How to Use Scales
The Purpose of Scales, and How to Practice Them:
Scales are complicated exercises that should be practiced a
variety of ways to ensure success. To become very fluent with scales at
high speeds, it isn't enough to repeat them over and over with no purpose in
mind. It also goes without saying that this way of practicing them is
soul-crushingly boring and tiresome. There are many difficulties in
scales that need to be practiced in isolation before you can combine them
together and play the whole scale. This is similar in analogy to a piano
piece, which can't be learned from start to finish but instead has to be broken
down into many smaller and more easily learned parts - then
combined. The reason for this in scales and in anything else is that it
is very difficult or impossible to focus on improving more than one task at a
time, which is what one would have to do if repeating the scale from start to
finish. Even when it is possible in some cases to focus on many things at
once, and even if it sometimes gets results to do so, it is always much
less efficient, and therefore inferior to breaking the tasks down to practice
one at time, because our time to practice piano is not unlimited. The
good news is scales are a great tool to practice all aspects of music, and it's
with these purposes that we should create our philosophy of how to play scales.
Here are the important components of the scale exercise:
0) Learning the Notes
1) Rhythmic
accuracy and perfect counting (Most Fundamental)
2) Technique
a) Comfort, relaxation, confidence
b) Accuracy
c) Hand/Finger Placement
d) Key motions
i) Epicycles
ii) Thumb Under
iii) Hand shape
a) Comfort, relaxation, confidence
b) Accuracy
c) Hand/Finger Placement
d) Key motions
i) Epicycles
ii) Thumb Under
iii) Hand shape
3) Articulation
accuracy (legato, staccato, etc.)
4) Dynamic
accuracy
5) Tonal
Control
Each of these components should be practiced in isolation,
and gradually combined together. The way to do this is to play a scale at
a very comfortable slow speed - as low as necessary to play well.
Sometimes this means not playing too slowly, because at too slow of a speed
your concentration can be easily disrupted. You may not be very
comfortable playing scales at any speed, so pick the best speed you can.
It doesn't matter how slow or fast it is, but should probably be quite
slow. Next, you will need to work very hard on becoming independent from
the metronome for awhile. Rhythmic accuracy, next to playing the right
notes, is fundamental and necessary before learning how to improve any other
part of your scales (or music for that matter). Once you are working on
other areas of your scales, you must continue to strive for rhythmic precision
and come back to working on it as needed.
You need to be using your ear to work on the other aspects
of the scale and this only becomes possible once you can ignore the
metronome. The goal of exercises for #1 on this list is to achieve
complete independence from the metronome. Once this is
accomplished, pick an exercise to do in a scale and practice it with the goal
of achieving perfection in that particular area. Concentrate only on the
goal of the exercise and try to 'file' other things away into your
subconscious. At first, you will be working on some singular aspect while
'filing' away rhythmic accuracy. If it is too difficult to do, then
continue practicing #1 (rhythmic accuracy) until it is automatic. Once
you can practice rhythm and any other aspect, it is not really necessary to
rigidly combine things in some particular order - you can try practicing any
two combinations (for example, perfect dynamics and articulation) as long as
your rhythm is precise. Then you can try practicing more than two aspects
at once, until eventually you try to do them all. It is extremely
challenging and will take an enormous amount of time before you can perfect
every aspect of playing a scale at any speed.
It is not necessary to practice in every key all of the time
- in fact, the exercise of the scale itself is what is important, not what
particular key you are playing in. Try to play a different scale every
day, or play groups of scales. Every scale is essentially unique, but at
the same time not that different from the others. The skills you build in
one scale will transfer to every other scale. The point of this approach
is to be fun and flexible - you can practice any scale and any aspects you
want. Maybe D# melodic minor will be your scale today, or perhaps D
Major? Just make sure to be precise rhythmically - if you have problems
here, solve them first. Hopefully now scales can be more fun and
interesting to practice. In time you will be able to play any scale and yes,
eventually you will have to practice them all.
Before starting any exercises, find your 'comfort
speed'. Find the speed you can play at as comfortably as possible, and
write this speed down. This may vary slightly between scales but don't
worry too much - as long as your scales are close to each other in speed it's
fine for them to vary a bit- keep a table log of each scale.
