Sign-Up: Improve your Scales in Two Weeks!
Sign up now for our very first Two Week Intensive on "Improve your Scales"! We will focus on Czerny's Exercises no.61 and no.69 from his op.599 set, Burgmuller Op.100 no.6 "Progres" and the Final page of Chopin's Ballade no.1 (where the scales begin!).
Improve your Scales in Two Weeks!
- Sign-Up Period: June 13th - 17th
- Course Period: June 20th - July 1st
- Optional check-In via Zoom: June 24th at 11 am PT
Group 1
Vidhya Bashyam
Ko
Michael
Andrea Buckland
Denise
hanqi4
Barbara Blakeslee
Sindre Skarelven
Jarkko Janhunen
Gail Starr
Harry Neuwirth
Peter Hirsch
Susan Rogers
Fides Cutiongco
Alistair Bertram
Group 2
Justo
Randi
Tommy Johnson
CK
Natale Farrell
Scotty
Rudelle Gaje
Harriet Kaplan
Sigurd Bj酶rhovde
Germ谩n
Himanshu Bhardwaj
RoxyHart
Jenny
Marco
ALICE
Group 3
Maya Martin
Rebecca Lam
Shaw-Jiun Wang
Kerstin
Tim
Gary Hamer
Angela
Amy
Claudio Carrani
Lin W.
Lorraine Nelson
Mia
Larry Johnson
Charlie Gesualdo
Michael Palmer
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I have been away from home doing different things for most of the last three weeks so sorry not to sign up for this but I can see that you have over 140 people already as I saw the live stream yesterday.
It will be so useful to see others being taught on the scales so not participating in the actual teaching is not a problem.
I am using some alternative fingerings for scales taken from Penelope Roskell, which I haven't extended to 'scales in thirds' to date , but which I shall now do.
I did not practise scales very much in the past and with no clear methodology. My first objective with scales when I joined TB was to play all of the scales, 2 octaves, parallel motion, hands together, which I now do, with the exception of the melodic minors.
The melodic minors are the same as the harmonic (1-5 going up) and the same as the major (4-8 again going up). The melodic minor is the same as the relative major on the way down but starting a minor third lower.
I am with Martha Argerich on this one [joke!], who said she only practises the minor passages within her repertoire and not the minor scales. I think this is because it is very unlikely that the melodic and harmonic minors ever come entirely in those forms in compositions. The minor sections are usually a mixture of both forms of minor and the modal. [This thesis is likely to have been addressed in numerous PhDs in the past, none of which I have read]
NB: I did not apply this approach to the flute, of course, as that would not have worked in examinations!
I now try to go through all the harmonic minors as much as possible. I am going to use the suggestion from Dominic Cheli of 25% of the practise time going forward - half an hour in two hours, etc. I tend to avoid pieces if I have very little time to practise - just playing scales instead, which I may try to adjust going forward but I am making up for lost time with scales, so I am happy to continue like that for now, but I take the point that I should be developing more repertoire pieces.
I only do parallel motion at the moment so I shall reduce the number of scales practised each week but include thirds and contrary motion.
I shall start with the live stream on scales from Dominic Cheli , which I missed when it was live.
Enough for now!
Have a terrific 2-weeks!
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Hello Everyone!!!
We are overwhelmed by your interest in this new community activity and we did not expect this huge response! Unfortunately, we need to limit it to 3 groups of 15 people as we want to be able to concentrate on each individual participant. But stay tuned, we have heard you and we will continue with the Two Week Intensives and especially with this particular topic! Sorry for everyone who don't get to participate this month, we are opening up the Sign-Up-Perdiod for the activities in the 2nd week of each month!