If you don’t have the practice book Seven Daily Exercises Op 5 by M.A. Reichert, you need to go out and purchase it. Mine has this nice yellow cover. True to its title, it contains 7 scale exercises – and they are great exercises.
If you’re getting a little bit bored with the scales that you’re practicing now, this has got some new ones for you to use. Because it’s not about just playing the scale. It’s about interacting with the scale. The more ways that you can interact with that scale, the more it is going to benefit you in a great way. Now, that first, exercise that I just played is part of the first exercise. And what I like about that one is that it goes through all the major keys and all of the harmonic minor keys. So that was the key of F. then I would go into D.
And we’re going through the circle of fifths. So, if that was one flat and the next one would be two flats and so forth. Now, the exercise number two is one of my favorites. It’s not per se a scale exercise. It’s an arpeggio exercise, but I think it’s really good. It’s good in that you’re training your ear as well as your fingers. This one goes through each tonic and dominant chord. So, this is what it sounds like
And then you’re supposed to play it up the octave too, and then you go into its relative minor and so on and so forth, and you travel through all the, keys and their minors. There’s some really interesting ways to play your scales note. I really enjoy, number… there’s nice chromatic scales is number six, where you’re just going through all your chromatic scales, but I think it’s number seven that I’m looking for right now. And this goes like this way.
It’s really a fun exercise. It gives you a good chance to practice your triple tonguing as well. When it’s all set in, in triplets and you have to decide whether you’re going to go Ta Da K-TKT or Ta Da T- TKT or if you have a different system, but you, you know, you get to practice that and put it into place. The, so he’s got some really neat exercises in these scales and it’s well worth your time getting this book and using them as daily exercises. And I frankly like to use all seven as a daily exercise, whether he meant you to go through the whole book or just choose one as a daily exercise or two, I’m not sure his original intent.
But I think it’s a great book to go through and just to play through all your scales. It’s fantastic for your ear, it’s good training and it mixes up the usual way of playing our scales and gives you some variety. So, check out Reichert’s Seven Daily Exercises and start including that in your warmup routine.
You’ll be glad that you did.
Have fun!
DoctorFlute
Watch me demonstrate this Practicing with Reichert’s Seven Daily Exercises Opus 5 – FluteTips 85
Loosening Your Embouchure While You Are Playing – FluteTips 165
