Bass day (1h 30m)

Chord tones
- II — V — Is in all keys round the cycle
- Harmonising scales with 7th chords C through Ab

Observations

I’ve just discovered a huge blocker that was holding me for a long time! So, my thing was that, when I used to play an exercise that had a lot to do with mind games — like harmonising a scale or II — V — Is in all keys, etc. — I used to always run into this paralysing moment of “Errrr… Where am I supposed to go next? I’m in F, so next one will be… Er… Bb, and the V in Bb is… F… Er… But I’m still in F, and the 5th of F is… Er—” So, like, I would always think about what I’m playing at the moment, and not about what’s coming up next. And therefore by the time I got to the next key, I would be lost and have to pause. There’s a scientific term for it actually, it’s called “analysis paralysis” — when you are presented with too many choices, you just get stuck and don’t do anything. So, in my case, I think the problem was that I kept holding too much to that key or whatever the thing was from which I was transitioning, and didn’t really think about the next thing to play in advance. But why think about II — V — I in F if you have already figured it out? Just let your fingers play it automatically and in the meantime think about II — V — I in Bb which comes next and figure it out before you started playing it!

It could be tricky, because your brain does not want to switch attention to something that it’s not doing at the moment, and instead it wants to control everything, even if it’s already in the fingers, but you have to force it and persuade it that you can do some stuff on autopilot, and then use this time to think about the next changes or about the larger-scale things. Not sure if this ramble was helpful for anyone or at all understandable, but that’s my today’s enlightenment, I’m feeling pretty happy about it! 😄

Bass day (1h 30m)

Chord tones
- Harmonising Dorian scale with 7th chords — all inversions, playing to the click, no pauses
  - D Dorian
  - A Dorian
  - E Dorian
- II — V — I’s
  - In the keys of C, F, Bb & Eb, all inversions
Walking bass lines
- Dominant 2-octave bass line around the cycle of 4ths
- Improvisation over the same chord progression, emphasising the b7ths & b6ths

Observations

Finally getting better at 2-octave dominant scales! This time played with almost no mistakes.

Piano day (1h 20m)

II — V — I’s
- Major (both formats, with click, no pauses)
- Minor (format 1, with click, no pauses)
- Major + parallel minor (no click, reading from the sheet)

Observations

I urgently need some LH exercises and more topics, as shell voicings and II — V — I’s, as cool as they are, are starting to get slightly boring (because I have basically been focused just on them for the good two months). New jazz piano books are on their way!

Bass day (1h 30m)

Chord tones
- Harmonising Phrygian scale with 7th chords — all inversions, playing to the click, with pauses between chords
  - E Phrygian
  - B Phrygian
  - F# Phrygian
- Harmonising major scale with 7th chords — all inversions, no pauses
  - C
  - F
  - Bb
  - Eb
Walking bass lines
- Dominant 2-octave bass line around the cycle of 4ths

Observations

Although I intentionally focus only on a couple of things, and it pays of, as I’m getting better real quick, I’m starting to feel that my practice gets a little bit boring. Need to get some new stuff in.

Bass day (1h)

Chord tones (Phil Mann)
- Harmonising the major scale with 7th chords — all inversions, C major (50bpm)
- Harmonising the major scale with 7th chords — all inversions, F major (44bpm)
- Harmonising the major scale with 7th chords — all inversions, Bb major (44bpm)
Walking bass line workout (2-octave dominant line up the cycle of 4ths)

Deep Practice Challenge Done!

Whew! I think that was it for the deep practice challenge. I mean, technically, I’m just going on with it, simply continuing in this thread. But it’s nice that I managed to make it somehow measurable: during this challenge I went through 2 courses — Scott’s Jazz Survival Guide (walking bass lines) and Phil’s Chord Tones, which turned out to be such a wonderful supplement to each other. I was already decent at walking bass, but I kind of always played safe and didn’t really think about functional harmony all that much during playing and was heavily relying on finger patterns. Scott’s course taught me to always be open for different ways to go, different paths to transition — be it a chromatic move to the 3rd of the next chord, or 7th (or 11th?) below, or enclosure of the root of the next chord — all of it — all I needed to finally start getting thins “walking bass line” sound to my lines, as opposed to the fake “boogie woogie” cheap sorta thing you get when you try to mimic it without really getting the mechanics of what’s happening under the hood. Now I know the process, it’s not magic for me anymore, and the only thing to do now is just become more fluent at it, which means — grind, grind, grind. Chord inversions were something I always tried to avoid because they play games with your brain, and your brain resists it, it simply wants some minor pentatonic box shapes happening! But I forced that, and I benefited from that tremendously: my fingers are breaking out of the box trap, and I’m already noticing when soloing that I’m much more aware of the functions of the notes that I’m playing rather than just the shape. Although, shapes are not evil! They’re just addictive, like sugar. LOL.

As of piano, well — I managed to get through all of the II — V — I skills in the Haerle book, and I got significantly better at shell voicings. So, like, playing things like minor ii — V — i around the cycle voicing them as 3-b5-6-b9 and 7-b9-3-6 is not a superhuman task for me anymore. I’m still slow at figuring out and mixing extensions like 11ths and 9ths above and below the root, especially in the rootless situations, but I feel like I’ve made huge progress.

That’s it for the challenge, now back to the regular shed 😄