Ever since discovering Hanon online a couple months ago (and reading Heidi’s comment about how invigorating she finds a round of Hanon to start off her practicing each day!), I’ve been inspired anew to put more emphasis on technique – for myself and my students. I’ve been doing a variety of Hanon – in C and transposed – and scales. I have seen a marked improvement in my technical facility when playing repertoire (shocking, huh? :-)), but I have to admit that it does get pretty boring after a while.
I may pull out some other technique books soon, but I think the importance of knowing scales fluently cannot be understated – both for technical and theoretical purposes. Thus, I was thrilled to come across this collection of Creative Ways to Practice Scales at LaDona’s Music Studio Blog. I’ve heard several of these over the years, but it’s nice to have a bunch of ideas all compiled into a list. I’m excited to try them out and share them with my students. If you have any other creative ways that you like to practice scales, do tell!
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