Become fluent in the language of music.

Engrave any scale, arpeggio or pattern for your instrument, in any key and any register, with the fingerings marked, then play it against a drone and drums that follow the key as it changes. Take one pattern through all twelve keys, or let the app show you something you have never practiced.

Made by Nick Mahon
principal trombone of the Orchestre symphonique de Québec.

Downloadon the App Store

$9.99. Works offline, no ads, no subscription.

Daily Scales on iPad, held portrait on a music stand: the C natural minor scale over two octaves, engraved for violin on manuscript paper with the fingerings marked, the first key of a lap around the circle of fourths. The console is open underneath on the rhythm well, with Triplets chosen.
The engraving

Pick your instrument.

Pick an instrument, a scale, a pattern to run it in and a rhythm to write it in, and Daily Scales generates sheet music engraved for your instrument.

D majorEighthsTenor Trombone

Scale
and 31 other scales
Pattern
and 35 other patterns
Rhythm
and 12 other rhythms
Keyboard
Strings
Woodwinds
Brass
Voice
Percussion
What's in it?

A complete scale book for every instrument.

35 scales. 34 arpeggios and chords. 38 patterns to run them through. All of it on all 40 instruments, in all twelve keys.

Every one of those scales and arpeggios in every key, through every pattern, in 15 rhythms, with 18 articulations, in 6 meters: 32,370,840 different exercises. More than you will ever finish, and every one of them ready to play with the band behind it. That count leaves out the dynamics, the direction, the inversions, and which of the 40 instruments it is written for.

See all 184 of them.

Digital 1-2-3-5 over a turnaround

For jazz players

Run your patterns over the changes.

Knowing the chord scale is one thing. Playing it at tempo, over a tune, is the job. Paste an iReal Pro link and decide what gets written over those chords.

Guide tonesThe 3rds and 7ths, and nothing else
Chord tonesThe chord itself, run in whatever pattern you set
Chord scalesOne for each quality, shaped the same way
The bass lineThe band's own, so you can mute the bass player and take the chair

Any scale and arpeggio catalog can be written over chord changes, voice-led from one chord to the next, so the line stays in one register instead of leaping a tenth every bar.

Want it to build? Set the chorus plan and each pass moves up a level: guide tones, then arpeggios, then scales, then patterns. Want it to stay uncomfortable? Set a digital pattern and let it reshuffle its digits every chorus, so you drill all twenty-four orderings instead of the two your fingers already like.

Screenshot the lead sheet of your own book and import it into Daily Scales, and practice the head while the band plays the form behind you.

In the app

Everything a practice session needs.

What breaks a practice session is rarely the playing. It's deciding what to play, remembering what you did yesterday, and keeping it inside a range that suits you. The app holds all of that so you can start on the first note.

A page of Daily Scales on iPad: A flat major in broken 3rds engraved for violin, with the console open underneath on the sequence well: rows of patterns from basic groups through broken intervals, weaves and turns, diatonic chords and jazz digitals

Watch the days add up

The app counts the days you practiced. The streak is what gets you to the stand on a bad morning.

Stop deciding

Fill a hat with the scales and arpeggios you want, then let the app deal. No two sessions come out the same.

Routines and grades

More than 100 ready-made sheets, graded from the first octave up. Or build your own and save it.

Print it, or send it

Any page exports as a PDF. Send it to anyone, whether or not they own Daily Scales.

Your range, your clefs

Set your range once and every exercise stays inside it. Move it to drill the register you're working on.

iReal Pro import

Bring in your own tunes. Practice scale and arpeggio patterns over their changes.

The band

Practice with a band, not a metronome.

Most scale practice is done against a click. This one is done against a band that knows what you are reading: drums and a drone under every scale and every pattern, the whole rhythm section over a tune's changes. It re-rolls itself every chorus, so it never plays the same thing twice.

A drone that follows you

Set it once and leave it. It holds the tonic of whatever is on the page, and when the page changes key the drone changes with it. Going round the circle of fifths never means stopping to reset anything.

Drums that know what you're reading

They play the subdivision of the exercise you're working on: triplets get a swung ride, sixteenths get the grid underneath them. Eight styles, so you can put the scale in the feel you actually need it in.

For teachers

An app for students of all levels.

Students tend to practice the keys they already play well. Build them a practice routine that gives them more variety: anything from one octave scales with the fingerings written in to dominant 13th arpeggios in 3rd inversion around the cycle of fourths. Randomize as much as you like so no two weeks look the same.

A student reading a pattern they have never seen in a key they avoid is sight reading as well as practicing. They stop hunting for the notes and start moving around the instrument, and the harmony they were taught in theory class turns into something under their fingers.

Send it whichever way suits: as an image over text, as a PDF, or as a QR code they scan into their own copy of Daily Scales and practice with the drums and drone behind them.

The Daily Scales library on iPad: the classical shelf at intermediate level, twelve routines from Daily Warm-Up to Slur and Tongue Patterns, each with what it is for, how many patterns it holds and a tempo to try it at
The maker
Nick Mahon with his trombone
Made by
Nick Mahon Principal Trombone, Orchestre symphonique de QuébecProfessor, Conservatoire de musique de Québec

I made Daily Scales to push my own technique, and to give my students something better than a metronome to work against: a drone to tune to and a band to play with. It has been honed and tested by working orchestral musicians, and my students at the Conservatoire play from it every week.

Something new to practice every day.

$9.99 Works offline. Collects nothing. No subscription, no account, no ads.
Downloadon the App Store

One purchase, yours on every iPad signed in to your Apple ID.