1. Keep the long-term goal as focused as possible, while varying the short-term goals as much as possible.
2. In an individual exercise, isolate reading, writing, hearing, singing, and playing skills, but switch from one skill to another when you change exercises. (TO DO: Think this over.)
3. Emphasize variation rather than rote practice.

For example, suppose I want my students to learn the "Erkenne Mich, Mein Hüter" chorale from Bach's St. Matthew Passion. The wrong way to do this is by making them sing the whole thing over and over and over. The right way is by abstracting it into a collection of exercises:

• Singing
  • Scalar patterns designed from the chorale melody's intervals and contours
  • Simplified chord progressions from the chorale
  • Alternative chord voicings and resolutions
• Keyboard
  • Chord progressions from the chorale
  • Figured basses made by reducing and revoicing the chord progressions
• Listening Comprehension: harmonic dictation and melodic dictation of excerpts
• Composition: harmonic and melodic recomposition of phrases
• Analysis
  • Roman-numeral analysis
  • Analysis of harmonic rules

And so on. In the end, the students will understand the chorale as a node in a network of tonal relationships, rather than as an ossified musical work.

For a more concrete example, see this Fux hardout.

---Ness