How much time should I spend daily on building technique?
Every great artist, when he or she turns to teaching, wants to hear only scales. Menuhin tells the story of his great embarrassment at having no idea how to play a 4 octave scale, when asked to do so by one of the legendary pedagogues; and by this time, he was already an international concert artist. Heifetz practiced scales 2 hours every day. And I am constantly telling my students that, no matter how pressing the repertoire demands, I continually spend about 2/3 of my practice time doing the abstract stuff.
