Piano day (1h 20m)

Mostly left hand practice, as I — as stupid as I am — injured my right while skateboarding 😕 Nothing serious, but just need to give it some rest for a week or so.

Comping practice (“A Night in Tunisia” by Dizzy Gillespie (slowed down significantly)
- Playing with shell voicings in LH
- Trying to follow the “minimum movement” principle and choose the voicings with that in mind
Cycle progressions
- Cycling dominant 7th chords in 7-3-6 — 3-7-9
- Cycling minor to dominant progression in 3-7-9 — 7-3-6

Observations

The last two were pretty boring practice sessions, but it will get better. I’ve also got in a habit of doing a track analysis and writing a couple of bars of bass solo, so that compensates for the temporary lack of fun in the actual routine 😃

Piano day (1h 30m)

Comping practice (“A Child is Born” by Thad Jones) — exercise from “Jazz Language” book by Dan Haerle
- Playing a jazz standard from the Real Book (to walking bass + drums accompaniment) with roots / block arpeggios in LH & shell voicings in RH
- Using 3-7-9, 7-3-6, 7-3-5 shells
- Trying to follow the “minimum movement” principle
Improvisation (only left hand)
- Cycling dominant 7th chords in 7-3-6 — 3-7-9
- Cycling minor to dominant progression in 3-7-9 — 7-3-6

Piano day (1h 40m)

Improvisation (Dan Haerle — Jazz Improvisation for Keyboard Players)
- Lesson 12: Cycling progressions of 5ths in shell voicings + improv with corresponding Mixo & Dorian scales
  - Dominant chords around the cycle of 4ths in 7-3-5 & 3-7-9 — click at 80bpm
  - Minor to dominant around the cycle — click at 80bpm
  - All Mixo & Dorian scales with both hands

Piano day (1h 40m)

Improvisation (Dan Haerle — Jazz Improvisation for Keyboard Players)
- Lesson 12: Cycling progressions of 5ths
  - Dominant chords around the cycle of 4ths in 7-3-5 & 3-7-9 voicings + corresponding Mixo scales with RH
  - Minor to dominant around the cycle + Dorian & Mixo scales in RH

Piano day (1h 40m)

Improvisation (Dan Haerle — Jazz Improvisation for Keyboard Players)
- Lesson 11: Blues progressions
  - F blues scale over 3 classic progressions (I — IV — V, 12-bar major and minor), shell voicings with LH
  - F blues scale + passing Mixo, Dor & H. M. scales over same progressions
  - C blues scale + passing modal scales over same progression in C
  - All scales used in progressions separately with both hands in 2 octaves

Observations

Just as I expected: running the scale and then immediately using it is the best way to make this process NOT boring. Just running scales is cool, but it only helps internalise the fingerings and does not really make them just pop out when you need them in the middle of the chord progression.

Bass reading (30m)

Reading a random contrabass etude just because I had some time for it 😄