Started jazz piano lessons back in August. Teacher has really thrown me in at the deep end which is great, but I sit down every day and think 'where do I start?'. I know I can't possibly get through everything he recommends (I can manage an hour a day maybe 5 days a week, sometimes a bit more).

I'm trying to keep on top of 3rds (2 octaves in tones, semi-tones, round the cycle of fourths) 7ths (major minor, tones, semi-tones, round the cycle of fourths , open and closed and so on) plus II V I progresssions in all keys but he keeps adding more! I've now got a load of chord drills, a lengthy blues lick, today more licks... all to be learned in every key. That's before any ear training, writing improvisation lines and trying out chord voicings etc. Every new 'lick' or progression can take up to a few hours to crack, then it's learning by rote/heart...!

How do others manage it?

Sounds familiar! albeit with some different exercises for sax rather than piano



Short answer is I don't - I do as much as I can, but never as much as I feel I really need to.

The good thing about the learning licks etc in every key exercises is that the more you do the easier it becomes, and remarkably quickly. I used to be painstakingly slow at it, but now it's become quite manageable. You also find that the more you do the more the same patterns, chord changes etc crop up over and over again, so you're not having to learn it fresh each time, but just a variation of something you already know. Given that you've only been working properly on this stuff for 4 months or so it sounds as though you're making really good progress.

Hi jinxi

I had a similar problem with piano a while ago - each hand separate, hands together, contrary motion, similar motion, chords, broken chords, legato, staccato, finger drills...

One of the things I did after a couple of months was cut my lessons down to once a fortnight. I felt it was all moving too fast so cutting my lessons back slowed it down and gave me a bit of breathing space. Your lessons sound just like mine were - you get an exercise/scale, go back the following week with it sorted and so you get another one I was lucky that my teacher was fine about cutting lessons down, but not all teachers would be. I'm glad I did it though and it stopped me feeling under so much pressure.

Another thing I did was cut out some of the exercises, eg I stopped doing staccato scales for the time being, which instantly halved the time I was spending on scales.

I was also in the habit of playing *all* scales, every time - just to "make sure" I was secure on them. So I wrote all the scales variations on slips of paper, played each one through 3 times, and if I was secure each time, I put it in the Secure envelope and didn't play it again. Eventually I only had about 4 variations that weren't as secure as the others so those were the only ones I practised every day. The others I just need to play once a week to keep my hand in.

It can all seem a bit like a runaway train unless you slow it down a bit - well it did to me anyway. Hope you manage to find your own way through it

Phew - glad I'm not the only one!

I've been using a grid with all the things I have to practice down one side and the days of the week down the other. I start a new one each week and the idea is to 'tick off' things I've managed to practise, so I can spot anything I'm completely neglecting, and areas where I can afford to miss a day or two. This works quite well, but in the run up to Christmas, I got really busy at work, had to put in quite a few evenings and noticed my grids had less and less ticks!

I've got a couple of weeks off work over Christmas, and it's nearly a month until I see my teacher again, so I've decided to give myself a couple of 'goals' for each week (new things or things I'm shaky on), so I don't feel I have to practice everything. Will see how I get on! Right, back to the grind!

What's wrong with some teachers? Shouldn't he be asking you what you can reasonably manage in the time you have available between one lesson and the next and setting practice accordingly? It's very tempting for an instrumental teacher, jazz or otherwise, to overload a particularly promising student with too much homework. The teacher sees the potential and wants you to progress quickly to satisfy some image they have of you a few weeks or months down the line, but he's not taking your own needs into account!

When my son was learning jazz saxophone, his teacher would set him three or four scales and arpeggios and maybe two or at the most three pieces to work on with a backing cd. He'd give him a few licks to work into his soloing but would never set more than my son felt he could reasonably cope with. Consequently my son's progress was steady and solid; if he'd been set more I'm sure he'd have stumbled and found it just too overwhelming.

As a jazz violin teacher myself I find myself succumbing occasionally to the temptation to set too much and try to resist it as hard as I can. The student needs achievable goals, not mountains to climb between lessons! If I'm not setting enough it soon becomes obvious so I start setting a little more but generally I find students are happier with too little than too much, not because they're lazy but because they want to feel they can get on top of what I set them.

Just ask him to set you a little less!

Well I have been upfront about the fact I can't do everything/that I'm still catching up from week to week. His attitude seems to be that if we waited until I'd got everything licked, before we moved onto the next thing, I'd be bored senseless by now.

