Random Progressions: Practicing Jazz with Chance

by Patrick Hinsberger (14.04.2023)

Quality beats quantity. This also applies to practicing. Much more important than the number of hours we spend with our instrument is how we use that time. Endless, monotonous repetition of difficult passages is not always helpful. Creativity is the key. Or chance: Random Progressions allow us to easily create a variety of personalised exercises that are perfectly suited to our abilities.

Variety improves the brain's ability to learn

The ability to play a piece of music in a certain way is good and important. However, it does not necessarily mean that you will become technically confident and musically versatile. Several studies have shown this (e.g. „It's Not How Much; It's How: Characteristics of Practice Behavior and Retention of Performance Skills“). Practicing with many variations helps to develop this confidence for concerts in the rehearsal room. It does not matter if we actually use these variations during the concert. They allow us to keep practising in a fresh and stimulating way and, at best, even to get into a state of flow.

In flow with Random Progressions

An important prerequisite for getting into a flow state is that the exercise is perfectly suited to our ability. It should not be too easy, otherwise we get bored. But it shouldn't be too challenging either, or we'll give up in frustration. So we look for the sweet spot: the level of difficulty that is slightly above our current ability. The Random Progressions are a tool to create such exercises for yourself.

One exercise – many uses

As the name suggests, Random Progressions are a random series of twelve chords, notes or keys, depending on which exercise you choose. The rule is: the more unusual and less logical, the better.

If you have trouble choosing a random series at the beginning, I suggest you visit the website TwelveTones. Every time you reload, the random generator will give you a new twelve-tone series to start using straight away.

The peculiarity of the Random Progressions is that you determine the difficulty and its use. This makes it interesting for advanced players as well as beginners.

Let's take the following twelve-tone row as an example:

Warm up

This series can now be used throughout your practice day. If you play a wind instrument, this series is the ideal way to start your practice session with long tones.

Scales and chords

If you play piano, guitar or bass, you can warm up your fingers by using the notes in this series as a starting point for scale practice. These can be major/minor scales at first, but later they can be advanced scales such as dominant scales (HM5, altered, etc.) or symmetrical scales such as semitone - wholetone / wholetone - semitone. Wind players can also practise scales with this series.

Next, you could play broken triads: Assign a colour to the notes for each type of triad (major, minor, diminished, etc.). Variation: Practice the chords in their inversions. Depending on the chords and tempo, you may find yourself thinking twice.

If this is too challenging for you at first, you can practice intervals that you determine in advance.