngest musicians.  Scales teach beginners precisely the opposite.  Working on scales drills into young minds and fingers the unmusical idea that all tones are created equal.

Tone Row music tried that approach---all notes treated equally; think how that turned out!

Well, there it is.  If you still wish to hold to the notion that music is made of scales, I'll grant you it's true for Tone Row music, Serialism, etc.  Is anybody truly turned on by that stuff?

Neither are your students.  Wanna know why?  It's because Tone Rows suck!! Of course scales are not Tone Rows...

...but they are Rows of Tones.

To summarize: music is not made up of scales, it's made up of arpeggios in disguise with context (mode & meter) determining essence. And when we teach according to this truism, we spare our students from the painful sword of our unquestioned catechism.

The Way of All Technique?
Regarding the second part of the catechism, that requires its own post to fully deal with.  Suffice to say here that muscles learn indiscriminately through repetition.  Being indiscriminate little robots, muscles don't care whether you do music or scales.  So why not just refine technique through music???That post is Making Muscles Mirror Thought.

Before Cooking, Remove Scales
Try this recipe, it's delicious.  Choose an easy melody (use the two above, or 'This Old Man') and teach your student to play it.  Next, show your student how the melody is built from arpeggios by dropping their disguises  (To accomplish this, simply skip all non-harmonic tones, as well as any immediate repetitions of harmonic tones.).

Spend time singing & playing around with these essential arpeggios.  Do them in the order they appear in the melody and new orders too (Try both typical and atypical chord progressions within that mode).  Graft these onto rhythms of your own or your students devising.  This wakes up creativity, and begins to help kids to truly hear and internalize harmonic structure, because they're living it.

Return later to the full melody.  Even though they're once again playing all the notes, now they'll be hearing them anew (because of their contextual comprehension of the harmonic structure and how the mode typically behaves).  This is when their expressive decision-making starts to grow.  They'll begin to independently demonstrate the 'micro-dynamics' all good players use when interpreting melody.

Do the above with lots of melodies and over time students will gain a rich practical insight into harmonic structure and melodic contour. Improvisation now takes root, and the real fun starts!

Now in this context, 'that verb' finally seems a sensible choice. You see, improvisation is where 'play' really begins.

Their growing improvisational ability and enjoyment of play then leads to a desire for greater control over the instrument.  So you'll provide them with better fingerings, hand positions, breathing methods, etc. for the melodies they've invented. Your improvement of their technique maximizes their current level of mind/muscle/music coordination, enhancing their confidence.  This increased confidence unlocks hidden creativity/musical risk-taking.  The candid, yet comfortable 'failures & feedback' that result from new improvisational risks fuels the desire for even greater control.  This you'll supply via ever more refined technique.

That's not a circle.  That is an upward spiral.  It goes somewhere purposeful and it is enjoyable.  It's work that feels like play!  And it keeps 'em coming back for more.

If we truly want our students cooking, removing scales is the first step.

Scales are for fish.  Stop practicing them.
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*----turns and runs from angry dark guild mob----*

Personal Note: Edwin E. Gordon’s Music Learning Theory provides the basis for virtually everything in this blog. I urge all parents & teachers to discover the efficacy of MLT.  Start here:  www.giml.org.