Alternatively, you can pick the lowest speed. You will stay at this speed
for all of these exercises until you can successfully combine all of them
together and play a flawless scale. Then increase the metronome by 1bpm
and repeat the exercises. You may find that the amount effort required to
surmount the initial comfort speed is colossal, but the increase of 1bpm is
almost non-existent. You may also find that later down the road, for some
reason moving a few bpm up from where you are seems very difficult, because
you've hit a speed wall for your current technique, and new motions need to be
discovered. All of this is quite normal - piano progress is never
linear.
The most important final note is to give no thought or care
whatsoever to the beats per minute you are currently at or planning to arrive
at. You should stay happily where you are until you have achieved total
mastery at that speed - a beautiful clean scale at a low speed is worth a
thousand sloppy scales at a high speed.
Exercises
Important note: When I use the term "spurts" in
this article, it just means quick repetitions at varying speeds (constant for
each spurt, but subject to increase or decrease at your desire). In this
case it would be acceptable to exceed the metronome for these little exercises
- after all, you want these difficult areas to be super solid and you want to
expose the issues that come up playing them fast. Aside from these
mini-exercises, when playing entire two-handed exercises stay at your comfort
speed and enforce rigorous rhythmic accuracy.
0) Learning the Notes
Scales should be learned very well hands separately, and
then put hands together very slowly, one note at a time. This is one of the first very challenging
obstacles for a beginning piano player because the hands must become decoupled
- they are performing radically different motions together, crossing over and
under at different times and assuming different shapes. To get on the right track, it's a good idea
to read the 'Finger/Hand Placement' and 'Key Motions' sections and to roughly
aim for these approaches but do not worry at all about perfecting them straight
away. This article for the most part
assumes you are an intermediate player who has learned their scales, but wants
a better way to practice them (my own situation really.)
1) Rhythmic Accuracy and Perfect Counting:
Intro:
Rhythmic accuracy is simple to comprehend on its own, but
many of us don't understand how to achieve it and find the metronome
troublesome and counter-productive to use. The truth is we will all find
it nearly impossible to develop a correct sense of rhythm without working on it
in isolation, and it will still take a lot of work. It can take years to
develop a very solid sense of this, so it's important to do it the right way -
the metronome is a terrible thing if you waste your time listening to it while
practicing other things. Listening to a metronome and repeating something
over and over again until it reaches that clicking speed is a terrible and
soul-crushing way to do scales and all other music, and also horrifically
backward. The goal of these exercises is to make rhythm a part of your subconscious
thinking so you can eventually get rid of the metronome altogether, just using
it to set an initial tempo and check how you are doing without it. Once
it's gone you can then file it away into your subconscious focus on improving
the rest of the music. Free from that incessant clicking or beeping,
rhythm will instead become the lovable (and now wonderfully
accurate) groove of music that it's meant to be.
Exercises:
1) Set
the metronome, and play the scale counting loudly out loud. First count quarters only. Then add smaller
subdivisions - eighths, and then sixteenths.
Then try longer notes - count only half notes, then whole notes. A four octave two-handed scale with sixteenth
notes as the smallest division will have 14 quarter notes. You can count it as a time signature with 14
beats per measure, break it up into smaller groups, or just count on one for
the whole scale. Eventually move towards
counting softer and softer.
2) The
next step is counting in your head. Choose quarter notes as your starting
subdivision as they are easiest. Remember to concentrate only on rhythm
during these exercises. Don't purposely be sloppy in your playing, but do
not worry about very good technique, proper dynamics, etc. because when you
start to focus on other things you will have a very hard time focusing on
counting rhythm in your head. If you want, use some kind of external rhythm counter (foot tapping, gentle
swaying, etc.) as well as internal counting but the goal in the end is to
jettison this and create an internal pulse or groove. Feel the groove, but when performing you
don't want to be distracting from the music by clicking your teeth or
something. To increase the difficulty, go
to eighth notes and sixteenth notes, and then try half notes and whole notes.
3) It
can't hurt to try other rhythmic variations; for example, you can practice
playing scales in different subdivisions (like triplets) or different time
signatures. Scales are in fact just the tool for this practice, but these
would be less about scales themselves and more about rhythm in general.
4) Gradually
get rid of the metronome. Start by turning the volume down bit by bit,
until it's barely audible. Then stop using it, trying instead to rely on
that internal pulse or groove, only checking occasionally to see how you are
doing. If you have a digital piano, you can record MIDI tracks
of your practice which will give you exact feedback of how rhythmically precise
you are without a metronome.
