It's a good idea to take a simple melody, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," or "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," and play it in all twelve keys, or to take a phrase you made up, a riff, and play it in all the twelve keys.
Usually I do it using the circle of fifths, so that the tonic of the tune becomes the dominant next time around, but once in an informal music group I was attending, we were challenged to play "Autumn Leaves" twelve times, each time going down half a step. We started making a lot of mistakes when we got to the keys with lots of sharps and flats. Jazz musicians commonly play that trick with "Mack the Knife."
Another good idea is to play through all seven of the modes in one key, starting in the Lydian mode with the sharp fourth and then flatting each note in proper order till you get to the Locrian, with the flatted fifth, then flatting the tonic and finding yourself playing the Lydian mode in them in the next key, and so on until you get back to the first key. E.g.:
C - D- E- F# - G - A- B - C (Lydian)
C - D- E- F - G - A- B- C (Ionian or major)
C - D- E- F - G - A- Bb - C (Mixolydian)
C - D- Eb - F- G- A- Bb - C (Dorian)
C - D- Eb - F- G- Ab- Bb - C (Aeolian, or natural minor)
C - Db- Eb - F- G- Ab- Bb - C (phrygian)
C - Db- Eb - F- Gb- Ab- Bb - C (locrian)
then when you flat the C, turning it enharmonically into B, you have the B Lydian scale:
B - Db (=C#) - Eb (=D#) - F (=E#) - Gb (=F#) - Ab (=G#) - Bb (=A#) - B
This kind of exercise is valuable because it's interesting and forces you to pay attention to what you're playing. It's a bit like changing sentences from one tense to another when you're learning a language or moving from singular to plural verb forms.
Incidentally, while I was checking on the nomenclature, I ran across a valuable chart of scales.
Usually I do it using the circle of fifths, so that the tonic of the tune becomes the dominant next time around, but once in an informal music group I was attending, we were challenged to play "Autumn Leaves" twelve times, each time going down half a step. We started making a lot of mistakes when we got to the keys with lots of sharps and flats. Jazz musicians commonly play that trick with "Mack the Knife."
Another good idea is to play through all seven of the modes in one key, starting in the Lydian mode with the sharp fourth and then flatting each note in proper order till you get to the Locrian, with the flatted fifth, then flatting the tonic and finding yourself playing the Lydian mode in them in the next key, and so on until you get back to the first key. E.g.:
C - D- E- F# - G - A- B - C (Lydian)
C - D- E- F - G - A- B- C (Ionian or major)
C - D- E- F - G - A- Bb - C (Mixolydian)
C - D- Eb - F- G- A- Bb - C (Dorian)
C - D- Eb - F- G- Ab- Bb - C (Aeolian, or natural minor)
C - Db- Eb - F- G- Ab- Bb - C (phrygian)
C - Db- Eb - F- Gb- Ab- Bb - C (locrian)
then when you flat the C, turning it enharmonically into B, you have the B Lydian scale:
B - Db (=C#) - Eb (=D#) - F (=E#) - Gb (=F#) - Ab (=G#) - Bb (=A#) - B
This kind of exercise is valuable because it's interesting and forces you to pay attention to what you're playing. It's a bit like changing sentences from one tense to another when you're learning a language or moving from singular to plural verb forms.
Incidentally, while I was checking on the nomenclature, I ran across a valuable chart of scales.
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