| Another practice routine...
Sign in to disble this ad
Hey guys, I've been working on developing an effective practice routine recently and this post is just basically to throw it out there for whoever to checkout and to leave constructive feedback and suggested refinements if they so desire.
First a little background (if you're only interested in the routine, skip this bit). I'm currently a first year jazz student in Australia and the uni I attend really deals in the currency of "straight ahead" jazz. By this I mean I spend a lot of time learning and analyzing the standard repertoire, learning standard methods of accompaniment, playing both electric and upright bass e.t.c. The issue this presents for me is that there isn't really a whole lot of scope in the program for me to foster my interest in slap and pop, fusion e.t.c, or rather there is, but it really needs to be propagated by yours truly. Hence I have been trying for some time now to develop a practice routine that can A) be accomplished in any given window of time, and B) allows me to explore all of music (not just those elements related to my jazz course)
The routine so far:
A - Accompaniment: This section focuses on the art of being an accompanist, rather critical for a bass player
B - The solo: This section looks at theories as applied to solo playing in a jazz context (i.e. voice leading, negotiating chord progressions e.t.c)
C - Thumb style related technique: Rather self explanatory
D - Reading: A page a day keeps unemployment away
E - Time feel: Timing related exercises
F - Repertoire: Maintenance and expansion of repertoire (a good chance to put into practice the skills developed in the accompaniment, solo and reading sections)
G - Theory and Aural skills: Can be done with or without the bass, deals essentially with ear training, pitch recognition e.t.c
You'll notice I haven't got a section for scales, arpeggios, transcribing e.t.c. Instead, the theory here is to identify your goals within these parameters and apply exercises within each to achieve those goals e.g in order to better negotiate a particular set of changes in the solo section, you might need to run some arpeggios in order to do so. You'll also notice that some sections overlap, and this is intentional, e.g. what you study in accompaniment may well come out in your practice of repertoire, or time feel exercises.
With regard to time spent on practice, if you were to split your given time evenly, you'd wind up with about 14.3% of time on each topic, so if you had 3 hours to devote to practice you'd spend approx 25 minutes on each topic. In uni semester I can often have 6 hours or so available for this, hence the viability of this method. I feel it is important to define what will be studied and for how long *prior* to the practice session.
You'll also recall that I play both upright and electric bass, although electric is my major, and this is the hole in the method or so I feel. In order to get decent exposure to the upright my plan of attack is basically to alternate the solo, accompaniment and repertoire sections with upright and electric each day.
This is pretty long winded I know, but I'd love feedback, particularly in terms of simplifying the method.
Cheers | 
