The Value of Using Nontraditional Scale Material
A scale book filled with examples from real repertoire may prove more useful than traditional scale material
Not much inclined to perform tasks I don't fully understand or with which I don't agree, I, for better or worse, just stopped practicing scales altogether during my college years and halfheartedly played my last two ever at the occasion of my junior exam at the Israeli Academy. It is preferable, I convinced myself, to warm up improvising on my instrument, greeting it in the mornings in a friendly way, rather than subjecting it to some harsh and boring disciplinary action. I thought that working on every passage in my pieces with full attention to what my bow does, where all my fingers are, how they got there, and where ideally they should be is as useful as practicing scales, if not more so.
As far as I was concerned, scale work should never be divorced from actual music.
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