Saturday

Piano:

20 Minutes Scales (at correct tempo for Grade 3.)

20 Minutes Bergonzi all permutations on Lady Duck and On the Brink at 60 bpm.

20 Minutes Neat Feet. All traditional metronome markings from 60-100bpm, ironing out a few reading errors as I get more comfortable with the piece.

30 Minutes Ted Pease Composition exercises.

20 Minutes Scales.

30 Minutes Bergonzi: Lady Duck 1234/1345 and the three permutations. I did one chorus of each at 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, 120 bpm and then played along to the CD four times - one for each permutation and then moved into mixing it up a little and improvising using these notes.

30 Minutes more Bergonzi. On the Brink permutations 60-100bpm

Gary Novak & Return to Piano

I finally got round to listening to a Gary Novak clinic I found online a few weeks back. Some very interesing ideas in terms of learning to make the most of your ideas on the drums - using the same pattern with different note rates etc... I think I have a new lick to practise 1000 times tomorrow!

I've also been looking into buying a new drum set and selling my two old ones. I'm currently fishing around for prices...

Piano wise:

20 Minutes Fly Me to the Moon 100-144bpm

20 Minutes Barrelhouse Blues 60-88bpm

20 Minutes Improvisation - having a little play with some of the ideas in Jerry Bergonzi's first book (chapter 1!)

20 Minutes Jazz Piano Grade 1, 2, 3 scales/arpeggios (up to B flat Lydian) I need to start at this point next time so that I make sure to cover them all, including the ones with trickier fingering!

Thursday

When I was a teenager and didn't have a set of drums yet I used to go find it difficult getting to sleep because there was always music going on in my head and I was so excited about the prospect of going to school the next day and practising or working on tunes I was writing. Although I sometimes go through periods where I lose my motivation a little it usually comes back stronger than ever. I feel really inspired to work at things at the moment and I'm hoping this will translate into improved performace.

In conversation with my friend John the other day we discussed an idea based on one of Mike Mangini's theories. John claimed that he once practised a particlar lick for 1000 repetitions non-stop and that he has never needed to work on it since but has pretty much mastery of it at a variety of tempos. It seemed to work for him so in the interests of science I gave it a try. I selected a lick that I can play but have never felt 100% comfortable with - the Steve Gadd ratamacue. I managed 500 repetitions but got interrupted when my first student walked in! It took about half an hour but it definately did some good.

I stumbled across an interesting video last night too: