# Effectivity of practice

**URL:** https://forum.troygrady.com/t/effectivity-of-practice/30491
**Category:** Off-Topic
**Created:** [April 21, 2020, 5:09am UTC](https://forum.troygrady.com/t/effectivity-of-practice/30491 "2020-04-21T05:09:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 3

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### Author: ![john\_louis](https://forum.troygrady.com/user_avatar/forum.troygrady.com/john_louis/32/3501_2.png) [@john\_louis](https://forum.troygrady.com/u/john_louis)
#### Post date: [April 21, 2020, 1:18pm UTC](https://forum.troygrady.com/t/effectivity-of-practice/30491/3 "2020-04-21T13:18:05Z")

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First-off! You should check out this post on How to organize your practice time: [The 18-minute Practicing Routine](https://forum.troygrady.com/t/the-18-minute-practicing-routine/6304)

Now, with a clear idea of how to organize your practice time, we can talk about what to practice. From my point of view, one need to select practice material based on our personal objectives with the instrument. There are however a few things that are essential to every musician:

1. Ear-training (rhythmic, melodic and harmonic)
2. Reading
3. Music theory
4. Harmony

This group of topics is important to develop your musicianship and help you experience the music in a most natural way.

Now, there is the technical part in the instrument where you can totally select material based on your interests. For example, my goal with the instrument is being able to improvise melodic lines over chord changes, so my technical routine includes:

1. Licks
2. Scale sequences
3. Chord changes
4. Right hand exercises extracted from licks where I find technical difficulties
5. Left hand exercises

And last But not least, I like to isolate sections of a chord progressions and practice improvisation over that. For example, in a ii-V-I, i like to practice ii-V and V-I in isolation before practicing the whole progression

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