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Major Scales and Practice Goals

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Hi all - Here's a recap of my first music class for Practicing Musicians.
We talked about our individual backgrounds in music, and set some goals for ourselves. 

Listening and Practice goals for week one

One big one was that we discussed picking a particular musician and learning their music by ear. For example, I'm learning a jazz solo by John Coltrane on tenor saxophone right now, listening to the recording and playing along with it.
Some folks mentioned they knew the style or even the tune they wanted to learn, but they didn't know who the player was. No problem! That's what the internet is for! You can definitely start listening and playing along to your favorite tune, and then go research who played it and what else they did. 
It's great to study a particular player (or singer!), and get a sense of their approach and individual style from several different recordings and examples of their playing. If you can copy them note for note and sound just like them, you'll learn a lot.  
My goal for each of us is to be listening, playing along in private, and then bring that recording into class and perform along with it.  
Homework: Spend 25 minutes per day practicing with your chosen recording, and see how far you get. 

Theory homework for week one

We also talked about the major scale, and how it's constructed. There's a pattern or structure that makes the major scale sound the way it does. 
Using whole steps and half steps to construct the scale, this is the pattern:

whole-whole-half-whole-whole-whole-half

Check out this cheesy video for a further explanation:



Based on that major scale pattern, take some time and work out 3 or 4 major scales in the keys that you play in most often - E, G, D, A, whatever other keys you use.  Having a keyboard to see the whole and half steps is really helpful.

Homework: Write the notes of each scale down, and then play them slowly while you say the note names. See if you can memorize the notes of each scale.
If you feel like it, work out all 12 keys... We'll talk more about the major scale in my next post...

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