Example 3

Doubling up

rhythmic patterns, sequencing and interval ideas are all good for incorporating into your scale practice routine. Another far less discussed idea is what I call ‘note doubling’. I first heard about this years ago from my old theory teacher David Galbraith, who told me some Baroque composers would deliberately add in some doubled notes into their scale passages. Sometimes this was for valid musical reasons but occasionally it was employed for sheer devilment – as a way of ‘tripping up’ musicians who tended to play scale passages robotically by habit. Try playing any scale you know and pick a note out at random and then play that note twice every time you come to it. This is a simple idea but technically it’s great for taking you out of scale ‘autopilot’ mode. Plus, you can’t do it effectively if you don’t know the notes on the fingerboard. Obviously it can be expanded to double more notes – it’s up to you. One good suggestion is to double all the chord tones, as doing this will help you learn where they all reside and give them melodic prominence. Here is a C major scale played first as a conventional E Shape fingering and then again with the 3rd – the note E – doubled throughout. Notice how just doing this small thing makes it sound less scale-like and more musical.