Download the complete collection of scales, thirds, arpeggios, and shifting exercises here.
Access the recordings here.
When my students are first starting to learn scales, I usually direct them to The Violin Case's excellent free, printable scales until they are ready to play scales in two octaves. At that point, I usually ask them to purchase Essentials for Strings. However, with the pandemic, it's harder for my students to obtain the book, and I haven't found good free two-octave scales for viola online - so I made my own. My collection of scales includes the basic scales, scales in thirds, and tonic arpeggios with the fingerings that I teach, as well as shifting exercises that resemble the exercises I have written for three octaves.
My professor in undergrad never asked me to play scales in broken thirds, so I haven't in the past asked my students to do so - however, once I saw them included on the printable scales at The Violin Case, I realized that they might be just what I need to help teach my students to keep their fingers down and place them in groups for accuracy of intonation and efficiency. Since then, I have started incorporating them in my students' assignments, and have seen great results.
Many of my advanced students have reported that the recordings I made of the 3-octave scales and arpeggios were useful, so I did the same for the 2-octave scales and arpeggios.
Again, you can download the complete collection of scales, thirds, arpeggios, and shifting exercises here.
The recordings are located in this Google Drive folder.
Be sure to comment or send me an email if you find any errors in these files!
