Phases of the mind

We will develop our memories in phases, as it would be impossible to practice everything that we need to practice, all at once. Much in the same way that you would not go to the gym to bench press one thousand pounds once, we will venture to br/eak everything down into small, bite sized chunks, which will allow us the time and mental rest that we need to maintain our practice schedule over a long period of time, and avoid burning out after only a few sessions.

Phase 1

In phase one we will introduce ourselves to the process and methodology of our practice program with the most fundamental information possible. This may be a good phase to repeat a few times until we feel completely comfortable with all of the information contained within. After we complete phase 1 then each subsequent phase will become both more challenging, and also more musical, as this is a vital component to becoming a more fluent and natural musician.

Circle of 5ths

During this first phase we will use the circle of 5ths as our guide through each skill. The reason that we will use the circle of 5ths is that it helps to create a state of pseudo randomness, or as close to randomness as we can get, while maintaining some semblance of structure and organization. This approach will help to alleviate our reliance on playing things using the context of the things around it. What this means is that once you have found one particular thing on the keyboard, either a note, or a chord, or something else, it is very easy to simply move each finger up one note on the keyboard to the next one, which would then allow us to play the next version of the thing that we are practicing. But by doing this we are essentially avoiding using our mind to figure out the next thing, relying instead only on the movement of our fingers to adjacent notes. But this approach will fail us if we are tasked with trying to find a thing from memory, because without the physical context that we learned that thing with, we will be lost. By using the circle of 5ths we are forcing ourselves to recall each piece of information on it’s own, which will help us to internalize each unique piece of information faster and more deeply.

So, without further adieu…

Notes

The first skill that we will practice everyday is finding all twelve notes on the keyboard through the circle of 5ths. We will also cycle through the circle of 5ths everyday as well, starting on a new note each successive day of practice. So over the course of two weeks we will have played all twelve notes on the keyboard everyday and we will have started on each successive note of the circle of 5ths every day that we have practiced.

Rhythm

Notes are great and all, but music would hardly be enjoyable without a little rhythm thrown into the mix. We will start developing our rhythmic memories by focusing on the most fundamental rhythmic patterns that exist in music, which are the multiplicative patterns. ‘Multiplicative’ may sound like a fancy word, but it’s simple, as these are patterns that are based on a series of note lengths that are either twice as long, or half as long as the next or previous note length. You may also call them exponential note values, as they come into existence by multiplying or dividing a note value by two. So, a whole note divided by two creates a half note, and a half note divided by two creates a quarter note, and so on… In other words, a quarter note times two is a half note, and a half note times two is a whole note, etc…

Notice that the half note is half as long as the whole note, and the quarter note is half as long again as the half note. We would also need four quarter notes to equal one whole note, thus the name quarter (of a whole) note.

To practice rhythm we will start our process by familiarizing ourselves with basic rhythmic patterns and play them on the keyboard using one note at a time to begin with. Using this approach will allow us to focus our energy on becoming comfortable with counting and playing different rhythmic patterns using different rhythmic values. Our approach to rhythm will be to internalize a few fundamental rhythmic patterns that utilize the most common and useful rhythmic values.

This approach will require an outside source of tempo, as it is essentially useless to be our own source of tempo when we are practicing. There is simply no way to know how accurate our timing is without something to reference against. So we will need some kind of metronome to give us our tempo and for us to play against to develop our rhythmic accuracy.

So our approach will be to practice different rhythmic values everyday to internalize them and help us to understand them intrinsically. We will increase our speed by 10 bpm every day until we have gone from very slow to very fast, and everything in between. This will help us internalize these patterns even better. We will also play our patterns on every different note on the keyboard, so as to become comfortable with playing rhythmic patterns on every note that exists. Here are the fundamental multiplicative patterns that will will internalize in phase 1.

Intervals

Now, practicing notes and rhythmic patterns aren’t really all that challenging, per say, but intervals are a bit of a different story. In fact, one would argue that practicing intervals by themselves, isolated from their involvement in music, could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. But this would be a bad attitude to take, because after notes and rhythm, intervals are vital to our development of a deep understanding of everything else that is yet to come in the musical language. And unlike notes and rhythms, intervals are even more important for our understanding of scales and chords and almost everything else that involves the combination of notes. The minor and major scales get their name from intervals. The same is true for every chord that exists. We analyze melodies and harmonies in terms of intervals, and almost everything starts to make a heaping spoonful more sense when we think through the lens of intervals.

But to practice intervals is to essentially inflict torture upon ourselves, at least, in isolation.

“Why?”, you might ask.

Because intervals aren’t music, only small pieces of music, and isolating one interval at a time and practicing all iterations of that interval can be very tedious, especially when you are practicing some of the more dissonant intervals. But if we can develop a solid understanding and memory of every single interval, then we can build a really solid understanding and memory of everything else that is yet to come, as they are simply that integral to the foundation to our knowledge.

Melody

Practicing scales will work in a similar fashion to notes, rhythms, and intervals, but with a twist. Every two week period we will alter our approach to practicing our scales. In the first two week phase we will play each scale using the following pattern, which is essentially a linear melody that moves up and down all of the notes in the current scale, in order. This is the same type of pattern that classical music instruction most commonly uses to teach scales. This means that every scale will be played starting on the root note and will move up through the scale until we reach the root note an octave above our starting note. We will then continue playing the scale back down until we arrive at the root again. This pattern is really a melodic pattern, albeit a rather uninteresting one, which we might consider to be a linear melodic pattern. Here is the pattern in full:

In subsequent phases of the practice regimen we will use much more interesting non-linear patterns to practice our scales, which will move us in the direction of understanding our scales through the lenses of compelling melodies.

Harmony

The next section of the program is harmony, in the form of chords. Remember that chords are an abstraction of the concept of harmony, which is an abstraction of music itself. Harmony happens when we take a piece of music and slice it into smaller pieces and analyze each piece as it’s own individual group of notes. We call these groups of notes chords. The way we are going to approach building our harmonic vocabulary is to literally build our chords from phase to phase, adding a new note each time we start our process over again with each new phase. We will start by playing the chords that accompany each scale combination after we have practiced the scales themselves. For the first phase we are only going to play the first two notes of every chord. This is going to force us to familiarize ourselves with the sound of two note harmonies, or diads, in every tonal center, or key. As an example, our first set of keys is A Minor / C Major, but they both share the same seven chords. We will focus on playing our two note chords starting on A first, and then play the same set of two note chords starting with C after that.

Putting it All Together

So, what you will do everyday is play the daily task in all five major areas of interest, which will help mke the process more palatable in the end.This is a rather exhaustive list of content to work through in total, but hopefully it has been broken up enough to allow you to work through it in the time that has been scheduled, without ever feeling truly overwhelmed. Do not be afraid to take more time on an element of the program if you are having trouble with it, but keep in mind that every element has been designed to compliment that other elements in the routine at that point in the schedule, so try not to linger on any one element for too long.

Please also keep in mind that the ultimate goal of this program is to help you tighten your focus and improve your fundamental theory, ear training and keyboard skills simultaneously, so if you skip any elements or do not follow through with the program fully then you will not get the full benefit of the routine, as it has been designed.