What to Practice

Jazzaferri

Follow the link for a great interview with Hal Galper on what to practice

http://bobreynoldsmusic.us1.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=c683eda1f2997a776b69f0b30&id=f816300302&e=23e65adae5

Bob is a great young tenor sax player and educator. I have had a number of online discussions with him on practicing.

some great stuff on the oral (aural ) tradition.

Jim Kaznosky

Thanks for posting this. I've struggled quite a bit in trying to figure out what to and how to practice. There are so many good materials that are out there that have been discussed on this forum. My personal problem with this is that I moved from method to method without really every learning what I needed to learn.

Recently, I've decided to really focus on ear worms that appear when I'm listening to this music. As background, I am still working on the technical grounding that is necessary. I think what Hal hammers home is what to practice and using what your ear finds interesting as a means of determining what to practice. It makes a lot of sense to me.

What is important in this video, at least for me, is that if my ear finds a lick, phrase, or idea interesting, it shouldn't be just about learning that lick. It's trying to figure out what about that lick is grabbing me and doing some work, inline with technical development to work this thing that I'm finding into my playing. Hal illustrates that very well with his Bill Evans example.

There's a lot more here than just this idea, but it is the major point that I took from this. I highly recommend taking 15 minutes to watch this.

pickitjohn

Thanks Jay, glad you posted this, makes sense to me to practice what your interested in.
Sounds to me like he's saying is practice one thing at a time everyone has their own path.
I wanna check out more of his stuff.

Jazzaferri

Do check out his stuff. He is a monster jazz pianist

Buco

This is a very smart man.
I was gonna sit down to practice but I remembered this thread and wanted to see the video and I spent last hour and a half going through various videos from his master classes (they're all posted on YouTube under the same user)
Everything he says is a gem that you can go back to many times over.
In one video he reminded me of Kenny Worker's thinking and then he cited Kenny somewhere towards the end of the video.
Thank you Jay for bringing him to my attention.

bopster

Thanks Jay. I saw Hal once with Phil Woods, Tom Harrell, Steve Gilmore, Bill Goodwin - and only rediscovered him through his book "Forward Motion." This video tells me that I need to go back and reread his online columns!

Shemi

Great insights from a great communicator. A lot of food for thought here, thanks for bringing him to my attention. :-)