Mastering the Scales And Arpeggios

A Complete and Practical System for Studying The Scales and Arpeggios from The Most Elementary Steps To The Highest Attainable Degree of Velocity and Artistic Perfection

By James Francis Cooke

The tiny print was terrible - there are better books to be had.

I bought this book after reading Charles Cookes Playing the Piano for Pleasure and I've found it helpful, but for a well laid out current volume you could also consider Willard Palmer's Alfred Publishing Book of Scales and Arpeggios. Charles Cooke's book is a classic and has...

been recently republished in the US and I would say is musically inspirational. Scale Book Camp from Philip Johnston is also well worth investigation for good visual representation of scale fingerings and the graded and extensive set of achievements to help motivate practising. Who ever thought scales could be dull!

Having checked this out several times from local libraries, I was familiar with the book and knew I wanted a copy. Unfortunately, I didn't notice from the order info that this current edition is considerably smaller than the original, thus reducing the print and staff music to extremely small...

font sizes and considerably reducing its readability. Separate from that, FYI, there are a couple comments in the scale history portion that I found offensively racist, printed just as they were in the original format. (Re the difficulty rating, this book can be used across the full spectrum of difficulty.)

This book is a godsend! It has everything in one place which makes it much easier to see the relationships. I have resisted the study of scales/arpeggios for too long....now I work at them everyday and it is definitely helping my playing. This book is a great find...

!