Scale practice

[catmandu2]

Unless it's Irish trad, where we frown on that stuff. Unless you're Trevor Hutchinson with
Lúnasa. That's a one-time, single use exemption.

Yes, although a bow on a jig can be nice too, for a dance.

[catmandu2]

But I'm totally with mandocrucian on the guitar and keyboard... I think much of my interest in strings emanated from not enough piano.

[Jim_G]

Thanks for that link. I'm about 2 years into learning the Mandolin and haven't been happy with my right hand progress for a while. Even before seeing that article I had been occasionally going back to just playing scales, hoping it would help. Always nice to have my instincts confirmed by other sources.

While I'm here, thanks for that link you posted several weeks ago describing the way Mike Compton holds his pick. I've been trying to adapt it to my own needs and found it has helped fix the angle of my pick stroke. And my upstrokes in particular, are much better than they've ever been.

[ombudsman]

I play scales, or other exercised closely related to scales, all the time. I do lots of other things too. I think approaches to music practice that involve several areas are more likely to produce good results. It's critical to make complete musical statements and to relate to others in real time, and it's also critical to be familiar with the fundamentals of music theory that we use all the time, and all of the notes on our instruments. There is no mutual exclusivity here.

What works for me is a roughly equal mix of scales and harmonized chords (typically sevenths, sometimes triads, and sometimes 4 note quartal). The chords can be arpeggiated or not and I'll use a pick, fingers, or the combination. That way I keep up a variety of right hand techniques. I do them up and down both within the scale and chord and in the larger pattern I am moving through. I cycle through keys in varying ways so that it doesn't get too easy or repetitive.

Real facility and confidence in fingerboard knowledge and right hand technique is great for improvisation. We only improvise using what we are able to do, so by expanding what we are able to do easily and without requiring much attention to that end of things we free ourselves to find our actual musical voice and use our mental resources for that when we are playing.