Music Video Lesson: Do You Need a Practice Checklist?

I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com and the subject today is why you need a practicing checklist. A practicing checklist? What's this all about? Well, you know, a lot of my students really want to have a routine in their practice to do a certain amount of things in a certain order on a daily basis.

And while this is commendable in one sense, a routine sometimes can work against you because you want to take advantage of the discovery in your practice. And sometimes you might take a tangent and think, oh, I'm spending too much time on this, I've got to get to all these other things. And you might not take advantage of an exploration that could lead to an epiphany in your playing.

So instead of a routine, a checklist offers something really valuable for you so that when you're practicing, you might come to a point where you're going, oh, what am I supposed to do now? And you kind of, if you don't have a routine, you kind of lost, but you have a reference of a checklist. Ah, I should do these things every day. Now, I offered this idea to one of my students, John Carlos in the Dominican Republic, and he came up with a checklist. I said, why don't you come up with a checklist, and I want to see what you come up with. And I said, you should come up with a checklist that has things you want to do really on a daily basis, and maybe things you do on a weekly basis, maybe not every single day, but something that you don't want to go too long without. So this is what John Carlos came up with, and see how many of these things resonate with you. And I'd love to get suggestions here in the comments on LivingPianos .com and YouTube. Any of you have your ideas of a musical checklist of daily and weekly things that you should do, that you suggest to others, it could be a valuable resource that we can share together here.

So John Carlos starts with memorization of new material. Now, I stress this all the time. Why is this so darn important? Well, if you're learning music, and now if you're not memorizing, at least learning new music every day that you can play faithfully with a score, carving out new material that you learn is essential if you want to grow.

Now, why does this need to be on a daily basis? Because cramming memorization doesn't work. If you've, let's say you've gone four or five days, you haven't done any memorization, you go, oh, I can make up for it, I have two, three hours I can practice on Thursday. Good luck with that. You know, when you first learn a phrase, it's not that hard. You learn the second phrase, it comes in, you know, okay, third, fourth phrase, it starts to get really taxing, plus trying to put the phrases together.

Those first few phrases come much more easily than if you keep trying to memorize. How much can you cram in your head in one sitting? It's tough. So take advantage every day of when your mind is fresh to learn at least something, even if it's just one phrase, you'll be rewarded. Take a look at your score of whatever music you're working on now and figure out the smallest phrase that you could learn that wouldn't take you very long. Maybe it's four measures. And then multiply that by seven and you'll realize, and then deduct any measures that are the same, skip those measures, and you'll see, my goodness, you might get a page or a page and a half of music learned just by doing a phrase a day. So make that a priority in your practice.

What else should be done every day? Well, I already made reference to it. Reinforcing the material from the previous day. Obviously, you need to be able to solidify when you learn the previous day, you might have to relearn it. The good news is you'll be able to relearn it much faster. Not only that, but if you learned four measure phrases the previous day, you might be able to learn eight measure phrases the next time you learn it because it's already there.

So learning new music and solidifying. Another thing that you really should be doing on a regular basis is scales and arpeggios. Or if you're not up to scales and arpeggios, simple hand exercises just to strengthen your fingers. Because the time you spend with that, if you learn one new scale a week or one new arpeggio a week, you'll have them all learned in a year. And boy, that is a good foundation for your playing. And if you haven't learned them, if you already have learned them all, solidifying them, taking them to the next level in speed and different articulations, or doing them in contrary motion or intervals, you can keep working on scales and arpeggios your whole life. These are all as a value.

Another thing is review of old pieces. Go through slowly, solidifying pieces you can already play. This is a great way to keep them in shape, to check your work so things don't degrade over time, so you always have music you can play on a high level.

Then free playing. Playing old repertoire or improvising, just anything, just to keep your fingers moving, to keep pieces in shape, just from playing them, improvising, develops your ear and your connection to the keyboard.

Then other things that you can do, maybe not on every single day, but on a very regular basis is sight reading. Maybe, you know, I would say that sight reading could be something you do every day. Remember, these are Giancarlos' suggestions. Sight reading is really a vital part to grow your reading because you might learn more and more music and still have a beginning reading level.

