How to spend 90 minutes or more practicing jazz piano

An Ideal Practice Session

1. Listen to a classic piece of jazz to get in the mood.
2. Warm up with scales, jazz chords both solid and broken, and for advanced players arpeggios, All in a logical and thoughtful manner. Don’t rush through this step. Use a metronome.
3. Practice a jazz etude from a jazz theory book or YouTube video.
4. Play over a feel-good piece of your repertoire before getting down to the difficult work. Remind yourself of your progress to date.
5. Practice transposing a simple lick into as many keys as you know.
6. Spend a little time analysing a jazz standard, mark the form and the ii-V progressions, noting which keys they relate to.
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 some more jazz.
13. Sight read chord progressions from your fake book.
14. Finish up playing some completed repertoire to keep it fresh. Record this portion of practice and listen back.
15. Don’t follow this list in order, bounce around.

Have Fun,
​
David Story