I've always hated scales and arpeggios. Just hated them. I was always a classical music kid - scales were like taking music, and aggressively distilling it down, boiling away everything that was good and true and emotional and affecting about music, and stripping it down to something incredibly annoying. I hated looking at music as something that had annoying elements to it, and scales/arpeggios just shone a big spotlight on them.
I also saw no point. What is the point of being able to play both-handed four-octave Ab-minor arpeggios if none of the pieces in my repertoire have them in their passages? Plus, I had been able to learn particular scale runs when necessary - the G minor scales in Chopin's 1st Ballade. The F# runs in Brahms B-minor rhapsody. I suppose they weren't perfect every time I did them, but they were a heck of a lot better than when I would do them as part of mindless scale exercises. It was the music that motivated me, not some aim of mindless technical proficiency.
And now... it's different. Jazz makes it all different. Now there's a point to practicing these scales. If I reach a confidence point with some altered pentatonic exercise, I can use it. And there are times in my improvising when I know I have a sound in my head - a flourish that I intellectually know how to play, one that depends on some pentatonic or symmetric diminished pattern... and my fingers get tangled.
Damn it.
I've always had good fingers. I've been able to coast on them. But I guess I'm getting to the point where my lack of scale/arpeggio practice is finally starting to limit me.
So, today was the first day I really started pounding scales again, first day in a long time. All the modes in several keys, both hands.
And this time... thinking about the jazz playing I might be able to use them in, it was actually kind of fun.
