How To Practice Jazz and Other Folks Musics Four Hours a Day!

At some point in your musical development, you may have the opportunity to practice four or more hours a day. If you do, please don’t spend the four hours doing scales and other repetitive tasks. You will injure yourself.
Here is a list of activities you can pursue when you are not playing with recordings on YouTube or transcribing recordings on YouTube or creating roadmaps of tunes you are listening to on YouTube.

Repertoire

• Learn new tunes.
• Polish current tunes.
• Review old tunes.

Musical maxim #1. Those that know the most tunes, wins.

Listening and analysis aka road mapping.

• Form analysis: what is the structure of this piece?
• Instrumentation: Who, what, when questions
• “What’s going on here?” See my lesson on road mapping.
• Watch YouTube videos of Jazz Transcriptions and try playing along with them.
• Read a book on how to listen to music like, How to Listen to Jazz by Ted Gioia

Musical maxim #2. Folk music is played by ear.

Ear training

• Transcribing licks. A lick a day transposed into different keys is a good place to begin.
• Transposing tunes into different keys like C jam blues or Autumn leaves.

History

• Reading about the history of jazz, blues, pop, folk musics and checking out the recordings on YouTube. Each month study a different decade of your preferred style. Research a musical history outline online and then listen to the historical recordings.
• Watch YouTube videos of Jazz Transcriptions from a historical perspective.

How to practice?

• Read a book on it. Better yet read all my blogs on the subject. My two favourite books are Benny Greb’s book and The Musicians Way. The point is to become a student of practice techniques.

Formal and Informal learning.

• Pop, Jazz, Blues, and Folk music cannot be learned in a classroom. The classroom simply augments the informal learning that takes place when you jam with other musicians. Nobody, but nobody learns to play these styles by playing from scores or reading books and ignoring the recordings or passing up opportunities to play with others.

General and Jazz Specific Theory

• Key signatures, intervals, transposition, scale/chord construction.
• Suggested materials: Music Theory Pro for drills, Alfred’s essential music theory is good as are the RCM theory books. But it all depends on where you are starting. You can ask me for a recommendation based on my assessment.

Jazz Sight reading

• General piano music: play simple stuff using a slow metronome or play along app.
• Lead sheets.
• Chords
• Suggested materials: Open your fake book and play. Or use RCM sight reading books. Again, it all depends on where you are starting. You can ask me for a recommendation based on my assessment.

 Piano Technique

• Memorize your jazz chord voicings.
• Major scales
• Bebop scales and other jazz scales.
• Broken 7th chords: Major 7, dominant 7, minor 7, minor 7b5, diminished 7th in 12 keys. Play a maximum of 2 keys a day. SLOW IS FINE.
• I play classical piano music to keep my hands in some kind of shape. Occasionally I will play written jazz arrangements. Written music keeps the hands alive, as jazz piano study is brutal on piano techniques because we spend so much time play single note lines and left-hand chords. 

If you would like help, call me. 

​David
revised 2024