The practice clock clicks at sixty. Beats. Per minute. Even that may be too much. It’s hard to tell. Time crawls when you’re working.
Even though I’ve logged some time on the piano, the first two years were for a grade, so practice was tailored for maximum short term effect. Scale skills were acquired through brute force, usually without a metronome. Accuracy was the only priority. Know the crucial tones that give the scale its character and be sure to hit them (ideally on the test).
It’s a different world now. I must truly learn the scales, as they’re the foundation of improvising. I know this because, uh, everybody says so. I personally never listened to a solo and thought, “oh this dude is just straight flexing the melodic minor.” But I at least understand that when improvising in a given key, the, uh, actual notes in that key are where you begin. My ear is hardly a trained one, so for a while I’m going to be taking a lot of these rules for their word. It may be some time before I can really hear what I’m doing.
Brute force won’t do. Patience, diligence, repetition, these are the most wanted assets. For scales and beyond.
About halfway down the pyramid, I decided I wanted to learn the harmonic minor scale of each key (in addition to the major and blues scales I’m already learning). That may not have been a genius move. Instead of the two scales a week I was used to, I upped it to three and tried to shovel the backlog of previously unlearned scales in a single sitting. I took to the task surprisingly well, but coming back at it the next day, I find the 3-groups and 4-groups of different keys are blurring together. Previously ironed out scales are starting to wrinkle.
I was supposed to start A yesterday, but I think I’ll pause the progression and spend the week ensuring that I have fully processed the others, particularly the harmonic minors. Any sudden defection is a sign to slow down, something I’m still not used to doing in practice.