An Introduction into Studies & Etudes

 Hi everyone,

I'm going to introduce you to the world of studies and etudes, and these can be used for a wide range of musical instruments. Studies and Etudes are also a personal preference, as some people like them and other don't.

Studies and Etudes come in a wide variety of different forms. You can buy them as both compilations or from different composers who specialise in your instrument, but also exam boards also have books of studies for certain instruments. It's also worth mentioning that studies can vary from easy to extremely difficult. 

The aim of a studying an etude or study is to help you to develop a skill that you may be struggling with i.e) staccato, and a little feature of a study is that there's usually one or two difficult bars just to push you a little bit more.

Study Compilations

These cover a wide variety of studies from different composers, but they can also come as a series of books. The above study compilations are for flute, and these are graded easy to intermediate as they cover Grade One right the way up to Grade Five. There's also a book two for both of the above books and they cover Grade Six and beyond. 

Studies & Etudes by Composers

These work in a slightly different way to the compilation study books. Within these books there's at least one book that focuses on Daily Exercises, and these are definitely worth getting as they can help with your scales along with other developmental areas. Because I'm learning the flute the Daily Exercises books I have are by Moyse and Taffanel & Gaubert; and these are highly recommended. 

Also, individual composers will each have their own study method for their chosen instrument, and these usually cover a range of different areas over a series of books to help you to develop as a musician.

The ones I'm familiar with are:

Flute

- Moyse

- Andersen

- Gariboldi

- James Rae

Clarinet

- Rose

- Cavalini

- Url

- Perrier

- James Rae

Violin

- Sevcik

Start with 'The Little Book of Sevcik' first, and don't do what I did when I was learning the violin and I accidentally ordered an advanced book of Sevcik's Violin Studies without knowing until it arrived through the post. I wasn't familiar with the Opus book numbers, and how they progressed at the time. 

I personally like studies and etudes, and do get tripped up by those tricky bars/ passages but thats all of the fun of learning and exploring a study. Some of the studies I've got at the moment are way beyond my musical capabilities. But it's nice to have a collection of studies that I can choose from and work on when I fancy exploring my study book collection.

Tip

Let's say that you are struggling with developing your slurs, and you want to do something than more than just trying to fix the problem using scales. Find a study that has an easy part that focuses on slurs, and slowly start working through that section using 'baby steps'. Once you feel more confident in your slurs after practicing the study apply what you have worked on to the piece or the scale that you were struggling with, and it should (in theory) make it easier for you to tackle the area with the slurs.