… You must learn your scales and your arpeggios.
And how to make the learning of those scales and arpeggios less of a drudgery?
I have a list – first posted in April 2011 – of a few creative ways to practice technique. It has proven to be the third most popular post in the two years of this blog. The PDF file of the creative scale practice ideas is also available in Printables.
The top two were the video of Charlotte and Jonathan, and the Creative Circles of Fifths, as listed in yesterday’s post.
Of course, you could get yourself a few adorable cats surrounding you on the piano. I’m sure that would add a certain pizzazz to the practicing as well…
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Image source: releasedonkey
A couple appropriate quotes from Frederick M. Noad’s classical guitar book, “Solo Guitar Playing:”
“A routine of daily technique exercises is valuable both for what it achieves and also for what it eliminates. A few carefully chosen exercises can replace hours of repetition of old lessons, and are the safest guarantee of technical advancement on the instrument…A very famous concert guitarist, whose name is today a household word, was conscripted into the army. Afraid of losing his technique, he evolved an exercise routine covering the main aspects of playing, which could be accomplished in forty minutes–the maximum time he felt sure of being able to secure daily without fail. After two years of military service he found that he had not only maintained his ability to play, but actually improved it. As he said afterwards, technique seldom stands still–it either advances or retreats.”
“The subject of scales is often a somewhat unwelcome one to the student since it is associated with boring practice drills or unnecessary academicism. However, scales are particularly useful to the guitarist, both for overcoming technique problems in both hands and also as a help to understanding the relationship between different keys and modes. In his preface to an edition of major and minor scales Andres Segovia wrote, ‘The practice of scales enables one to solve a greater number of technical problems in a shorter time than the study of any other exercise.’”
Of course, you know you’re preaching to the choir, Joe!
But ’tis true in piano as well. It’s also useful to have alternate fingerings – as there are passages where it’s not the most efficient or economical to use the standard fingering. I don’t have a clue if this is applicable in guitar as well.
I find it intriguing that a mere 40 minutes a day sufficed to not only maintain, but to improve technique. Was that Segovia as well?
Frederick Noad never identified the “famous concert guitarist” who was a “household name.” Since that quote occurred earlier in his book than the one mentioning Segovia, I have always assumed that they were one in the same. At the time Noad’s book was written Segovia was probably the best known classical guitarist in the world. Regarding the ’40 minutes a day’ , when I joined our community band and start playing my flute after many years, I remembered that story, as well as what Segovia had said about scales. I decided to try it for myself. I would set my wife’s cooking timer for a half hour. For the first 20 minutes I practiced nothing but scales. The last 10 minutes were spent going over the band music we were rehearsing each week. For the first time in my life I saw the benefit of practicing scales. When I was starting out in school scales were almost punishment. I didn’t see the point of them. Of course, no one ever mentioned the 10,000 hours that anyone wanting to become a good musician needed to put in either!