daily

PIANO DAILY

I'd like to devote this page this month to discussing the daily demands of the professional freelance life that I encounter, and the effect they have on my focus and decision making in regard to keeping up a practice schedule.

I must begin by making one admission: without a daily practice routine, I would not have progressed to this point, and I believe that any future development would be unpredictable, chaotic, and virtually a matter of luck. As a result of my studies with some wonderful teachers including Sanford Gold, Harold Danko, Barry Harris, Mike Longo, and Roland Hanna, I have found a way to organize my time with an eye towards keeping up my technique, learning repertoire (classical, jazz, and Brazilian), and expanding my vocabulary as a pianist, improviser, and writer.

I start with fifteen minutes to a half hour of basic warm-ups, scales, and arpeggios. This I consider analogous to the daily stretches of a dancer or an athlete, and is meant to avoid injury as well as reacquaint me with the physical sensation of playing. I'll then play through a tune, perhaps a new one, or one I know but in a different key than usual. After fifteen minutes or so, I hopefully feel ready to begin the body of the practice session. Roland Hanna stressed the importance of a familiarity with classical technique and repertoire, both for their own sake as part of the history of the piano, and to incorporate the great variety of devices found in these works into an improvisational vocabulary. With him I've worked on Bach Preludes and Fugues, Beethoven Sonatas, Debussy Preludes, and a number of the Chopin Etudes (Op. 10, Nos. 1, 3, 4, Op. 25 No. 10). I've just begun Op.10, No. 7; it , like the others, demands an enormous amount of time and concentrated practice just to enter the universe created by Chopin. In addition, I've recently I've been working on Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and his Preludes.

The next part of the session I devote to transcription and improvisation practice. I have a notebook of lines I've found in the solos of other musicians as well as lines of my own, and I take one or two of these through the keys until I feel that I have assimilated them. I then turn on my metronome and begin to apply them to harmonic progressions such as the ii-V-I motion, chromatic or diatonic motion, minor and major third cycles, and the cycle of fourths and fifths. The next step is to take the lines through tunes; this is both the most demanding and most interesting to me. Each tune has its own particular way of progressing, and each progression offers "puzzles" to solve. I find it a great discipline to try to remain focused on just the line or lines with which I am working. In the heat of improvisation, it is a great temptation to rely on habit or ideas processed at an earlier time; this practice leads to the possibility of finding a "comfort zone" while developing the implications of one or two ideas, of course while remaining conscious of the flow and swing of the music.

Next is repertoire or composition work. There are countless works of music that form the canon of "standard repertoire", countless more that are rarely heard, and new works to be written. I try to at least become familiar with two or three a week. This entails learning the correct melody and harmonic format, transposition practice, working out a solo piano version, and improvising....

In an ideal world, I would be dedicating at least six hours a day to practice, then getting out to play a session or a gig. The truth that in following the path of the professional life I have found myself with a more realistic time frame of one to three hours as the norm. There are weeks when I can reach the ideal, but much of the time I must decide how to administer the shorter span.

Warm-ups are important, and I may cut five minutes off. Scales and arpeggios I cut down by concentrating on two keys instead of twelve. The classical repertoire suffers in a short day, and I usually find a few passages to work with instead of larger sections. Repertoire is often dictated by the jobs that are imminent; an artist might send a tune list or a tape and I will devote time to preparation. In a short day, my composition time tends to suffer as well, unless I have been working something out in my mind before I sit down to the piano.

That's a brief summary of my approach. As I update this page, I hope to present more specific situations and the way I attempt to solve them. In these past two weeks, for instance, I have been writing arrangements for a recording I will produce beginning October 19. Of course they take precedence, but I have to deal with that little voice in my head whispering, bothering, and finally screaming "Practice!!", or I'll get to the recording with all the paperwork done and no chops!




		PIANO DAILY I'd like to devote this page this month to discussing the daily demands of the professional freelance life that I encounter, and the effect they have on my focus and decision making in regard to keeping up a practice schedule. I must begin by making one admission: without a daily practice routine, I would not have progressed to this point, and I believe that any future development would be unpredictable, chaotic, and virtually a matter of luck. As a result of my studies with some wonderful teachers including Sanford Gold, Harold Danko, Barry Harris, Mike Longo, and Roland Hanna, I have found a way to organize my time with an eye towards keeping up my technique, learning repertoire (classical, jazz, and Brazilian), and expanding my vocabulary as a pianist, improviser, and writer. I start with fifteen minutes to a half hour of basic warm-ups, scales, and arpeggios. This I consider analogous to the daily stretches of a dancer or an athlete, and is meant to avoid injury as well as reacquaint me with the physical sensation of playing. I'll then play through a tune, perhaps a new one, or one I know but in a different key than usual. After fifteen minutes or so, I hopefully feel ready to begin the body of the practice session. Roland Hanna stressed the importance of a familiarity with classical technique and repertoire, both for their own sake as part of the history of the piano, and to incorporate the great variety of devices found in these works into an improvisational vocabulary. With him I've worked on Bach Preludes and Fugues, Beethoven Sonatas, Debussy Preludes, and a number of the Chopin Etudes (Op. 10, Nos. 1, 3, 4, Op. 25 No. 10). I've just begun Op.10, No. 7; it , like the others, demands an enormous amount of time and concentrated practice just to enter the universe created by Chopin. In addition, I've recently I've been working on Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and his Preludes. The next part of the session I devote to transcription and improvisation practice. I have a notebook of lines I've found in the solos of other musicians as well as lines of my own, and I take one or two of these through the keys until I feel that I have assimilated them. I then turn on my metronome and begin to apply them to harmonic progressions such as the ii-V-I motion, chromatic or diatonic motion, minor and major third cycles, and the cycle of fourths and fifths. The next step is to take the lines through tunes; this is both the most demanding and most interesting to me. Each tune has its own particular way of progressing, and each progression offers "puzzles" to solve. I find it a great discipline to try to remain focused on just the line or lines with which I am working. In the heat of improvisation, it is a great temptation to rely on habit or ideas processed at an earlier time; this practice leads to the possibility of finding a "comfort zone" while developing the implications of one or two ideas, of course while remaining conscious of the flow and swing of the music. Next is repertoire or composition work. There are countless works of music that form the canon of "standard repertoire", countless more that are rarely heard, and new works to be written. I try to at least become familiar with two or three a week. This entails learning the correct melody and harmonic format, transposition practice, working out a solo piano version, and improvising.... In an ideal world, I would be dedicating at least six hours a day to practice, then getting out to play a session or a gig. The truth that in following the path of the professional life I have found myself with a more realistic time frame of one to three hours as the norm. There are weeks when I can reach the ideal, but much of the time I must decide how to administer the shorter span. Warm-ups are important, and I may cut five minutes off. Scales and arpeggios I cut down by concentrating on two keys instead of twelve. The classical repertoire suffers in a short day, and I usually find a few passages to work with instead of larger sections. Repertoire is often dictated by the jobs that are imminent; an artist might send a tune list or a tape and I will devote time to preparation. In a short day, my composition time tends to suffer as well, unless I have been working something out in my mind before I sit down to the piano. That's a brief summary of my approach. As I update this page, I hope to present more specific situations and the way I attempt to solve them. In these past two weeks, for instance, I have been writing arrangements for a recording I will produce beginning October 19. Of course they take precedence, but I have to deal with that little voice in my head whispering, bothering, and finally screaming "Practice!!", or I'll get to the recording with all the paperwork done and no chops!