When he sets me 'homework', I don't feel I have to do it and I certainly don't get 'tested' on it the following week. As I move onto the next piece of the jigsaw (as it were), it's very apparent what I've 'got' and what still needs work. And of course, as I am an adult learner, every lesson starts with a chat about how I've been getting on with stuff since the previous lesson (and usually lots of questions from me).

I guess I just assumed that's how jazz is taught, but it's very interesting to hear your thoughts. My teacher often says 'don't expect miracles. Give it a year and you'll see...' But I would like to be able to measure my progress in more concrete terms e.g. have learned x number of songs in the next three months or whatever.

I guess there is also the expectation that as an adult learner, with a fair bit of musical experience (but not on piano!) I can, to an extent, organise my own learning. I don't know if piling it on is any reflection of my ability. I certainly don't feel as if I'm showing any particular promise at the moment!

Maybe he worries a bit too much about you getting bored along the way! I often set my students exercises involving seemingly senseless going up and down, the meandering around dominant bebop scales, and tell them that they need to learn a few strict rules to imbibe the genre before they can cast off the rules to some extent and play more freely. I find as long as you tell them where they're headed, including showing them the destination and explaining clearly why they have to do this, this and this before they get there, they accept the journey quite readily even though from where I am it might look a bit tedious!

But anyway, there are probably as many ways of teaching jazz as there are jazz teachers. Some start with rhythms, some like to dive straight into scales, some like teaching licks first. Also, you're learning jazz piano which is a completely different phenomenon to jazz saxophone or piano because you have to learn chords and comping as well as single line improvisations. I'm sure you're doing great, but just go at your own pace and perhaps ask him not to set you quite as much.

I do have to say I don't like my students moving on to the next stage before they've properly absorbed the last one but perhaps that's just me....?

Good luck!

I tend to think I could learn 3 tunes - then I'd know 3 tunes. Or I could learn the chords, scales, licks, vocabulary etc in every key - then I can play any number of tunes I like. I think that taking time with the building blocks helps you to progress more quickly in the long run. I think that approach would be more difficult with a child or with someone with no musical background, but given that the musical competence, the motivation and the desire to work hard are all there it's a good way to go about it.

I have to confess that I know jinxi's jazz piano teacher - he occasionally covers lessons in the jazz workshop I do when the regular teacher's away. He's something of a favourite with the group and we always leave buzzing with enthusiasm even if brains do get a bit scrambled along the way sometimes.

He is very fond of saying 'just give it a year...!'

It seems like a helluva long way away, but when I think about what I've learned in 4 months, I can see what he means...

But sometimes it IS hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when I'm ploughing through exercise after exercise, chord drill after chord drill etc.

One of the traits of being a good teacher is to understand how much the pupil / students are learning. This is normally done through assessment and over time the teacher will learn how mush the pupil can cope with esp. in the case of one to one teaching.
Overloading any one with work leads to stress and I would think that you are now in this situation. I say this as you have posted to this website and are now looking for advice. I also guess that you think you should be able to learn everything your teacher gives you in the time frame that suites them.
This is wrong and I would suggest you talk this through with your teacher explaining that you want to learn at your pace not theirs. Practicing somthing and getting it dead right before you move on is better than learning two things and getting them half right. That leads to a half good player.

i'm doing grade three jazz sax this term and the simple truth is...
i don't practise.
I do the scales, but nothing else. I hate doing the improvisations without the accompaniment... so i don't. and they are meant to be on-the-spur-of-the-moment anyway
ok that is probably really lazy of me. but I am practising for grade 6 sax and violin too, and a piano festival.
so its all good

mmm...well the way I practise for jazz exams is a a lot different from the way I practice jazz piano skills. I see them as quite separate really. I have to ask though...if you hate the pieces and the impros, why are you doing it?

Re: jazz teacher. As time goes on, I think we are getting to know each other so I'm getting more confident about what I want to do. I'm realising that while it's obviously essential for me to be doing chord drills, scales, licks and exercises, I need to be working on 'real' pieces, and seeing things 'in context' so I've been picking out standards I want to learn from my Fake Book, and asking him to work with me on those in lessons. Ultimately, as well as playing with other people, I'd really like to be able to accompany myself singing standards, so I keep reminding myself (and him) of that.

no! I don't hate doing it, I just don't like doing it without the accompaniment! I practise the bits that aren't improvisations, I just don't practise improvising.