12 MAJOR SCALES
Istallation view at Sons Improbábeis exhibition at Auditorio de Galicia, Spain, 2022. Photo: Roi Alonso
I’m a visual artist and a musician, a classical pianist. I investigate the relationship between time and space with a special emphasis on repetition. My background in music is very important in my work. In order to develop the necessary piano skills, one must spend thousands of hours repeating the same gestures allowing the body to internalize and integrate them.
The repetitive practice of scales is one of the exercises that every pianist has to go trough during their training. A scale is based on an ordered set of notes following a fixed sequence of intervals that can be repeated in different octaves. The major scale is one of the most commonly used musical scales. It is possible to form a major scale from any of the 12 different keys of the piano (7 white and 5 black ones). There are, therefore, 12 major scales.
Each scale implies using only a set of keys, a physical path that the fingers and hands of the pianist must learn through all the repetitions.
My drawings show the scores of each of twelve possible major scales using the maximum number of octaves according to the extension of the keyboard. The drawings work like maps indicating the path to be followed by the fingers on the keyboard. The color of each note refers to a particular physical space, the black and white piano keys.