So making reading something that you do on a regular basis, finding sight reading material on the right level is the most important part because it's something you struggle just to get through a line or two of music. It's not going to be that valuable.

It'll be painstaking for you. You're not going to want to do it, number one, and you're not going to get the fluidity and get the sense of reading and maintaining a tempo.

Finding easy enough music for sight reading is a challenge for many people because many people who become somewhat accomplished still have reading levels that are like a beginner. I was in that category when I was a pretty advanced player in high school because I didn't do enough sight reading. So make that a part of your regular study.

I made mention of improvisation earlier, playing old pieces and keeping them in shape. Improvisation is another one of those things you can either do on a daily or at least on a regular basis.

And on a regular basis, going through theory, it can be something as simple as just going through F sharp, C sharp, G sharp, D sharp, A sharp, E sharp, B sharp, your sharps and your flats, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat, C flat, F flat. And by the way, when I do that, I'm actually thinking the interval. I do not have those numbers, those letters memorized. I've actually think, I've done it so many times, I'm thinking the intervals that fast. And that's the way you want to do it. You don't want to just memorize by rote. That's not that valuable, frankly. It's better than nothing, but better off to figure out the intervals that you're playing. F sharp, C sharp, G sharp, D sharp, A sharp, E sharp, D sharp, and the flats, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, G flat, C flat, F flat.

That's a great way to think through on the keyboard, or you can even just count letters, F, G, A, B, C, C, D, E, F, G, G, A, B, C, D, and become fluent with your key signatures. Why is this so important? Imagine trying to solve quadratic equations in algebra, and you still aren't quite fluent with how much is six times seven? Well, six times six is 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41. I mean, that's not going to work very well. You've got to be pretty fluent with all your tables before you can approach higher mathematics. Same thing true with music theory. You better be really solid with your key signatures and how to spell all your major scales before doing chords and intervals and all of that.

So spend some time with that on a regular basis.

Right along with that, practicing chord progressions on the piano or common cadences in different keys can be incredibly valuable, like a classic authentic cadence, a I chord, and then put the C on top, and then C on the bottom. That's a nice voicing for a I chord and a IV chord, but you put up there, and then 164. That's a C major chord with a G on the bottom, and a V7, but the F here, the B there, and leave out the G and add another G, leave out the fifth, and add another root for smooth voice leading.

And do it in all the keys.

Why this is so valuable is because your music is comprised of these fundamental chords, your primary chords, and they're in everything you play. So learning music and sight reading music and improvising music, everything becomes easier just from knowing your standard chords, your I, IV, V chords, right? So these are all very, very useful and fundamental aspects of practicing.

So you can also do this in the minor keys, by the way.

Et cetera.

And you could do them, by the way, in circle of fifths rather than doing them in, as I was just demonstrating them, you could do them in circle of fifths. First G major, and then, I mean, C major, then G major, then D major.

And then, and that's a good way to accomplish two birds in one stone because you're actually getting your key signatures and going through chord progressions at the same time.

And of course, last thing that Giancarlos mentioned, which is also a great thing, is kind of exploring other styles of music, whether it's jazz, salsa, pop, blues, et cetera, new age, maybe you want to kind of experiment with new agey type of music.

You know, this is along with improvisation, just letting yourself go wild, you'll make discoveries and you'll understand the structure of music better. It ties in with music theory. All of these skill sets relate to one another. That's why the more of them that you do on a regular basis, the more productive your practice is. So make a checklist for yourself. So you ever get stuck in your practice where you're feeling you're not getting anywhere, change it up and do something different. You can come back to what you were doing the next day when maybe that resonates more genuinely with you at that time and have this checklist, you know, right on hand, either on your phone or on a piece of paper so that you can make sure you get to all these important fundamental skill sets on a regular basis. Thank you Giancarlos for sharing this with everybody and all of you, share your musical checklist here at livingpianos.com, your online piano resource, as well as YouTube. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/do-you-need-a-practice-checklist/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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