Welcome Tim
Excited to have you on-board here too!
Your 10-year comment made me chuckle
If you are completely new to jazz piano, but have some prior piano experience and can read music to a basic level (treble clef) then Iād say 2 years is a good amount of time to see real progress and be able to entertain others whilst playing in a ājazz styleā.
This is a goal for many students: to play for their personal pleausre, and perhaps occasionally entertain others.
Now, hereās a couple of things you should keep in mind with practice time:
1) Practice time at the piano
There is actual practice time where you are sat at the piano - for yourself, youāve said 30 mins - 1 hour a day.
The first thing you should do is break that up into small āslotsā of practice time - 10 to 15 minutes.
That way, you will be able to cover 3 - 6 topics in 1 sitting.
If youāre completely new to jazz piano, hereās what you could spend those 10 min slots on:
- major 251s
- rootless 251s
- minor 251s
- listening and emulating recordings
- playing and learning a jazz standard(s)
The main point is to practice the area for 10-15 minutes without distraction and then move on. Most importantly, you must revisit what you have practiced.
Just like going to the gym, you wonāt see the improvements straight away, it takes times, and the improvement - or muscle growth to continue with the analogy - will happen whilst you are sleeping. When you come back to the piano, you will be a bit sharper on those subjects.
In the same way, that when you turn up at the gym, you know what you are going to do, you should have the same mindset with the piano. So that you know exactly how you are going to spend that 30 mins - 1 hour before you even sit down at the piano.
Follow a focused practice schedule for 6 months and you will see huge improvements. What I have just outlined is a brilliant way to structure your practice sessions.
2) Next we have practice time whilst away from the piano
You can be working on your knowledge of jazz theory whilst away from the piano. For example, perhaps you commute in the morning and evening. Perhaps you wait for the kids to finish school or activities, or any time of the day when you have a spare few moments.
You should spend this time wisely. Hereās how:
Listening To Jazz
Make sure you are listening to jazz regularlyā¦ you need to completely immerse yourself in the idiom. If you commute to work, listen to jazz all the way there and back, any time in the day that you have the opportunity to listen to jazz, do it.
You canāt play this music with conviction unless you have spent the time to listen! One of the main reasons I set up the forum, to allow students to discover and share music.
Scroll through this thread and take a listen to some of the jazz recordings shared by our community.
Or check out these recommended jazz piano albums for longer playlists for a drive or commute.
You will discover some musicians that you like, some that you donāt like. Make note of this and listen more to the sounds you like.
Most importantly with improvisation, when you improvise, you are calling upon a ālibraryā of ideas/lines/rhythms/patterns in your brain from the records you have listened to. True improvisation is almost subconscious, you donāt have time to think because you are composing music in real time.
The more you listen, the richer your brainās ālibraryā will become. I cannot stress the importance of this enough!
Testing yourself away from the Piano
There are many things you can āquizā yourself on whilst away from the piano.
Much of jazz is based on numbers, I outline this in the first lesson of the course on āMajor Scalesā.
In jazz, instead of thinking of note names C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C we think of scales numerically 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-1
This then makes all keys equal. When you learn voicngs by the numeric construction, you can easiliy transpose them and find them in other keys.
The same applies to licks, lines, progressions, even entire tunes.
Hereās a few exercises to get you started:
One of our students - @bkzl - created this fantastic Major Scales Quiz Tool: https://major-scales.bkzl.co/ - you can quizz yourself at this away from the piano and ask yourself āwhat is the 5th of Bb Majorā or āwhat is the 6th of D Majorā etcā¦
You should be able to get these in a flash, and by practicing this, you soon will do.
Next you could say, what are the 2-5-1 chords in Ab Major, ā¦ if it takes you longer than a split second to say āBb-7 / Eb7 / Abmaj7ā then you need to quiz yourself on the major 251 progression.
Then you could say what is the 1-6-2-5 Progression in C Major
What are the diatonic 7th chords of C Major
etcā¦
Make use of your idle time in the day. Thatās how we all have done it, I used to do this all the time, and I still do it to get my head around more advanced harmonic concepts. It will work wonders.
Finally, jazz theory is very challenging to begin Tim, with but i can guarantee that with time and focused daily practice you will see improvements with my teaching method.
If youād like me to elaborate on anything above just let me know