Technical Exercises in Music

Alright then, guys. So, what do we mean by technical exercises?

By that, we're talking about scales, arpeggios, and chords, things like that.

Importance of Technical Exercises

These exercises are incredibly useful and are used all the time, whether you realize it or not, in your day-to-day playing.

• They may not be quite as fun as the pieces to pick up initially,
• But once you've cracked them, there's absolutely no end to what they allow you to do.

They're really, really useful creative tools that you're going to have great fun using. However, you've got to get them down first in this kind of rudimentary format.

Future Applications

We will look at some more creative applications of these exercises later on, such as:

• Using them within songs to play solos
• Using them for improvisation

But for now, I'm going to demonstrate them as required for your grade.

Important Notes Before We Begin

Before I do that, there are just a couple of things worth noting:

• The demonstrations I'm going to play are what's written in your book.
• If you read the preamble before the technical exercises, you will see that you are required to play, depending on what grade you're doing, the scales in very specific keys.

For example, it might say to play exercises A and B in keys A, B, and C, or something like that.

Preparation for the Exam

Please do read the information, it's really important if you're planning on taking the exam that you've prepared the exercises in the right keys.

I'm just going to show you the ones demonstrated in your book so you can see the fingerings that I use.

Moving Exercises to Different Keys

To move the exercises into a different key, all you need to do is:

• Take the same shape
• Move it to the starting note that you want to begin on.

Later on, in the more creative sections, we will discover why this is going to be useful. Here's a hint: it's going to allow you to play some pretty darn awesome solos!

Riff Exercises

One further thing, I'm not going to demonstrate the riff exercise.

• If you're comfortable with the scales and arpeggios, the riffs are based around these shapes and exercises.
• It should be just one step further for you to work out what these riffs will be should you need to move them.

This is a really useful skill for you to develop on your own.

Stylistic Studies

We're also going to look at the stylistic studies in a part called Stylistic Techniques.

What this will involve is:

• Rather than demonstrating just the stylist studies themselves,
• We will look at the techniques involved within those studies and how to use them.

Alright then, here we go with the demos of the technical exercises for your grade. They're all played at the correct tempo for your gradebook.