Theory book suggestions

[totallyclassics]

I am a 3rd years piano student.  I am beginning to play more difficult pieces with a lot of scale passages, only I haven't practiced scales!  I need to learn my scales and theory, but I prefer to learn through pieces.  I would love to find a book that introduces a scale, and then has me play pieces using the notes of that particular scale so my fingers get used to it and become more flexible.  Do you have any suggestions? 

Sincerely,

Totallyclassics

[Bob]

Most of the method books I've seen do that.  Concept and a piece to demonstrate it.  Unless you're looking for a book that has a piece with every key in it.

[goldentone]

Totally,

Even though you don't like to practice scales, why not do just a bit of scale work
every day?  And eventually work your way through all of them.  I found a good tip not long ago in Josep Lehvinne's "Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing" regarding a way to learn scales efficently:

"Scales are musical multiplication tables.  One good way of fixing them in the mind is to start to play the scales upon the different tones of the key consecutively."

So for F major, for instance, you would play it regularly, F to F, and then play the scale starting on G to G, and up through all of the seven notes of F major.

Lhevinne goes on to say, "their great practical value is for training the hand in fingering so that the best fingering in any key becomes automatic.  In this way they save an enormous amount of time in later years.  They also greatly facilitate sight reading, because the hand seems to lean instinctively to the most logical fingering, to elect it without thinking."

By doing a little bit of scale practice every day could save you time as well as make time in your progress as a pianist.