2a) Technique: Comfort, Relaxation, Confidence
Intro:
Comfort is more than just being relaxed at the piano and
finding your playing to be easy. Comfort is also a state of mind - it's
playing something while feeling very confident in what you are doing because it
is not straining you. For many players, even ones who can play
challenging pieces, this state of mind is foreign to them. They are never
'truly' comfortable, and always on edge about mistakes and always building
tension throughout a piece. The only way to get better at this is to do
it on its own. Total confidence in scales will come when you have
mastered every aspect of them, but you can go a long way practicing comfort,
relaxation, and confidence by doing so in isolation.
Exercises:
1) Breathing
exercise - Play your scale, and concentrate on breathing as much as you need to
feel calm, keeping every single aspect of your body relaxed except for the
tiniest amount of tension necessary to play the notes. Take deep breaths
through your nose as much as possible and through your diaphragm, not shallow
breaths with your chest. There is a lot of information about proper
breathing techniques in Yoga manuals and other places and it all applies
here. Try to practice taking deep breaths in opportune periods of time -
such as when the rest of the technique allows for it. Don't force deep
breaths in areas of the scale where they aren't comfortable. Try to
feel a positive mindset or mind when you are playing - that you are having fun
and that what you are playing is taking effort, but it's not worrying you or
making you tense. Instead, think about how fun and enjoyable it is to
play the piano while also feeling calm, relaxed, oxygenated!
2) Posture
exercise - Play your scale and pay attention to your entire body.
Discover that perfect posture that works for you - keeps you looking upright to
the audience (difficult to find for some with back problems like me) but also
gives you as little pain or tension (or none of you can) anywhere in your
body. Also find that perfect distance and bench height (distance is where
you can access the whole piano comfortably, height is where your arms are level
with the keys and don't have to raise up or down). Discover all of this -
discover your piano playing pose. Once you find it, play your scale over
and over and pay attention to when you are shifting around or becoming
uncomfortable, and try to revert to your comfortable zone. A lot of
people never find this before they dive into all sorts of piano stuff and pay
the price later.
If you can't do these exercises at the speed you are playing
then slow down. Don't consciously worry very much about other aspects of
scales while practicing these things, but don't get too sloppy either of
course. It's also a good idea to make an exception to the usual principle
of not combining exercises: it's never a bad idea to practice breathing and
relaxation while doing any other exercise! However, you will find that
until you can do it in isolation, you will probably not be able to pay any
attention to it while concentrating on making every note exactly as loud as the
next (for example)!
2b) Accuracy
Intro:
When we are playing anything in piano, it's easy to get a
bit sloppy and compensate for it, instead of be rigorously accurate. For
example, all but one major scale and one minor scale include black keys.
Striking these black keys must be precise because they are smaller than the
other keys. Actually you should be precise on white keys also - aim for
the center of the note, and with the motions to make accuracy as sure as
possible. If your motions are naturally getting your fingers into
trouble, it's time to work on them. Striking those black keys requires a
degree of precision you may not appreciate until you are in the 80bpm range of
speed and suddenly you are flubbing black keys left and right.
Remember, the more precise you are early on, the more
precise you will be later if you continue to work on it - it will carry
indefinitely into future speeds until you are playing 160bpm striking every
single key dead center. It also means that if for whatever reason you are
not up to par (exhaustion, nervousness, etc.) your usual precision will mean
that any deviations these random factors create will be greatly nullified. If
you are off by a little bit, you still won't be flubbing any notes because of
how precise your accuracy is.
Exercise:
1) Play
your scale, and concentrate on placing your fingers as accurately as
possible. Play as slow as you need in order to hit every note comfortably
and accurately in such a way that with practice you feel precise enough not to
worry about flubs.
2c) Hand/Finger Placement
Intro:
Closely related to the above topic of accuracy is
hand/finger placement. Black keys are often struck with a curved finger,
but this need not always be the case despite what some teachers want you to
believe. Playing black keys flatter offers some more ease but it can be
awkward when you are playing surrounding white keys in a curved fashion.
Whenever you are playing white and black keys, use the 'grey' area of the piano
- the area between being all the way into the black keys and all the way down
in the white keys. Experiment with different combinations of flat and
curved fingers and different placements of the hand in or out of the keys.
