So there is a sporting event today. One thing I love to do when watching something full of break and commercials is what I call the “commercial drill”.
Here is how it works
Tools: Horn, metronome, random number generator.
When the commercial begins grab your horn and get to town. Set the random number generator to have a range of say 42 - 136 this is your tempo range. You will also want a way to pick note duration (quarter, eighth, triplets, sixteenths, quintuplets, etc.), and scale.
Hit those randomizers, when you get your results play the scale up one octave, down two, up one. Then break right into the arpeggio to cover the same range. (do various articulations)
Rep the scale a few times with different note duration. You can do beat division on each note, or play the scale in that pattern.
Do this until you hit all 12 major and minor scales.
Now you have done all your scales, you feel great. But now what, there are more sportings going on. Time to up the anti. Interval time. Using the same setup as before just add one more way to pick a random interval, I use thirds through tenths. Get your scale, your intervals, and for fun let’s just go max range. Start from the bottom and work all the way to the top of your range (Singer style)
Repeat the above using the outcomes until you guessed it, all 12 major and minor scales.
More sports? More fun!
Now we are going to do non-standard scales, pentatonic, Limited transpositions, whole-tone, diminished, etc. You get the idea this is all about fluency and breaking the normal habits we all have
That is it, happy sporting watching and happy scales.