Knowing your scales form an important part of learning Western Common-Practice music and also learning music theory from that period. The materials I am using in this video are taken from the cnx website with the study I prepared there. So let’s look at different ways to memorize the major scales.
Many musicians learn their scales first on their instruments. I remember learning scales on the piano as well as on the bassoon. After hours and hours of playing the scales I know them backwards and forward, up and down. So I have that type of memory. Kinetic memory is one of finger patterns. Visual memory is certainly on you can derive on piano: seeing the ordering of the sequence of the white keys and the black keys as you are playing the scales. If you are a musician I encourage you to rely on that memory and use it quite often.
Now the cognitive memory is another approach. In fact I recommend that have several different types of memory. Particularly music majors need to do this. You need to know by rote your major keys. Much like you learned your multiplication tables in primary school, music majors should know by rote (immediately) the key signatures. If you are told, for instance, C# major you should be able to produce the order of the sharps in that case, know the number of sharps, and be able to do that right away. All of that is very important. You should also be able to recognize the scale with the accidentals—no key signature. This is very important for music majors who need to be familiar with scales.
For the non-major, the general student at Towson University, you might find this theoretical memorization helpful. I don’t expect the same speed, the same knowledge and acquaintance with scales that a music major will have after years of practice. So you may find this pattern to be helpful. A tetrachord--tetra meaning four notes—a tetrachord is a scale broken up into two segments. We have from tonic up to subdominant (the fourth member). Then starting at the dominant back to the tonic. The interesting thing about major scale is that it has here what I am calling two “Major Tetrachords.” It includes a whole step, from C to D is a whole step. Whole step, D to E; E to F is a half step. Joining the two tetrachords is a whole step. Then after that we have whole, whole, half. So the lower tetrachord is the same as the upper tetrachord. You have here an example in C major. If we did the same in F major you would again see the same pattern; G major the same pattern. All the major scales have the same pattern of tetrachords.
So I am encouraging you again to know your major scales. Know how they are constructed. If you have experiences with the kinetic and visual memory that is a good way to work on your scales and to know them. The cognitive memory will be very important for music majors so that you can reproduce that (scales) on paper, and tests, and have a head-knowledge of that. The theoretical memorization of the theory part may be less helpful for music majors that rely on the other two forms of memorization of the scales, but this may work very well for the general student.