Help on developing consistency on scales and technical stuff

Also remember that focusing intensely for an hour straight is basically impossible, no matter who you are. If you feel your eyes start to glaze over and that you're playing your scale just to be able to say that you played it today, switch to a new exercise. Or even play a few minutes of a piece you like, to rest a little bit.

My guess is that you are practicing too fast and perhaps skipping some steps. I don't know if you meant "fingered octaves" as hyperbole or as a skill you are currently working on, but if the latter, you should stop immediately. You don't need fingered octaves at this point; focus on slow careful practice of the major and minor scales with arpeggios.

You have to do fully attentive practice, not just mechanical drill. You have to be analytical and thoughtful while you do your scales or you might as well spend your time on something else. You need to pre-hear the pitch correctly, and your finger needs to come down on the right spot. You need to figure out which of those two things is at fault -- or both.

To develop consistent finger control, do the first exercise in Schradieck op. 1 book 1. You have to be ultra-critical and sure that your finger drop for each pitch is identical each time. That exercise must be done with a metronome, with no tolerance for any unevenness.

If you're having trouble hearing the right pitches for the scale, try the Simon Fischer approach (he has a good "Scales" book). Play the tonic, the fourth, fifth, and octave. Now add the second and seventh. Then the third and sixth.

You also need to do arpeggios, scales in octaves, and arpeggios in octaves. Eventually you might also do scales in third and sixths and fingered octaves.

If you miss a note, go back a note or two and try to nail it correctly this time. Do NOT slide. If you're doing that, you're basically training yourself to miss-and-slide. You need several correct repetitions for each time you do it wrong.

Seriously, three 45 minutes sessions every day will pay you the dividends you are looking for.

Next, follow the advice already offered by people in this thread. That is, make a list of the advice, and copy it seven times, and tick off each point you have noted every time you work out. (Print another seven copies for next week.) Use data, goals, plans, methods, in the same way an aspiring Olympic athlete uses data. (You might even add a mentor, and other support people, to your teacher-led team of assistants.

Give yourself time. You might need six months to cross a threshold. In two years, if all goes well, you will have the same complaints as you have today, but all your musician friends will know that you have made vast improvement. We are the last people to know that our technical practice has paid off, especially in an "area" where we can always improve.

I don't have the patience or time to practice that way any longer (I wish I did), but I can tell you that it works.

It seems to me that the advice and techniques discussed in this thread are helpful for anyone at any level - thank you!

I know there is no magic to getting comfortable with that F arpeggio than intentional practice - but if there is let me know ;-) My teacher is on vacation and I want to get comfortable with this arpeggio before I return to the piece with which it's related.