An important truth to realize is that there is no one right way to play
in all situations, but there are right and wrong ways in
every particular situation. It may seem like there are a
gazillion situations but they can all be reduced to a finite number of
placements, hand positions, and finger curvatures - it's all about what you are
playing and your goal should be to find the combination and motion that is the
most comfortable and produces the sound you want. To some extent, scales
are just difficult for human hands to play in a lot of ways - it seems we can
never find perfect solutions for our hands to effortlessly roll up and down the
keys from white notes to black notes with our uneven fingers. But this is
your chance to practice these little groups of notes on their own without
having to worry about playing the entire scale perfectly.
Exercises:
1) Experiment
- for any one group of notes in a scale that is troublesome, practice different
hand and finger placements to find a comfortable solution, and then practice your
solution spurts.
2) White
Keys and Black Keys - Practice small groups of notes in spurts and focus on
evenness.
3) Black
Keys - Pick a section of black keys in a row (such as the key of F# major or D#
Minor) and play them with very flat fingers in spurts aiming for perfect
evenness.
4) For
White Keys - Play an entire C Major scale with curved fingers. Now try
flat finger positions - both are appropriate for groups of white keys,
depending on the situation.
2d) Key Motions (epicycles, thumb under, hand shape)
Intro:
People who practice scales quickly figure out that not all
motions are equal in difficulty. In fact, there seem to be just a couple
of motions that cause almost all of the trouble. The first is the thumb
crossing under going up in the right hand, and the thumb crossing under going
down in the left hand. The next two are the fingers crossing over the
thumb - L.H. going up, and R.H. going down. Included in this discussion
are all of the small variations of these themes in other scales. It
stands to reason then that we should give these the appropriate amount of
concern, yet so many people just repeat scales over and over practicing these
motions only a few times on each go, while these weakest links prevent them
from speeding up the whole thing. Meanwhile the whole thing is probably
ready to be played faster! Don't get sucked into this trap - these
motions require focused practice.
There are big 'debates' to be had about which motions are
'optimal' but anyone can see that basic or intuitive motions often don't get
the job done; repeating them over and over causes a lot of strain and never
gets that fast. The most important thing to realize is our imperfect
hands on this strange contraption will not be playing scales like typing on a
keyboard - imperfection in form will be necessary to create perfect
sound! What I mean by that is that our hands will look 'funny' or
'asymmetrical' and that's exactly what is needed. Some people might think
that all scales are played the same, or with the same motions. In
reality, every single scale is unique in the motions it requires and the shape
of the hand. I don't even think it's particularly useful to group them
into fingering patterns, etc. Of course, although being unique, the
differences between them are not enormous either, so you don't have to worry
about devoting a year to mastering each scale's particularities. In fact,
skill in one scale will transfer to every other scale perfectly well, even
though they are completely unique! How incredible the human mind is!
Epicycles
So what basics apply to pretty much all scales? The
first is epicycles - in order for a finger to cross over another finger, the
hand should rotate to help out. This will require turning your wrist in
the appropriate direction. This may result in your elbow and forearm
tiling out or in a bit - this is necessary. Epicycles should be practiced
in isolation and the goal is to make them comfortable and to do what is
necessary but not more. Most people use these motions to at least some
extent subconsciously, but since they aren't aware of what they are doing, they
don't stop to consider exactly what it is they are doing and why, and whether
they are doing it too much or to little. The goal of an epicycle
should be that the rotation of the wrist allows the motion of the scale to stay
fluid and uninterrupted. The point of this technique is that you can
continue to go up and down without interruption by making it one fluid motion
instead of stopping, starting, and lots and LOTS of strain that will happen
otherwise. For example, in the right hand going down in the C Major
scale, as soon as the thumb reaches C4 and your 4th finger wants to cross over,
you are aiming for a motion that starts really before your thumb hits C and
ends after your 4th finger hits B3. In one fluid motion, your wrist
prepares to rotate sometime earlier (around E or D perhaps) and then goes
around your thumb to allow your 4th finger to strike B3 in one motion.
