When we begin building our own practice routines, it's easy to feel lost in crowd of choices. To make it a bit easier and give you some ideas on how to get started, I’ve collected 25 practice ideas that you can take and place into your own routines.
Here’s how to make these work best for you:
Customize them to your needs.
If you see one that catches your eye but it feels too easy or too hard, change it. And if you do, I’d love to hear what worked for you (just toss me an email or comment below!)
Pick the ones that apply directly to your goals.
Don’t practice something just because someone tells you to. You should always evaluate how you’re spending your time according to the specific musical goals (both long-term and monthly) that you’ve established. And how to best establish those is definitely going to be the next blog I write, but there are some thoughts on it here.
Once you finish one, see if you can make a new one for your next session that’s even harder.
If you nailed an arpeggio challenge at 100BPM, maybe 125 BPM is your next step.
Keep an eye on what tripped you up.
If you ran through all 12 keys of something and did great on every single one but Db and Ab, well, now you know what you need to focus on next session.
Happy practicing!
Beginner Practice Challenges
Just because these are on the “beginner” side of things does not mean they aren’t worth doing. You may have weaknesses in some areas that you aren't aware of.
#1 Play Happy Birthday in every key, starting with C Major and going around the circle of fourths.
Skills Practiced:
- Ear Training
- Transposition
Notes:
- Hint: Happy Birthday starts on the 5th.
- Can you embellish the melody easily?
#2 Turn on a slow B flat blues backing track. Take as many solos as you can without playing the root or the fifth of the chords.
Skills Practiced:
- Focused improvisation
- Interval training
Notes:
- Happy Birthday in C Major does not start on C.
- The last note of the song (“you”) will be the same note you need for the two pickup notes (“Hap-py”)
#3 Take the chords to Autumn Leaves, then arpeggiate each chord up to the ninth and back down again @ quarter notes at 60BPM.
Skills Practiced:
- Arpeggios
- Improvisation
Notes:
- Be careful, some ninths might be a half step lower than you think.
- You can sub in any song you like here.
Intermediate Practice Challenges
These are a significant step up. If you have any questions just ask!
#4 Arpeggiate the notes of a C7b9 chord and hold the top note. Go around the circle of fourths and outline a 7b9 chord for each one.
Skills Practiced:
- Arpeggios
- Improvisation
Notes:
- A V7b9 chord is the 1st, major third, 5th, flat seventh, and flat ninth. So in C, it would be C, E, G, Bb, and Db.
- How fast can you go with confidence?
- Try a V7#11 next! For C, you would sub the Db for a Gb.
#5 Turn on a metronome to 80 and play each click as a quarter note. Have your friend fade the volume out on the metronome as you continue to play. Then, fade the volume back in on the metronome.
Skills Practiced:
- Rhythm
Notes:
- If you don’t have a friend handy, then Paul David has a video that does something similar.
- Try the same thing but have the metronome acting as different parts of the measure (e.g. the & of 2).
#6 Turn on a metronome to 120 and play Blue Bossa, except the metronome isn’t the quarter note – it is the offbeat eighth note.
Skills Practiced:
- Rhythm
Notes:
- To get the most out of it, learn the chords by ear.
- You can also sub any song in any genre you prefer and do the same exercise.
#7 Pick four different random notes, then put the chord labels M7, m7, 7, and o7 with them. Outline each chord up to the seventh and back slowly until you’ve got it down. Then, reverse it and arpeggiate each chord from the seventh down to the root and back. Try to get it to eighth notes at 120.
Skills Practiced:
- Arpeggios
- Vertical line-building
Notes:
- Practice it in swung and straight eighths.
- Sub in any chord quality you’re scared of.
Dig these? Want to get better at music faster? Then you should come hang with us on the Noted Newsletter. I just send out thoughts on practicing every few weeks — no strings attached.
Get Noted here.
#8 Play a major scale up to the ninth and back in eighth notes at 140 (quarter note).
