Practice regimen

I’ve been thinking about my practice regimen lately. (As opposed to actually practicing, which would require that I sit at the piano and work, which I just haven’t been in the mood for lately.) Back in March, I developed a sort of plan, a list made up of things that I thought might be useful to practice on a regular basis. I put it in a spreadsheet so that I could print out a sort of tracking grid to actually be able to see what I was practicing and when and how often and sometimes (if I noted it), for how long. It was an excellent idea and I kept at it for one whole month before it got shunted to the wayside. Since I’ve been working on some new things in my lessons, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit it, add to it, and start using it again.

Here it is:


Obviously, there is far too much here to practice it all every day, unless you maybe do so for just a few minutes on each exercise or practice for at least two hours – which is out of my reach at the moment due to a lack of discipline. I would think that a minimum of ten minutes per area is required to realize any sort of advancement, but I find I have to spend more than that on most things before I feel I’m doing any better on it (like scales and stride work.).

One of the important things missing from the sheet is tunes. I feel that after practicing, one must make time for playing. That can be playing just to play, or playing to implement what was practiced. More often than not, for me, it’s the latter, because I think that’s what makes me sound better, but I also an not entirely against the idea of just playing a few songs to make me feel good in general and forget about the burn in my knuckles.

And so, having written all I can write for the moment about practice, I think I will go and actually do some. School starts pretty soon and if I’m going to take some classes, I’m going to have to audition, so, I’d better practice.

Virtuoso? More like "lazy so-and-so"

It is said that in order to be a virtuoso in something, you have to practice whatever it is for 10,000 hours. That would make you “world class” or put you into the top 1% in that field, or something like that. In other words, make you a virtuoso. As of this August, I will have been formally studying jazz piano for two years, and while I have not tried to keep track of every single minute that I play the piano, I have tracked the majority of the time that I spend practicing, playing, taking lessons, rehearsing with bands, etc.

Now understand, I have no delusions here. 10,000 hours is a long, long time. To put it into perspective, if I were practicing piano as a full time job - that is eight hours a day, five days a week - it would still take five years to become a virtuoso. If (for example) I worked at it full time, and worked twenty hours every weekend as well, it would still take three years, four months to reach 10,000 hours.

Folks, I can’t even SIT at a piano that long, much less sit at it and play something. (I’m ashamed to admit it, but since school ended, I’m pretty sure I haven’t played ten hours all together. I just haven’t felt like it.)

Given that, the fact that I’m pretty close to having five hundred hours under my belt is actually pretty amazing. If you throw in my plonking around time, plus some of the time I had as a kid learning to play the organ, I’m probably up around two, maybe three thousand hours total. Still, a long stretch to the 10,000 total.

It is entirely possible that I won’t play ten thousand hours of jazz piano in my life. If I do somehow stick to it and play, say, five hundred hours a year (two hours a day, five days a week for the entire year ... yeah right, not likely), I’ll be 65 when I reach the virtuoso total.

What’s the point? I’m not sure, but I think the point is that I need to set manageable, near-term goals, or the title of “virtuoso jazz pianist” is going to fairly and completely elude me.

Only 9500 more hours to go. Let's shoot for two hours today, anyway.

Break time

It’s spring break, so that means my Monday and Wednesday for this week are free from band practice and free from pressure to demonstrate a little progress and improved capability in playing the five pieces we are learning.

Yeah, right.

All it means is I’ve got to continue to practice and improve and demonstrate twice as much improvement once we get back in the rehearsal room. The way I figure it, the director is probably going to expect these pieces to be ready to go and sounding pretty much like they are going to sound on the night of the concert, a little more than one month hence.

Just the same, if I want to take it easy and then hunker down later, this is the last week I can do so until after April 17. Good thing that my new jazz blues lesson book arrived. It gives me something to look at and makes me want to sit at the piano and learn some new stuff, and after I get tired of that, I work on tunes. Plus, my piano instructor gave me a new practice method/exercise to develop my left hand stride ability, and it allows me to play a bunch of tunes that I like, albeit in a truncated, staccato fashion built solely on quarter notes.

Long story short: spring break is no time for rest.

Some practice hints

These are some things that have been working for me. They might work for you, too.