This requires quite a turn on the part of your wrist and can be feel quite
strenuous at first but this is why you have to practice it in isolation - if
practiced enough with comfort and relaxation as the goal, along with economy of
motion, freedom and looseness of the wrist should be achieved to the point that
this motion causes no undue strain. If this motion is bothersome,
attempting to play a scale is hopeless. Of course, it may never be
totally effortless either, but your goal is to get as close as possible.
Thumb Under
Next is thumb under motions. Having to cross your
thumbs under your hand is the notorious bane of all scales and greatly
restricts what humans can accomplish. There are some who argue that thumb
crossings at high speeds to achieve legato is unnecessary or even impossible,
and that a lose wrist and a quick break in legato is preferable. The
debate is not that important however because in the end, these so-called
different methods really converge on the same thing - a free wrist. When
playing legato, your wrist must learn to be free to rotate and stay rotated to
some extent. If your hand is not positioned at a comfortable angle, the
thumb under motion is just too slow and straining to ever achieve comfort and
high speeds. By tilting your hand, your thumb has less travel distance
and requires less motion of those slow muscles to go where it needs to
go. Also, it becomes possible (just as with epicycles) for the thumb
under motion to begin and end before it actually happens, creating one fluid
uninterrupted motion. It's also important to focus on the thumb itself -
it is said that having a straight thumb and playing with the knuckle is
ideal. Of course, this isn't how it works for everyone, but if your thumb
is pointing awkward directions or is very tense take a moment to find out what
works for you.
Hand Shape
Now it's time to discuss hand shaping. When playing
anything on the piano, an important goal to achieve is what is commonly called
"quiet hands". This just means that your hands are not freaking
out from note to note or chord to chord with lots of unnecessary motions.
Most importantly, they are 'relaxed' while achieving this economy of
motion. In scales, how much motion of your hands is really necessary to
play the scale? If we understand that the same notes are being repeated
over and over, it seems like we really need maybe only one hand shape, plus the
motions we already discussed. It's possible to divide the scale up
further perhaps, but by and large I feel that only one primary shape is
required. This doesn't mean that you keep your hand perfectly still and
tense to make it look as quiet as possible! It just means your hands
should largely be static and relaxed while the shape of your hand is already
set for the work that needs doing. An easy example is the C# Major
scale. In this scale, your thumbs play white keys while the rest play
black keys - possibly the most harmonious arrangement of all the scales!
Your hands can maintain a steady shape throughout this scale and the
fingers need only do a small amount of work to play the scale. This is
probably the ideal scale I would use to practice hand shape and quiet
hands. More than any other scale, this scale gets closest to that 'perfect'
form of typing that many imagine should be used to play scales. In fact,
placing your hands perfectly even and spaced like on a keyboard is almost the
perfect motion for this scale!
Other scales can get much harder however and the law of
imperfect form to achieve perfect sound applies instead. Tension will
build up quickly trying to keep one hand shape. But the goal is that
there is going to be a shape of the hand that requires the least amount of
extra motion to do all of the necessary motions required for that scale.
When you watch a very good pianist play a rapid scale, you notice that their
hand adopts a shape and rockets up and down the keyboard alternating between
thumb under motions for R.H. or epicycles for L.H., and vice versa. If
you've tried to play scales very fast and had any success, you notice that this
is just what your hand naturally seems to want to do. There is just not
time for anything but the bare minimum of motion you need - your hand will
naturally want to form the optimal shape that requires the least extra motion
so that your fingers and wrist rotations can get the rest done. Like everything else, this must be practiced in isolation,
and no faster than you can do correctly (except when using exploratory spurts).
Exercises:
1) Play
your scale and focus on epicycles and thumb under motions. When going up
with a two-handed scale, your left hand will be doing epicycles while your
right hand is rotated to accommodate the thumb under motion. It
will be the reverse going down.
2) Try
practicing just going down from the top of the scale, in isolation. The
reason for this is a lot of people get stuck practicing scales from the
start over and over, and this sometimes means they get more practice going up
the keyboard than down. Also, different issues crop up when you have to
lean over to the higher register compared with when you are in your comfort
zone (where pianists typically start their scales.)
3) Pick
a particular troublesome epicycle or thumb under in a scale and practice it in
spurts, in isolation.
4) When
practicing epicycles and thumb under motions, try to adopt a rigid hand shape
and imagine that they are 'anchors' that stay nearly motionless while your
fingers do the playing. If the position
is uncomfortable or builds tension, adjust it until it feels more relaxed and
natural. Don't tense up your hand to
keep it rigid - if it's an economic shape it should want to form that way to
reduce effort!
