Mark’s Practice Log

[Mark]

1/2/25 – 0500-0600

• Warm-up: Played through the first 7 pages of Practice Like a Rockstar (PLR), vol. 1. Used BIAB at 80 BPM and had good results. Felt fluid through all exercises.
• Technique: nothing here. I’ll add in arpeggios tomorrow…
• Chord Progression: Used I-vi-ii-V (“Heart & Soul”) as a staring point. Began as octave/block then worked into a simple stride base with inversion in RH. Moved to playing the melody in RH with a simple stride base. Need to experiment with jazz chords (4-note) and more complex stride bass.
• Song: Autumn Leaves (100 BPM) Finally nailed the LH chords! Practiced RH melody line, but clumsy when playing together. Just needs more repetition. Tomorrow, focus on RH melody and look at 2-hand shell chords as an intro for head arrangement.

[Mark]

1/3/25 – 0430-0530

• Warm-up: Played through pages 8-12 of PLR, vol. 1 at 80 bpm. Getting more interesting but still fairly fluid and I’m able to read straight away. Think I’ll try a Bossa groove just to mix it up.
• Technique: Using Autumn Leaves, played 7-tone chords and 4-tone arpeggios at 80 bpm. Not too bad since Bb scale works through out. Added in LH shell voicings to simulate improvisation. Must work on 2-hand shell voicings through chord changes.
• Chord Progression: Analyzed Hotel California chord progressions. Starts out in Bm (harmonic) and moves downward chromatically in 5ths. Not certain if I can nail the progression, but I tried it in the key of Am as well.
• Song: Hotel California. We have band practice later today and I know that the lead guitar wants to add in this song. I’m not sure of the arrangement we’ll use. No problem playing and i have a good broken chord part set-up for the piano. I can use chords for rhythm guitar part and think that I can create a bass line during practice. We’ll see what we come up with…

[Mark]

Mingus Jam

1/3/25 – 1000-1200

• First band practice since New Years. So far, we have performances set up for once a month, to December. Not bad to start out the year, just need a bass player…ugh!
• Okay, todays practice starts off with rhythm guitar sick and missing practice. Not to be discouraged, 3 of us set up and jammed, just to get in a groove and experiment. It went well!
• We knocked our a few standard songs, I was able to try out different chord patterns with jazz based chords, and I worked out my RH with bass riffs, in anticipation of playing bass with my keytar. It’ll work out well. My RH is strong and can move through bass lines fairly easily.

[Mark]

1/4/25 – 0445-0545

• Warm-up: page 12-13 of PLR vol. 1. Triplets with hands together on page 13 are a challenge. Separately, okay, but together is clumsy. Slowed down to 50 bpm to get them together. I’ll stay here for a bit.
• Technique: Review of traditional shell patterns: 3-7-9 and 7-3-5. Focus on getting these naturally into my LH
• Progression: Set-up Biab for first 4 members of circle of fifths using bossa groove. Played 2-5-1 progression through C, F, Bb and Eb, following Technique shell voicings only in LH. Need to add scales and arpeggios in RH while maintaining shells in LH.
• No song practice today. Working on LH chording only…

[Mark]

1/5/25 – 0530-0630

• Warm-up: 7-note arpeggios and scales in C, F, Bb, Eb with RH, starting at different locations. <b style="”font-family:" inherit; font-size: color: var(–bb-body-text-color); background-color: var(–bb-content-background-color);”>Try 7-note arpeggios for E, A, D, G for next Warm-up .
• Technique: Shell chord movement alternating 3-79 & 7-3-5 or 7-3-5 & 3-79. Notice that moving from 3-79 to 7-3-5 is a change of finger 5 (LH) and moving from 7-3-5 to 3-79 is a change of fingers 1 7 3 (LH). Practice changing back an forth, from one pattern to the next, within a key (3-79 to 7-3-5).
• Chord Progression: 2-5-1 (major) in C, F, Bb, Eb (100 bpm). Notice that each group (Dm, G7, CM) uses the root tone scale throughout the progression (in this case C major). This is due to modes: Dorian, Mixolydian, to Ionian, all formed on the same key. This means that when following along with my RH as an improvisation, I can stay in the root key and simply play through the 2-5-1 chord change…very nice!! Practice this for next Technique, then change to E, A, D, G for next Chord Progression
• Song: Pretzel Logic – Practiced chord changes along with song (thanks YouTube and Apple Music). I think these sound pretty good. Need to nail down arrangement, then make a backing trach in BiaB. I think this may be “above the pay grade” for our band, but I like playing it. Interesting, C major scale will play over the entire song. I think that it is really Dm (Dorian), but I’m splitting hairs with this. Play with song and chart the chord/pattern changes or sections.

[Mark]

1/6/25 – 0445-0600

• Warm-up: Practiced 7-note scales and arpeggios in E, A, D and G; RH with octave in LH. Get off the root! Practice different starting positions.
• Technique: Practiced shell voicings (Traditional) for maj, min, and dom for E, A, D, and G (LH) Focused on 2-5-1 changes alternating positions between 3-79 and 7-3-5. Try Contemporary shell voicings.
• Progression: Using Biab at 100 bpm, played through 2-5-1 progression in E, A, D, and G. Alternated starting positions between 3-79 and 7-3-5. Finally, played each progression alternating back and forth between starting position, both up and down keyboard. Kept RH running in either scales or arpeggios of root key. This was good! Do more of the same, particularly with these keys.
• Song: Pretzel Logic (80 bpm) Proofed new Biab arrangement. Seems to work for practice. Ran through verse and chorus enough times to become comfortable. Verse with Biab is good, but chorus break with Biab is awkward. Work on Chorus and ending break. Need to demonstrate for band on Friday practice.

