Backtracking in your practice routine

Mark Wein

Grand Poobah
Staff member
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Sometimes you have to back up to go forward. I realized as I was working on comping ii-V7-I's in the circle of fifths on piano that I depended on the geometry of the fretboard more than actually knowing what was coming up next in my head when I played this stuff on guitar. So pen and paper comes out and I work my way through them off the instrument. Hopefully tomorrow it will be easier.
 
Other things I'm doing this summer to get a better start for the fall:

Sightsinging practice with the software my teacher used for our final: https://www.sightreadingfactory.com/

Obviously working on my piano chops.

Going through the 40 or so jazz standards I've learned this year and making sure that not only can I remember them but that I can apply concepts we worked on in my lessons and classes and the critiques from my jury. One of the performance classes used this book a lot and I actually got some good progress from it so I'm going to work through it a bit too:

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Yeah, I need to go back to where I was when I was in classes with you, and review and work forward again. But that's ok, there was lots of good information for me to chew on there.

Makes me not feel so bad that you look backwards sometimes too.
 
This is something I wanted to talk to you about....the practice routine.
We can talk about things more specific to you in your lesson but....

I try to have long term and short term goals. I laid out some long term goals for my summer practice in my OP's.

1. I need to master the repertoire that I'm currently responsible for
2. I want to master or better incorporate lesson material and concepts from the year.
3. I want to become more proficient at my piano and sightsinging skills before the next semester.

Those are for school. I'm also considering building a solo acoustic guitar/voice repertoire to pick up some extra gigs without the band.

In the short term this week I am reviewing and playing through 5 songs a day from my jazz repertoire. That is manageable until it's not and then when I get into the second half of that list it will just be a song or two. I am spending 15-20 minutes a day running major scales and arpeggios on piano, comping ii-V-I's on piano in the circle of 5ths and using the sightreading factory program either on my computer or ipad for 15-20 minutes a day. When I practice improvisation (either on the tunes Im reviewing or in other ways) I'm trying to incorporate something from the school year. This week it is about motivic development. Next week might be about digital patterns or chromatic embellishments of chord tones or ii-V outlines or something like that.

The long term goals steer the short term ideas. While I'm in school I'm more about just trying to keep my head above water but now I can work more like this.
 
One nice thing about the guitar is that it allows for alternate tunings, which can be very helpful for breaking bad habits.

Agreed, but for me I found it to be, unfortunately, a hindrance rather than a help. This is most likely due to the fact that I cannot consider myself a musician in anything but the broadest sense. So anything that diverts my tiny musical brain even a bit can cause what little I do know to suffer. And while I used to do drills to practice, really all I do now is try and play songs because that's where the enjoyment is, as SVL signature states :thu:
 
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