Introduction
Having a structured and reliable practice routine is a key part of growing as a musician. A good practice routine should consist of aspects that both challenge me and develop my musical knowledge. Currently most of my attention is focused on my piano playing and my saxophone playing. Below will be an insight into my daily practice routine for both of these instruments. As my piano is my main instrument, the majority of my practice time goes onto that , however I try to have a decent practice on the saxophone whenever possible.
Warmups
Piano –
To start with I pick four different types of scales to practice in every key to a metronome in either straight or swung feels.
The pool of scales that I pick from include, major, natural minor, harmonic minor, melodic minor, dorian, lydian, mixolydian, phrygian, whole tone, blues and diminished.
At first I was confused in ways to use modes and the wholetone scale, however as I grow more confident and knowledgeable in my approach to improvisation and songwriting, I find myself using them more and more.
I currently practice to a metronome at 140bpm on beats two and four of the bar. This allows me to work on my swing feel as it emulates the feel of the hi hats when playing in a band with a drummer. I also practice in a straight style as it is still very useful when playing pop or classical music. I find that 140pbm is a good level for me to practice at as it is in the middle of fast and slow which allows me to develop my touch and feel for the keyboard whilst also being able to approach most tempos.
I practice every scale in every key when possible. This has hugely helped me to increase my theoretical knowledge as well as making me feel more confident when playing in obscure keys with lots of sharps and flats.
I then move on to chord arpeggios. This is a great exercise that develops my wrist technique as well as my knowledge of seventh chords.To do this, I pick a seventh chord being either minor, major, dominant or diminished and then practice it in all twelve keys.
I then move onto practicing 2-5-1s.
There a number of different ways that I do this including rootless voicings, one handed chords and two handed chords.
I do my 2-5-1s in all major and minor keys and practice them by going round the circle of 4ths. For example I go from C to F to Bb etc.
I practice 2-5-1s as they are a very common chord progression in jazz and allow me to understand how to voice different chord shapes which is useful when comping or playing solo piano.
Saxophone –
As the saxophone is my 2nd instrument, I get much less time to practice wwith it. Due to how loud it is , I can’t play too late which means that sometimes I haven’t got time to practice on an evening. I therefore don’t approach the saxophone with the same formality and although I still do warmup exercises they are much more limited.
My warmup exercises on the sax consist of me playing two scales that I choose from a similar range to that of the piano. I then practice these in either straight or swung feel to a metronome at 140bpm.
I do these scales in all twelve keys. I then also do arpeggios in all twelve keys to a metronome. This allows me to continue developing technically and to warmup in order to play some pieces and do some improvisation.
Sight Reading
In my role as a cocktail pianist and in a couple of the bands that I play in, I am required to have a decent level of sight reading. I therefore do my best to keep it up by practicing sight reading quite often. I have a few music books at home including the real book, a classical music book and the complete Beatles and depending on how I feel I usually take a piece from one of those and attempt to play it to my best ability.
On the saxophone, I often follow youtube videos of songs when playing such as jazz standards as I don’t have the real book in E flat.
For example here is Just the Two of us –
Ear Training
Piano –
I have been working hard to develop my ear as a musician. In order to this I often try to work out different songs by ear including their chord progressions and melodies. I am getting better all of the time and I have developed massively compared to where I was at the beginning of this course.
On the Piano, I mainly focus on learning pop and blues songs by ear, however if there are interesting riffs that I like, I do my best to work them out.
Having a well trained ear can open up fields of work in music such as transposition as well as a good ear being a key part of music producing. As a lot of jazz is improvised, it is important to have a good ear so as to be able to react better when improvising or comping for other musicians.
On the saxophone, I often play along to jazz and funk songs as once I have found out the key by experimenting it is relatively easy to improvise or work out the melody off of the back of this. Pieces that I often play along to and improvise to can be seen below –
Strasbourg St Denis is one of my favourite songs to play and improvise on. On the Alto Saxophone, the song is in F major which is a really easy key to play in and although it is quite fast most of the riffs are pretty straightforward. There are a number of Hargrove songs that I play along to as I love his and his bands style and improvisations and I do my best to emulate his playing even though he is a trumpeter.
Fists of Fury was one of the first songs that I fully transcribed. I was amazed when I managed to work out the full melody for this as there are so many different parts to the song. Overall, I think that this is such a beautiful composition and I am always blown away by Kamasi’s songwriting and improvisations. Kamasi often does a lot of squeaking and plays very high up his register which is something that I find very interesting and try to copy quite often, much to my neighbours dismay.
Isn’t she lovely is another song that I have transcribed on the saxophone, the melody of the piece is iconic and it also provides a great background to improvise on.
Solo Exercises
Due to my keyboard having an inbuilt looper, I have been experimenting a bit more with my piano and saxophone crossover by making up chord progressions in the piano and attempting to make melodies for the saxophone as well as improvise. This allows me to develop my understanding of each instruments role in that set up.
Pieces
I set aside a part of my practice routine every day in order to learn some songs or to try and write some ideas or arrange them into a song. A lot of my time is spent learning jazz standards for my cocktail job as well as songs for bands. It is also nice just to be able to put my ideas and gained knowledge from my practice routine into action and develop areas such as improvisation.
Improving My Touch
A pianists touch on the piano is often what defines there sound from another pianist. Of course an artists choice in notes of rhythm also has a huge impact, however if I was to transcribe and play one of Bill Evans solos , I would probably sound nothing like him. Touch on a piano is something that pianists spend there whole lives and careers on and is what defines some of the great pianists. For example when you are listening to someone such as Evans, Ellington or Tatum, you can often tell it is them just from their feel from the piano as well as other areas such as their phrasing.
Pedalling
Pedalling is a big part of my practice routine that I have worked hard to improve. Accurate use of the sustain pedal really effects your sound as a pianist as by holding on for too long you can create an unsatisfactory ringing whereas if you don’t hold it for long enough, you may not catch the magic of the note as intended. In order to improve my pedalling, I have been focusing a lot more on my technique and correcting it when it is wrong. I am hoping that if I keep my pedalling in mind and correct it when it is wrong that this will develop into my playing naturally over time.