Scale system major scale for alto recorder by Agnès Blanche Marc

This article about the major scale system for alto recorder by Agnès Blanche Marc was published by Windkanal - Das Forum für die Recorder 2024-3. Author: Vincenta Prüger

How do you keep your fingers alert, how do you keep your tongue alert? Is there a training plan? An ultimate method? Several textbooks and exercise materials have been published on the following questions, often with independent methods, but also with recurring concepts.

One well-known method is playing scales, which many consider essential. Agnes Blanche Marc's recently published book "Skalensystem" contains various exercises dealing with major scales, designed to be played on an alto recorder. According to the author, this would turn one into something of a "Paganini of the recorder."

Everything is designed so that you play through all the scales in chromatic order, but first "mark out" the overall range. This means that if you start with an F major scale, you first play f1 and f2, then the scale. This is intended to help the player determine whether the intonation is still good when playing the scale and the two notes are the same pitch as before. This system is used not only for the usual range, but also beyond it, with these extended exercises marked in gray. The first gray scale begins at g2 and the last at c3. This basic exercise is then varied.

In variations, different articulations or slurs are played in order to get a varied grasp of the scales and to be well prepared for situations in real life, where various combinations actually occur.

The exercise book contains other exciting exercises: In addition to playing third scales and even fourth scales (f/a, g/b,... or f/b, g/c,...), a combination of the scales with rhythmic trill movements is also introduced, which should enable an improvement in the agility of the fingers in various trill combinations.

As a final step, third and fourth scales are combined with trill exercises, followed by further finger and tongue training combinations, which are recommended for fluency training. Regular use of scales not only improves finger dexterity (and, if practiced specifically, tongue dexterity as well), but also the understanding of difficult fingering combinations. With ongoing practice, these combinations later, in the "wild," such as in a Vivaldi concerto, no longer seem nearly as difficult and unusual as they would without the previously completed scale workload.

In addition to this textbook, which can be viewed as practice material for advanced players, the author has also published another method for children. This is the soprano flute method "My Recorder and I," in which Agnes Blanche Marc attempts to work holistically, incorporating findings from brain research.

Vincenta Prüger
This article was published in Windkanal - Das Forum für die Recorder 2024-3. Courtesy of the publisher.

Agnès Blanche Marc: Major Scale System for Alto Recorder. Edition Delor (2024).