How to Practice a Series of Exercises

[frankbiff]

What are your opinions on working your way through a series of exercises; such as Klose or Scale studies or a book on a particular technique etc.

Do you play each one, starting slow and build up to playing it corectly at some reasonably fast speed; then move on to the next, working your way through.

OR do you play each one, starting slow and then move on after you play it correctly at some not-so-fast tempo. Then, after finishing the series start over and play through them all again and again, each time through increasing your tempo.

I used to do it the first way but now I am starting to do it the second way and I think for me it works much better. It seems that by the time you get through everthing slow, the next time through everything just goes much faster without a lot of effort, each excersise seems to reinforce the learning from the others. This seems especally true for scales but for me, works for just about anything.

Any thoughts on this?

[Razzy]

Do whatever you can to get it REALLY solidly in your technique.

For Klose studies, I would run each measure 10 times, each line 10 times, sections 10 times (which I mark off myself, usually 3 or 4 lines apiece), each day during the week. Once I had those all pretty much down, I would run the etude itself about 4 times in a row and see if I could play it perfectly all 4 times, and more importantly, play it better each time. I would do about 2 etudes out of that book a week.

Now I'm in the Berbiguier Flute studies played on saxophone, and use pretty much the same methods. Next is Ferling.

Some etudes are obviously more difficult than others. Sometimes you'll have maybe two to do in a week, and the first will be HARD and the second will be EASY. Obviously, practice the hard one more. Don't always just start from the beginning, mix it up. Maybe play 3 and 4 of one measure and 1 and 2 of the next of the phrasing works that way, 10 times in a row, slowly.

So, really slowly, repeated by chunks, building to eventually being able to play the entire thing straight through several times with little to no mistakes. I tend to wait until the last 2 days of the week to tackle that last part.