How to spend 90 minutes or more practicing jazz piano

An Ideal Practice Session With Fly Me To The Moon

1. Listen to a classic piece of jazz to get in the mood.
2. With a metronome, warm up with scales, jazz chords both solid and broken, and for advanced players arpeggios. Don't rush this step, be logical and thoughtful.
3. Practice a jazz etude from a jazz theory book or YouTube video.
4. Play through your feel-good piece.
5. Practice transposing a simple lick into as many keys as you can.
6. Spend a little time analyzing a jazz standard by marking the form and the ii-V progressions on the lead sheet.
7. Pick a tune from your repertoire to focus on. Play the melody with a recording, trying to mimic what you hear. Better yet learn a melody by ear.
8. Play through the broken chords on each chord of the piece.
9. Practice the scales associated with each chord.
10. Mimic the recording again.
11. Practice comping the chords first with a metronome, then with the recording. Transpose as needed.
12. Listen to another recording of the same piece and mimic the melody. Note the differences from the previous interpretation you worked on. 
13. Sight read chord progressions from your fake book.
14. Finish by reviewing and recording your completed repertoire. Now have a listen. 
15. Don’t follow this list in order, bounce around.

To get you started, here are several recordings of Fly Me to the Moon. Imitate the melody, phrase by phrase. 

Have Fun,
​
David Story
 April 2023