Scales with Character is a method book designed to help with scale practice. It is a 63 page book featuring broken apart Scale Exercises, Character Studies with distinct musical characters, and Warm-Ups rounding out the book. This is a great starting point for a common trumpet routine. This book focuses on scale exercises and their uses in music. This is perfect for players at the intermediate/semi-professional level who want to improve their skills. Since scales are the foundation to improving your musical vocabulary, the more variation of scales you know, the more you are able to comprehend, demonstrate, and discuss music. Not only is this book formatted with scales in mind, it has the foundation for a proper routine to practice efficiently.

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Special Thanks to Phil Snedecor for guidance and proofing throughout the editing process.

Published by PASmusic.

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C Major Etude

Free Download of the C Major Simple and Complex Character Studies!
Use this example to help define your etude studies!

Scale Exercises

The more scales you know, the more your vocabulary expands as a musician. However, music is more intricate than simple scales that move up and down. There are specific patterns composers use to develop their music. The most common are the thirds pattern, triplet pattern, and diatonic pattern. In this book, we will learn these patterns and apply them directly to a piece of music.

The book organizes the scale exercises by key signature. Each key features the common scales patterns in their standard form. To practice these scale patterns effectively, there are exercises below each pattern to break apart each section of it. This breaks down the exercises to become much easier to play with accuracy. It helps players internalize the scales instead of playing it with muscle memory alone.

Character Studies

These studies are the most important part of the book. Each study is designed with these specific scale patterns in mind. The work you have put into the scale exercises will directly transfer into a musical character.

These studies are divided into two parts, a simple version and a complex version. This book is based on a teaching method called “scaffolding” where you continue to return to previous concepts and ideas, but improve the foundation of these ideas. The simple version of these studies introduce you to a new style of music. Since you will return to this study in a complex form, you don’t have to spend all of your time perfecting each etude. Instead, you will use the simple version as an introduction to this topic and come back later. This is so you are not stuck on the same etude for a long time and continue to expand your knowledge of different types of music. You will come back and refine your skills on this etude at a different time.

Each study embodies a different style of music. Through this book, you will learn about different types of marches, waltzes, dances, and melodies. Each study is distinctly different from the next so you are able to experience a wide variety of styles and forms. Play each etude as stylistically as possible.

 Scales with Character is now a video series on YouTube as well! Make sure to subscribe to the youtube channel for the latest videos releasing!

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