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Hi Mark,
Motor learning is not my strongest area of expertise, but my take on all of this is that the whole point of all the various ways of structuring or blocking practice trials is to ensure that we are actively creating or reinforcing an ever more precise, but also robust sequence of motor movement.
Meaning, a motor sequence isn’t much use if we can only do it when our hands are at a certain temperature, if we are wearing a t-shirt, our heart is beating at 68 bpm, and our instrument is angled just so. Repeatedly having to recreate an ever more precise motor sequence, when the circumstances are always slightly different will help us develop a more reliable motor solution even when the demands of the situation are slightly (or even wildly) different.
Here’s a cool tidbit from a book called The Coordination and Regulation of Movements (Bernstein, 1967): “The process of practice towards the achievement of new motor habits essentially consists in the gradual success of a search for optimal motor solutions to the appropriate problems. Because of this, practice, when properly undertaken does not consist in repeating the means of solution of a motor problem time after time, but in the process of solving this problem again and again by techniques which we changed and perfected from repetition to repetition.”
So long story short, I think you can come at the new etude from any number of different approaches. You could work on one etude for 5-10 minutes, go to your piece for 5-10, then to scales for 5-10. But sometimes you might need to puzzle over a shift, or a specific phrase for 20-30 minutes until you can figure out what is wrong with it, or what you want to do with it. So it kind of depends on what the goal of your time is as well.
But at the end of the day, so long as you keep your mind on its toes, and are constantly stretching yourself, you will be headed in the right direction.
