Review: Scaling New Heights: Major Scale Duets on Keyboard Classics, by Laura Spitzer

Here's a new publication that piano teachers and their students will enjoy, Laura Spitzer's Scaling New Heights - Major Scale Duets on Keyboard Classics. This book presents an innovative, fun approach to learning scales. It's a clever idea, and I wish I had though of it! (Full disclosure - Laura is my sister.)

18 well-known classical pieces are arranged as duets for students and teachers to play together. The teacher ("secondo") parts consist of short arrangements of the pieces. The student ("primo") parts consist of major scales, rhythmically adapted to harmonize with the teacher's part. 

The pieces are in their original keys, and have been chosen to cover all 12 major scales, moving around the circle of fifths. Each primo part presents at least two ascending and descending runs of the scale.

In case the teacher is not available to play the secondo part, or as a practice aid, recordings of all of the pieces are available online, at lauraspitzer.com. There are two sets of recordings - one set with both parts being played, and another with only the teacher's secondo parts.

Here's a sample:

The student parts (scales) may be played with either left or right hand or both, in a higher or lower octave if student and teacher are sharing a keyboard, or in any octave if two separate keyboards are being used.

Since the student parts are consistently scalar, the duets also serve as a basic exercise in rhythm reading, and in synchronizing with a duet partner.

Pieces include The Entertainer (Joplin), Soldier's March (Schumann), Canon in D (Pachelbel), Humoresque (Dvorak), Gymnopedie No. 1 (Satie), and more - 18 titles, with additional alternate versions of three of the titles.

Although this book is written for pianists, I can certainly see a way to adapt it for other instruments (like the ones I teach, clarinet and saxophone). It would be easy enough to use the online secondo recordings, and ask the student to transpose the primo parts as appropriate for Bb or Eb instruments. This could serve as a lesson in transposing from concert key, and shouldn't be particularly hard for students, since the primo parts move scalewise. For violin or flute, no transposing would be necessary!

Scaling New Heights is available on Amazon - just click the link. For more about the author, visit lauraspitzer.com.