ShiroKuro But if you're just mindless going around the circle, memorizing one by one, and then not connecting it to music that you're working on, I'm a little skeptical of how beneficial that is.
I've been thinking about this question a lot while I practice the scales I've been assigned, and while I think about how to use Dr. G's practice strategies.
My teacher took me directly from C major in one octave, hands separately, into 3-octaves, hands together, cresc to dimin, in triplets, and because she's asking me to learn all that technique at the same time as the notes and fingerings, I stopped thinking about them as boring scales and started thinking of them as interesting etudes, instead of something "to be gotten over with" (boring) before practicing my pieces (fun).
So, instead of getting scales over with, then moving on to the "fun stuff," I'll sit down in a Dr. G random practice, and include my "scale etudes" as pieces:
a complete two-line baroque piece, 3 times
a "scale etude" in C major, 3 times
a 2-line section of another baroque piece, x3
a "scale etude" in a minor harmonic, x3
and so forth, through that day's pieces
... and it's all the same overall result. I'm internalizing all the new patterns in everything I'm practicing, the equivalent of one or two systems of "music" at a time (a quarter page or so). While one short baroque piece is teaching me how to elide a melody between the left and right hand, the G "scale etude" is teaching me which key the fourth finger of the left hand is pressing on the way up and down the keyboard.
I think the patterns we learn in one piece get added to the overall encyclopedia of patterns in our brains, and we build both our sight-reading and "sight-fingering" skills with each piece we learn. So I've decided to eliminate the separation between learning the patterns via "scale" versus via "pieces," and just treat all the new content I'm learning the same. While I drop most little pieces once I've learned them to make way for new ones, I move each newly learned scale into my "active maintenance repertoire," with the aim of one day having a complete masterpiece called "Scales and Technique Etude Around the Circle of Fifths."
My adult daughter's undergrad was a music degree, and she HATED doing scales for her piano lesson, sitting there regurgitating notes for her piano teacher. But she LOVED playing scales on the marimba in her percussion ensemble, as an etude around the circle of fifths, because they played it as though performing a cool and fun piece. (I discovered that my intuition on how to make it interesting for me matched the deliberate choice of my daughter's percussion teacher.)
So I think the key word in what you wrote was "mindlessly." Play anything mindlessly, and you won't get the benefit of whatever you're practicing.
In my newbie opinion, scales are beneficial, but we each have to experiment and decide how to connect with them to get the benefit. If you can do them like taking a reluctant shot of vitamins, and that works for you, great. If you can do them like a stretching routine before playing a piece in that key, great. If you can turn them into a game, or practicing an etude to perform it later, great!
Whatever mindset gets you there, great!
In my last lesson, my teacher said to me, "Studying the piano isn't like building a bridge." Many different approaches will build the skills. You pick the approach that's best for you.
