A comprehensive book of scales and arpeggios for the zither, written by King Keyes, has been posted to the Zither US website. The author, King Keyes, was a student of Alberta Krader during her time in California. The instruction manual can be found at the following link:

http://www.zither.us/files/keyes_scales_arpeggios.pdf

I downloaded this book many months ago, fiddled through it briefly, and forgot it.
Then this last week I got serious about studying it; found it extremely helpful and pretty entertaining. Great way to get my fingers exercised properly each time I sit down to play, to break down chord patterns and see how they form/ how they can be combined. I love the ascending octaves part and the melodic harmonies. What an excellent practice book King created! I only wish I'd been still taking lessons from him when he created it.
KP

I think this is an excellent book and I wish I had it when I was first learning. My approach to scales is pretty much the same but I got there by a somewhat different route. I already had a book called Patterns For Jazz by Jerry Coker. I had used this book for guitar and saxophone to learn all the scales, arpeggios and diatonic modes. I just adpated it for zither and accomplished pretty much the same things The only real difference between what Mr Keyes has in his book and what I did is I regularly use my little finger of the left hand and find it very handy. Not for everyone but since I was already using that finger a lot on other instruments I figured, why not. I often use the little finger for ascending scales and the thumb for descending. Like I said, not for everyone but I have found it useful. Just thought I would pass this along in case anyone else might be interested. Let me know if you need more info about this.

Ken Bloom