Try the following patterns: accent the odd-numbered beats, accent the even-numbered beats, two slurred and two staccato, two staccato and two slurred, accent every third beat (will take three repetitions until first beat is accented again). Come up with three more patterns and practice them. Then, pick two new keys and do all the same patterns for each.
Skills Practiced:
- Scales
- Rhythm
- Transposition
- Technique
Notes:
- Sub any scale in!
- Instead of going up and down in the exact order, try thirds or 4ths to kick this up a notch.
#9 Take a hard section of whatever piece or song you’re working on right now. From the last note of the hard section, play the notes backwards to the first note of the section without any rhythm, slowly. Then, speed it up.
Once you know the notes, then introduce the rhythm – try to play the rhythm backwards. Don’t play it normally yet! As you’re playing backwards, notice what your body is doing – are there any places where your hands tense up? Is there any place where you hesitate? Try to eliminate these things at a slow tempo, then once you can speed it up, try to play it normally again.
Skills Practiced:
- Transcription
- Technique
Notes:
- Slow and steady wins the technique race. This is a particularly good exercise for licks and songs that require techniques you want to work on (e.g. economy picking for guitarists or alternate fingerings for pianists).
#10 Take a really fast lick you know and either transcribe or get the music for it. Take about a ten-second snippet of it.
Play each note one at a time, out of rhythm, and slowly. Then, try to play the notes in the rhythm of a dotted eighth note and a sixteenth note. Go slowly at first, then once you have it, switch it up and play it in the rhythm of a sixteenth note and a dotted eighth note. Once you have this, try to play it normally.
Skills Practiced:
- Transcription
- Rhythm
Notes:
- Jump off this by creating new licks based off of the original with new rhythmic variations.
- The point is to internalize a lick and then be able to access the spirit of it (and/or quote it) as you improv.
#11 Take a popular song out of a genre that you don’t usually play in and either find music or transcribe the melody.
Play the song in the style of the genre that it comes from, and then play it in the style of the genre that you usually do. What differences are you making? Can you play it in two more different styles?
Skills Practiced:
- Transcription
- Genre-swapping
Notes:
- Pick a song that interests you from a groove or harmonic perspective!
- Think critically about what your instrument contributes to each genre and how your technique influences the sound.
#12 Take a hard lick you’ve been struggling with. Turn the metronome on so that each note of the passage is at 80BPM.
Play it five times, then turn the metronome to 85 and repeat. If you miss a note, keep restarting until you hit it 5x without messing up. Keep going until the passage is at tempo (you may have to cut the tempo in half and do two notes per click.)
Skills Practiced:
- Transcription
- Technique
Notes:
- Don’t cheat! If you can’t nail it 5x with complete confidence, don’t keep upping the metronome and locking in bad muscle memory.
- Once you've learned the lick, how can you change it to make it your own?
Advanced Musical Challenges
#13 Transcribe a solo of someone playing your instrument. Play the solo along with the recording. Then, play the solo along with the recording, but reading from the music, play all the notes a major second lower than written. Then, play a major second above what’s written.
Skills Practiced:
- Transcription
- Real-time harmony
- Transposition
Notes:
- Sub any other interval. Major thirds and sixths are classics!
#14 Outline the following progression in a key of your choice at four clicks of 130 per chord: I ii7 bVIM7 bVII. Move chromatically up to the next key until you’ve played in all twelve.
Skills Practiced:
- Arpeggios
- Harmony
- Transposition
Notes:
- Sub any section of any song you’re learning.
#15 Pick a random note on your instrument, and play it, then immediately sing a minor second above it. Pick a second note and sing a minor second above it. Do this for all the interval types from minor second to major seventh. Then, start over and sing the interval, but below the note.
Skills Practiced:
- Ear training
- Intervals
Notes:
- Swap the order in which you sing first or play first.
- The end goal is to be able to hear something and replicate it on your instrument immediately.
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That's it!
Oh, and if you don't like to nerd out about all this stuff and would rather do one thing — just TRANSCRIBE. That's it. Just exclusively transcribe the songs you want to play and the people you want to sound like. That will do more than just about anything else.
Want to know you're making every minute in the practice room count?