[Mark]

1/7/25 – 0500-0630

• Warm-up: Superstition bass pattern, key of F#, right hand only for entire riff (thinking keytar playing). Fairly straight forward with a good stretch to a 10th and pairs played every other note to keep the fat sound. Practice 7-note arpeggios within the same zone for Ab, Bb, F, C, G, D, A, E
• Technique: looking at traditional shell chord changes: Cm7, F7, BbM7, EbM7 and Gm7, C7, Fm7, Bb7. These are both used in Autumn Leaves and are tricky parts for me to remember. Try stride bass over 2-5-1 pattern.
• Chord Progression: 2-5-1 (major) in E, A, D, G, 100 bpm. Changing patterns back and forth between 3-79 and 7-3-5. Practiced small LH riffs between chords and running up/down using scale motion to reach each zone. Notice that the iv chord will fit in nicely for the V chord and provide some off “color”. Go back and do same idea over the C, F, Bb and Eb group.
• Song: Played through chord changes and RH melody line in Autumn Leaves from memory. Not bad, until I hit the tricky parts to remember. Play Autumn Leaves from memory.

Goal: Autumn Leaves et All of Me from memory before going on trip

[Mark]

1/8/25 – 0445-0615

• Warm-up: PLR vol. 1 pg. 13 & 14, worked through slowly to get hands together. Thumb exercise seemed easier (p. 14) so that tells me that the close movement of thirds is tough. Also, played Superstition rhythm with RH well. <b class="””">Move to pg. 15 and keep up with Superstition.
• Technique: played with inner arpeggio triad added to 4-note outer. Played this in both directions. Also, playing 4-note for 1 measure, triad for 1 measure and landing on V is a good way to end out improvisation since the dominant V leads you back to the I. Try adding in other dominants and leading to another key.
• Chord Progression: 2-5-1 (100 bpm) – Added some contemporary shells into my mix. Alternates are: 3-6-9 (3-79), 7-3-6 (7-3-5), & 6-3-5 (7-3-5). These are getting crazy! Switching back and forth between traditional and contemporary shells on alternating measures. Look at the use of diminished or b alternates to lead to key change.
• Song: Pretzel Logic – played with song on Apple Music. Goes well but there are still some issues with the last section. Autumn Leaves – played melody until it could be played without looking. Added it to chords (LH) and it works well. Some of the chords aren’t “as written”, but they sound good. All of Me – played through just to make sure that it was still there…it is. Take a closer look at the end of Autumn Leaves. Make sure to get the chords correct, as written first, then look at alternates to understand the difference.

[Mark]

1/9/25 – 0445 – 0600

• Warm-up: 1/2 step approaches (ascending/descending) to scales and whole step approaches (descending) into arpeggios. Practiced this mostly in Bb, E, A, D, C since they seem to be used a lot in both popular and jazz music.
• Technique: Started looking at 2-5-1 minor traditional shells. Need to start pairing this with the major 2-5-1 practices since they use a common scale throughout both forms.
• Chord progression: Went back to original group (C, F, Bb, Eb) and tried some of the recent practice methods (common scale/arpeggio, alternating 3-79, 7-3-5) and the use of contemporary shells.
• Song: Started looking at Roadhouse Blues (Doors) as there is some interest with the band. Not bad, I can at least play the rhythm and basic RH together, but this will need work.

Starting to gather notes and information together in anticipation of upcoming travel to Australia. Since I will not have access to a piano (5 weeks!!!), I will need to shift over to theory study and melody improvisation by ear, using my iPad. We’ll see how it goes…

[Mark]

1/10/25

0445-0545

• Technique: Played around with simple 2-note (LH) and 3-note shells, looking at songs the band plays. Can I use these?
• Song: Come Together – the band has shown some interest in playing this so I need to put on my Billy Preston hat and make an arrangement (a very big hat). After working through this most of the morning, I have a good arrangement that can be played along with the song on Apple Music. I split the keyboard into a Hofner bass (LH) and Rhodes piano (RH – thank you Nord!), and it sounds great! Now to roll this out at practice later this a.m.

Vacation in 2 days!!

[Mark]

1/10/25 – Band Practice (www.mingusband.com)

1000 – 1200

• New Song Jam: Today we were finally able to get together as a group and run through some new material. This included: Come Together, Pretzel Logic, Hotel California, Gentle On My Mind, Keep Your Hands To Yourself, Polk Salad Annie and Walkin’ The Dog. Lot’s of stuff for 2 hours…
• Come Together, Pretzel Logic et Hotel California seem good wrt format and playing. Gentle On My Mind is good for playing, but need work on the vocal since it’s pretty complex. Hands to Yourself, Polk Salad Annie, and Walkin’ the Dog are simple, but will need some thought to make them unique.
• Most of these are very dependent upon playing the Nord keyboard. They need the flexibility of sounds present in the Nord to make them stand out. Particularly true if we do not have a bass player.

Off on our vacation Sunday morning (1/12). Not sure about how often I’ll get to journal…

[Mark]

1/11/25

0445-0545

Last real opportunity to practice prior to vacation. Limited this to review of new songs played at yesterday’s band practice. Spent a lot of time working on Come Together et Pretzel Logic. I can play both of these to the original song on Apple Music, still need to cover these a few times to really sink in.

Want to look at Get Back again. I think that we could add this into the mix.