1) Even if it doesn't seem productive, practice all the songs you're liable to have to perform at least once each every day. On Tuesday night, not having much time to practice, I was going to limit my big band practice to the two pieces we are going to play in the February concert, but I decided to at least have a look at the third piece that the director gave me. I input the main line in my music program to get the rhythm right, and I practiced all the main phrases except for the obviously difficult ones (two of the, say, six or seven phrases). I didn't expect we would be playing it on Wednesday, but it turns out that the third piece is the "break the monotony fall-back song" for the band, and they love to play it. So when we got sick of playing one of the tunes, we did decide to play the third piece a little bit. Good thing I had looked at it the night before. I actually held my own. Then we played four pieces in combo, so yesterday, I played all seven songs over a period of about an hour. Today, since I will have some time, I'll actually work on improving. But they are sort of getting better by sheer exposure.

2) Practice right before bed, even if it sounds bad. They say your brain forges the neural paths from a day's learning while you sleep. I've noticed that even when I can't play something, even hardly at all, if I practice it more or less right before I go to bed, even if I just keep making mistakes and making mental notes of those mistakes, the next day, it goes smoother. If I'm not drinking while practicing, as I have been doing of late, the effect is even greater.

3) Mix hard drills with easy drills. This seems to give me some positive reinforcement. I work at something that I don't do particularly well, like a stride left hand or full octave scales in both hands, and after that I run through some simple arpeggios and drills, or a straight up scale or two. There was a time I couldn't really play much of anything on the piano, and the realization that now I can play these drills that were once, essentially, impossible, reminds me that I'm not wasting my time on the hard stuff. Someday, it too will be soundly based in my repertoire. (Who knows what ridiculously esoteric and difficult stuff I'll be practicing then.)

4) Never forget to reward yourself. After practicing rootless voicings over and over, I always like to go back to one or two songs with straight up, rooted, full chords. Let's face it: Repeated rootless voicings on solo piano, although they sound great at times, are desperately tiresome after a while. The ear and brain really crave resolution and 3-5-7 harmony when they are continually fed 3-6-9 harmony for any length of time. Give your brain, nerves and muscles what they want, and when the pressure and spotlight are on you, they'll give you what you want.

I'll have more practice tips soon.

A small accomplishment

This weekend marked a first for me: I finished playing through one of my drill books. That's right, I've conquered the mountain of Hanon's Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises. Now, let me provide this disclaimer: that means I played through all the exercises in the entire book at least once. It doesn't mean I can do everything the exercises are designed to teach you to do, and it doesn't mean my playing has gotten better, necessarily (although I think it has). What it means is that I promised myself I wouldn't buy any more drill books until I had at least gotten through one that I owned. Truthfully, when the end came in sight about two weeks ago, I went ahead and bought some more books, but fact of the matter is, I reached my goal. Now, when I practice, I go back and work on various parts of the book, in order except for the scales, which I do one of every session.

I said "small accomplishment", but actually, that's a pretty big deal for me.

I start back to school tonight. Jazz improvisation on Mondays, and jazz ensemble on Wednesday or Thursday (or maybe not at all). The thing most likely to improve this semester, especially if I take Wednesday night jazz ensemble: my figure. I'll have to go with only hard boiled eggs, granola bars, and water for dinner on Monday and Wednesdays. Since I'll have to practice what I learned when I get home, and I won't get home until 8:00 or so, I won't be able to drink alcohol or eat a full dinner. I think I'm good for somewhere between five and ten pounds of weight loss, just to make music.

If I stick to that plan, that will be a much bigger accomplishment.

The G# minor scale - under duress

Okay. G# minor. Okay, that's the melodic minor of B major...five sharps. Only two white keys, B and E. Let's see, though, we have an E#, which is an F. (Cough, cough, cough.) and a...crap. Is that a double sharp F? (Hack, wheeze.) Yeah, it is. So three white keys. (Cough, cough.)

Let's try it.

G sharp - A sharp - (hack) - B natural - (suppressed hack) C sharp - D sharp - E sharp (F) - (hack) - (wheeze) - (invective) - F double-sharp - (invective, hack, invective) - G sharp - A sharp - (cough) - B natural - (suppressed cough, hack) C sharp - D sharp - E sharp (F) - (cough, cough, invective) - F double-sharp - (invective, wheeze) - G sharp.

OK, great, let's try E major then C# minor, and go from there. (Hack, cough, wheeze.)

That's been basically my whole weekend, folks. How's yours going?