Tag: observations

Bass day (1h 30m)

  • Walking bass lines
    • Improvisation with emphasis on chromaticisms over “Airegin” and “All The Things You Are”
  • Groove techniques
    • Rich Brown exercise: shifting one pattern in 16th notes (I only managed to do starting on 1, on e and on a)

Observations

I definitely need to do more counting practice. I’m very used to feeling things, but when it comes to rhythmically shifting whole phrases within one bar, that’s when it starts to play tricks on your brain, and what you’re “feeling” is rather what you’re most comfortable with, but often not what’s rhythmically correct. Like, you might switch the beginning of the phrase, but — without being aware of it — still play the rest the same because it feels right. But it’s not! 😄 So, counting using 16th notes is really essential here. It’s tough, but becomes extremely fun when you get it sorted!

Piano day (2h)

  • Improvisation + modes
    • I — II, I — III, I — IV, etc. transitions with shell voicings / voice leading
      • Ion, Aeol, Dor, Phryg in F
      • Lyd, Mixo in A
  • Jazz voicings
    • Fourthy modal voicings (D Dorian to Bb Dorian) — another killer exercise from Dan Haerle!
  • Left hand focus
    • Stride bass patterns: basic stride, tenths
  • Comping
    • Stride bass + Mixo scale over dominant progression (+ “Just One of Those Things” opening)

Observation

I literally can’t help but skip a couple of bass sessions in favour of piano as I’m onto some extremely interesting topics (left hand + modal studies) and I just don’t want to lose focus!

Piano day (1h 20m)

Took a little break in practice because of o lot of production tasks going on, now back again.

  • Improvisation
    • Minor blues scale over minor chords (shell voicings) in all keys
    • Major blues scales over dominant chords in all keys
    • Alternating minor and major
  • Jazz voicings
    • Recap: minor to dominant, dominant to major

Observations

Even 2-day break feels hard. Although I do play piano a lot during my production and recording sessions, stopping to practice the new theory material results in losing momentum, and this is not cool. So, the takeaway here is to practice no matter what, even if there are only 30 minutes.

Bass day (1h 30m)

  • Chord tones + Walking bass lines
    • Harmonising in permutations: Bb major, 12 permutations (6 on 1, 6 on 3)
    • Inversions (run all around the cycle)
    • 1st inversion in 6 permutations over Autumn Leaves
    • Mixing all inversions and permutations of root inversion over Autumn Leaves in 3 keys

Observarions

Permutations (especially permutations of inversions) are the best thing I’ve learned on bass so far. Thank you so much Mr. Mann, sir! :D

Piano day (2h) + Routine update

  • Jazz voicings
    • Dominant to minor #1 (+7 → m9 and back)
    • Dominant to minor #2 (7b9 → m7 and back)
    • Recap: dominant to major
    • Recao: minor to dominant
    • Recap: all 7ths around the cycle
  • Improvisation
    • Blues scale in all keys
    • Blues scale in RH, dominant chords in LH (around the cycle)
  • Modes
    • Harmonic minor mode 1
      • Harmonising with 7th chords: A through D#
      • Hm scales with both hands: A through D# around the circle of 5ths
  • Combining skills
    • Improvisation over Hm1 progression in F# (I — II — V — VI) with F# Hm + F# blues scale, using shell voicings in left hand

Observations

Just made a big review of my piano routine and goals, made it on paper and just wanted to put a quick digest of it here. So, I have three main areas of focus at the moment:

  1. Jazz voicings (shells, voice leading and transitions)
  2. Improvisation (blues & modal scales, common chord progressions, left hand patterns)
  3. Composition / modal focus (major modes, harmonic minor modes, melodic minor modes and their typical chord progressions)

I have a lot of exercises in each area that I partly borrow from some jazz books, partly take from my music school notes, partly invent myself. Luckily, they seem to overlap pretty good, and, in fact, there’s an area where all three come together. So improving in one makes me better at the other two. I discovered it recently when I decided to harmonise a random modal scale and instead of playing block 7th chords use shell voicings and watch out for voice leading to preserve minimum movement. It was extremely satisfying to discover that I could do it almost fluently, without really thinking about fingerings: my fingers sort of already knew where to go, as they got used to these movements during my endless cycle of 4ths runs. So that was great. I also realised that I am getting comfortable enough with scales to use them over chord progressions that I play with the left hand and mix them up to — basically, play jazz solos! Wow. So I decided to add this new section to my practice where I will intentionally combine all my skills that I develop in different areas of focus and improve my overall comping technique.

One thing I kind of excluded for now is technical exercises — for speed and finger independency and stuff — I used to do them a lot last year (Hanon exercises, arpeggios etc.), but it just doesn’t feel beneficial for my current goal right now (which is to get good at jazz comping). So I just leave the out for now. Also, I don’t learn songs or scores that much as I did before (it’s extremely time-consuming and could be very frustrating), but it’s also something that simply doesn’t fit well with my routine. I mean, I do understand why conservatory pianists practice 6 hours a day — you just can’t cover all the stuff you want to cover within 2 hours, let alone 1 hours. But to make up for that, I’m going to start learning songs from the Real Book — shell voicings with left hand, melody with the right. Should be enough for now! Okay that was it for the practice review, gotta go, till later!