lostinthemusic

As someone else has noted, Indiana DOES make you play scales, major and all kinds of minors, and in different styles too.
But then, that's the clarinet faculty... I can't speak for other instruments.

It's probably worth being solid on them all just in case... at my Michigan audition I wasn't asked any, but I didn't feel at all that I'd wasted my time preparing them - after all I have other auditions soon that I may have to play them for, and even if not they are essential to the study of music in general.

stringfollies

My S has been working on his octave and double stop scales lately and not as much on straight scales and arpeggios. This is the place he is in with his teacher who prefers that he do this. Only so many hours in a day with school too, but I certainly didn't mean to infer that scales were not an essential part of a musician's training (pianists included!)

fiddlefrog

While I agree with the substance of Cosmos's post-- that technical conditioning should never stop, least of all when auditions are approaching-- I'm not sure that playing scales is always the way to go. To be clear, I play scales virtually every day. However, when my practice time is limited, I often cut back on scale practice in favor of open strings, finger patterns up and down the fingerboard, first-position arpeggio practice, double stops, one slow, carefully tuned scale, and whatever Sevcik/Dounis/Fischer exercises I'm doing at the moment.
It's very important and useful, as Cosmos says, to apply this raw mechanical work to scales, but playing a 3-octave scale is quite complex, and often one aspect of playing will suffer when you focus on another in the scale-- i.e. out of tune staccato volant scales. Obviously one must both practice mechanics in isolation and apply them to larger tasks on the instrument, but when under time restrictions, I'll usually go for the former.

Cosmos

Quite right - It wouldn't be practical to do marccato practice in a 3 octave scale. Those kinds of exercises are best with simple scales, like a 1 octave C major. One you don't need to think about too much.

But, yes, I agree - Scales and exercises are best when there isn't much practice time to be had.

musicianmom

Thzxcyl, love your point on piano intonation! Life's not fair!

I did want to mention that any one hoping to test out of piano requirements or into a higher level of required piano may be required to play scales for the placement test. So, if piano is a secondary instrument, you may want to review your piano scales before placement exams!

BassDad

Actually, the Curtis audition requirements for double bass include a THREE-octave B-flat major and B-flat melodic minor scale with arpeggios, and they make everyone play them. As fiddlefrog states, it is extremely hard to get all aspects of a three octave scale up to snuff at the same time. Hal Robinson, the current bass teacher there (with occasional appearances by Edgar Meyer) says that one can tell a lot about a bass player by the way they approach this particular task. That was the only place my daughter was asked to play scales.

Cosmos

Sorry for the misinformation! I didn't apply to Curtis so I wasn't sure of the requirement... But, yes! Scales are of the utmost importance! Hal and Edgar would know.

neumes

My son is a singer. He's only had one audition so far and did some sight reading, which he says was easy. Are there similar requirements for singers--to sing scales and start in the middle of a song? Seems instrumentalists have more audition hoops to jump through. Is this a can of worms that I shouldn't be opening?!

Vieuxtemps5

Yes sometimes they will. Usually if the panelist on the selection jury is very old school, they'll ask for it sometimes. Don't be scared of scales, just go over everything slowly. They know you're nervous and if they ask for it, it's ok if everything doesn't go 100%, they just want to see good fundamentals.