Group 3
Welcome to the NEW TWO WEEK INTENSIVE on tonebase!
Improving your Scales with Dominic Cheli
We will be working on different techniques on building speed, virtuosity, and confidence in our scales with assignments posted by Dominic!
Post your progress with videos and written commentary on how things are going for you!
- Course Period: May 13 - 25
- Class Size: ALL are welcome!
- Optional check-In via Zoom: May 22 at 11am PT
- ZOOM MEETING LINK:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87650346065?pwd=iNGsfHMSqMVopfHw3bnxalYfaDuwpe.1
Assignment #1
In this assignment Dominic discusses "grouping practice" for your scales. This is a great way to increase your speed, finger control and independence.
- Choose a scale to work on (could be C major, or a relevant scale from your repertoire)
- Let's work on "2 note groupings"
- Start slow, start hands separate, and increase to 4 octave scales with both hands together
- IMPORTANT: Remember to keep the proper fingering at all times for the scale! (The Standard fingering found in any technique book, or in your decided fingering for a scale passage).
- Between each grouping, take as much time as you like, and focus on fast movements
- If a group poses trouble, stop and work on that specific part of the scale!
Assignment #2
1. Focus on your thumb and (optional) take a video of it!
2. Choose a passage to apply grouping practice to, and share why!
3. Make sure to focus on your scales and practice hands separately, even just polishing/perfecting a few groups! Don't need to complete the whole scale!
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Hi Everyone, here is my d minor scale exercise and at the end I applied it to measure 34 of Mozart's Fantasia in D minor K 397 where you ahev a descending scale and then an arpeggio runup. Thanks a lot Dominic for this motivating and eye opening TWI. One gets fast really quick.
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Sedef CANKOCAK Fantasia in D minor K397 is a masterpiece! Groups can help also for the others bravura passages with right hand, including the chromatic scale!
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Letizia Indeed. Group practice forever!
A query: for the chromatic scale do you use the standard 12,12,123? I saw a youtube short in which a teacher was saying 1234 is faster.
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Sedef CANKOCAK look: here's my Mozart Fantasia in D minor K397 as presented during Tonebase Springtime Recital Community concert, March 29 2024.
https://youtu.be/OC_qkhlNBAk?si=OELAkbuKUGd6v33_
Hope it can help.
Ciao!
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Sedef CANKOCAK Great! This is a great example of how to do grouping practice - you are really getting some speed in those groups and good control over the fingers.
This is terrific - keep it up!
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Sedef CANKOCAK I much prefer 1234!
my chromatic scale fingering is attached here: chromatic scale fingering - Score
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Sedef CANKOCAK Make sure to use the fingering in RED
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Dominic Cheli Many thanks Dominic. This is so helpful.
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Many thanks to Dominic for this TWI! I've gained a lot of fluency by seeing and practising the groups that were awkward. While recording myself and playing the clips back later, I could see that I was hearing the intervals between first and last notes in the groups - whether the minor third in the chromatic scale or the perfect fourth in diatonic scales - allowed me to increase my accuracy and speed.
In the practise pieces, this also helped because I broke up runs of a series of six sixteenth notes into groups, sometimes of fourths and others times of fourths and major seconds.
All told, working this way gave me many ideas for ways to practise pieces I am working on.
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I know it's past two weeks - but still working on it. Below quick videos of my 3-note and 4-note runs in G major. I never video myself - and in making these short videos I realize how many times I mess up and need to do a re-take. Without the camera running it's all so much easier, I'm just probably ignoring all the little mistakes. So that's an added benefit of making a video.
re: Dominic's second question: where can we apply the grouping exercise in pieces we're workgin on . I tried it - and I think for me it works best in sections with some repetition. For example, Chopin's 2nd ballade, the fast pieces - repeated sections, usually 3 in a row, great for grouping. On the other hand, I'm working on Rachmaninov Prelude 6, grouping would be great for the left hand, but there's no repetition, so it really doesn't work that well. Also it's not intended to be so fast, so another reason that grouping doesn't work there. Wonder what you think....
