Many pieces contain challenging spots that require special attention. The temptation to hack away at them until they yield is usually an unsuccessful and frustrating ploy; instead, we might find creative solutions by getting into the habit of making up our own exercises based around the material from the piece. Very often, the difficulty lies not so much in the mechanics of its execution but from a lack of perception about the structure of the passage, its internal workings and its musical meaning. Exploring the passage by inventing a series of exercises can help clarify the composer’s patterns, while at the same time building up technical security. In this article, I will present some ideas using examples from
