Old School Practice Technology

When I was in a hurry to gather together as much technique as possible on the flute, my favorite way to do it as quickly as possible was by using Marcel Moyse's Scales and arpeggios: 480 exercises for flute. It begins with the numerical grid pictured here. The numbers on this grid refer to 480 of the most difficult combinations of notes possible. Each combination lasts for about 4 measures or so.

Since I imagine that Moyse, who was a very cosmopolitan musician and teacher, could have gotten the idea for this from the violin technique books of Sevcik, I numbered the exercises in three of my Sevcik books (Shifting the position, Double Stops, and Exercises in the First position) so that covering all three books comes to 480. I pasted the above grid in one of my books, and I do a line every day. It takes about an hour, and I digest all the most difficult aspects of violin technique in four measure "bites."

You can find a PDF of this grid here.