Why Should You Practice Scales?
There are many reasons why scales are vitally important.  Scales are one of the most powerful musical tools available to enable students to learn important music fundamentals. Learn violin scales to help your fingers develop a good fluency and shift them accurately. When played at a rapid tempo scales will help your violin playing skills to a great extent. The importance of understanding the scales is realized worldwide.

            - Excellent for learning key signatures
            - Scales help students to learn how to play new notes
            - Scales help in mastering difficult fingering combinations
            - Scales are great to warm up on
            - A large amount of music is based on scales and scale patterns

How Do You Get Started Learning Scales?
If you don't yet know your 12 major and minor scales, work on memorizing them. By doing this you will have the ability to play the key signature of any piece put in front of you. Learning your scales will help you eliminate wrong notes. We have provided major and minor one-octave scales as a fundamental learning tool.
Practicing of scales will give you a proper idea about the rhythmical consistency and symmetrical bowing. You also need to have a clear idea about the key signatures to know how to play the scales well. Violin is an instrument that requires you to play in various positions. If you want to develop a good tone and intonation you must know the scales.

How Should You Practice Playing Violin Scales?
Play along with the recordings you have purchased from ViolinScales. You can reference the notation on our website, use a scale book, or play by ear. Once you are to a point where you can play along with scales by memory and you can match the intonation on the recordings then you can begin to implement scale patterns, which we will be providing soon, so check back.

How Can You Advance Practice Techniques Once You Have Memorized The Major and Minor Scales?
If you have the scales memorized you can practice scale patterns, combine different articulations and dynamics (e.g.: a combination of legato and martele), and use different bowing patterns.

What Other Types Of Scales Are There?
There are many different types of scales. They are the backbone of music.

- Major Scales:
            In music theory, the major scale or Ionian scale is one of the diatonic
            scales. It is made up of seven distinct notes, plus an eighth which
            duplicates the first an octave higher. This scale is built on the formula of
            an ascending pattern of two whole steps, one half-step, three whole steps,
            one half-step. There are 12 major scales.

- Natural Minor Scales:
            Minor scales sound different from major scales because they are based on a
            different pattern of intervals. Just as it did in major scales, starting the minor scale
            pattern on a different note will give you a different key signature, a different set of
            sharps or flats. The scale that is created by playing all the notes in a minor key
            signature is a natural minor scale. Natural minor scales start on the tonic note and
            go up the scale using the interval pattern: whole step, half step, whole step, whole
            step, half step, whole step, whole step.  There are 12 natural minor scales.

- Melodic Minor Scales:
            The melodic minor scale is the same as the natural minor with the exception
            that the sixth and seventhtones are raised by a semitone (half step) when the
            scale is ascending. When the scale is descending, the melodic minor is the same
            as the natural minor.
            e.g.: C, D, E-flat, F, G, A, B, C (ascending)
            C, B-flat, A-flat, G, F, E-flat, D, C (descending)
            There are 12 melodic minor scales.

- Harmonic Minor Scales:
           The Harmonic and Melodic Minor scales are similar, except the Harmonic Minor
           contains a flat sixth and the Melodic Minor contains a natural sixth. In the pop,
           rock, country, blues, etc. genres, solos are usually based entirely on blues and
           pentatonic scales, there are times when different, more exotic sounds, fit in
           nicely. The harmonic minor, can add an altogether different sound to solos. 

- Chromatic Scales:
           Made up entirely of half steps. When ascending, the scale uses sharps,
           when descending it uses flats. Chromatic Scales can be deemed as one of the most
           challenging musical scales, and are also great pitching exercises.

- Whole Tone Scales:
           A Whole-Tone Scale is a scale made entirely of whole-steps and has only six notes.
           The pattern for a whole-tone scale is easy to remember because it consists only
           of whole-steps. The whole-tone scales gained prominence in the beginning of this
           Century through modern composers such as Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen.
           Jazz improvisers were quick to take up this new sound for improvisation over augmented
           triads and augmented 7th chords (+7 or 7aug).

- Pentatonic Scales
           A five-tone scale, which has its beginning in antiquity.
           There are traces of this scale in Oriental and American Indian music.
           This scale does not have a leading tone, which gives the scale it's unique sound.
           The major pentatonic has a sweet, almost country flavor to it.
           The minor pentatonic has a darker, more blues sound to it.
           Knowing this difference in sound will help you to match your playing to chord progressions.
           If you already know the major and minor scale well, you can learn to see the pentatonic scales
           by leaving out the appropriate intervals (4 and 7 for major, 2 and b6 for minor).