2e) Articulation Accuracy
Intro:
Scales are in general played legato, but it's easy to get
sloppy and play them too legato. Also, other articulation patterns are
called for in music and scales are a great tool to practice them all.
Exercises:
1) Play
your scale and focus on being as cleanly legato as possible.
2) Reverse
articulation - to improve your legato, try playing a scale staccatisimo to get
used to a clean break.
3) Practice
a whole scale with a tenuto or accent on each note. Reversing the
articulation you are desiring to produce counter-intuitively will help you
learn it.
4) Note
that for things like accents and tenutos, you will want to get your entire body
involved for a good tone (especially your wrists). Feel free to practice
finger accents (playing loudly from the knuckle, Hanon style) but this isn't
the only thing you should practice.
3) Dynamic Accuracy
Intro:
After having mastered and combined all of the previous
aspects for hours and hours, there is still more work to be done. Without
dynamic control over notes or scales in general, we can't hope to ever play
musically. However, having reached this step and having gone onto learn
it, we are taking our first steps into the wonderful world of musical
interpretation - the point of all this work! There are really two aspects
to dynamics - the touch and feel (tactile sense) and what you are hearing
(aural sense). Perfect control of dynamics is achieved when these senses
are in harmony. Often, most players have very good senses of one or both
in isolation, but have enormous trouble combining them. A good place to
start is to play everything at the same level of volume. The first step
in mastering dynamic accuracy is to play every note equally loud (mf).
Although we should be cautious about playing everything loudly to mask our
incompetence, aiming for no dynamic variation at all is actually just as
challenging as putting in consciously-directed and musical dynamic
variation. This is because they are really the same thing - consciously
controlling and paying attention to the dynamics. Because of the
differences in finger strength, and all of the technical motions required to
perform a scale, this is an extremely difficult exercise to really do
right. Most people give up at trying to perfect this and just accept a
lower standard. It's all up to you in the end what kind of quality of
playing you want to achieve. You don't have to be a God of dynamics to
make things sound good but, don't you want to be? So play that scale and
listen - listen very carefully. Are you really playing everything at the
same level? I would go with mf as your dynamic level because it will
throw out the idea of smashing everything working. If you hear even the
slightest variation, work on it. If you are unable to do this or some of
the other above aspects suffers, you are either not ready or playing too
fast. Many, many hours and of patient work in this area will be
rewarded.
Exercises:
1) Play
a scale with every note being mezzo-forte.
2) Play
a scale with every note at some other dynamic level (I'd go with p and pp next,
be careful with f)
3) Play
a scale with a gradual crescendo going upwards and a decrescendo going
downwards.
4) Play
a scale with multiple crescendos and decrescendos, starting with just two going
up and one going down.
5) If
you have a digital piano, MIDI recordings
can be used to see how loud you are playing every note! This will give
you feedback on both your ear and your touch sense. You may find that you
aren't as accurate as you want but more importantly, this can be used as a tool
to perhaps achieve ungodly levels of dynamic precision.
4) Tonal Control
Intro:
Tone is the endgame of technique. Having mastered
rhythm, fingerings, articulations, and dynamics, you now realize that you have
a wealth of sounds on the piano you can create at will. You have realized
that subtle changes of finger placement alter touch, subtle increases of
tension in your playing in some areas adds a different tone, and subtle
fluctuations in rhythm create an infinity of possibilities in phrasing.
Combining these skills with knowledge of the damper pedal and soft pedal, and
suddenly the piano is instrument of incredible musical potential. There
are limits to what kind of sounds the piano can produce, but those limits are
far higher than you probably realize.
Exercises:
1) Experiment
- try playing scales with different touches, varying articulations, and paying
attention to and learning the subtly different sounds of each. Create a
musical inventory of these sounds.
2) Try
using different amounts of pedal and soft pedal as you play a scale. See
what sound a particular approach creates without pedal, with 1/4 pedal, with
3/4 pedal, and with full pedal. Try adding different levels of soft pedal
as well.
3) Introduce
tightly controlled but audible rubato in your scales. Focus switching
back to keeping rigid rhythm at will.
4) Use
scales now as a tool to explore a whole world of music!