Winter break is a great time to organize your practice goals and strengthen your habits so that you can maintain them once the new semester begins. And the new year can be a great incentive to create a new routine.
I took time today to write down my goals for daily practice. Here are some areas of concentration that jazz musicians typically include in a daily routine. These are chosen from my perspective as a saxophonist but you can adapt them to your instrument as well. I’ve included general categories and subcategories.
- Instrumental Technique – the foundation of our musical proficiency. Use a metronome and practice SLOWLY. You’ll get more done in less time if you go slowly
- Long tones
- Scales/Arpeggios
- Reading Etudes, tunes, and written out solos
- 12 key work, licks, bebop heads, solos
- Transcription – There are different types of transcription. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. It isn’t necessary to do each kind every day, but it’s helpful to rotate through these different types every few days or weeks.
- Learn to sing a new solo. Sing it perfectly in pitch. Learn to sing it while accompanying yourself on piano playing only the roots of the chord changes.
- Learn a solo by rote, using your instrument and memorizing it as you go along.
- Write down a solo by ear, only using an instrument to find the first pitch. Even if this seems daunting, spend 5 minutes every day trying to hear the intervals and scale degrees of the solo. You can start with a simple solo and write down a measure a day.
- Learn a solo from a transcription you’ve written out or that someone else has. Memorize the solo starting with the last 8 bars and working your way back towards the beginning.
- Learn the solo in 12 keys.
- Repertoire – Learning tunes is an important daily practice. You can start working on your semester tune list now!
- Research a couple of different recordings and listen on repeat
- Learn to sing the tunes you are learning – Lyrics are a great help in remembering tunes
- Learn to play the chords to the tunes you are learning on piano
- Arpeggiate the changes on your instrument
- Sing the tune while playing chords (or roots of the chords) on the piano
- Play the tune from memory 3 times in a row without any mistakes.
Let me know in the comments section what you might add to your list as you organize your practice routine for the coming semester.