Practice plan
What a week looks like
One lesson a week, one checkpoint with Greg, and the same four blocks every day. The pacing notes say where to slow down.
Every day
- 20 min
- Structured listening, following the lesson's protocol.
- 15 min
- Keyboard exercise from the current lesson, plus the Module 1 warm-up.
- 15 min
- Transcription.
- 20 min
- Sketching.
Every week
- One lesson.
- One checkpoint with Greg.
- Ten minutes of sight-reading every day, below performance level, without stopping.
- Modules end with a piece.
Pacing
- Twenty foundations lessons plus thirty-seven composer's-path lessons is about one year at one lesson per week, and about two years at a working adult's pace.
- Part A Module 1 never ends. Slow scales and touch stay in the daily warm-up for the whole program.
- Modules 2, 3, and 6 of Part B are the slow ones. Expect them to take longer than the estimate says.
- Composing starts in Part B Module 2. Before that the work is listening and transcription, on purpose.
Checkpoint ledger
| Passed | Lesson | Checkpoint |
|---|---|---|
| L0 | How this path works Ten five-pass paragraphs written, including at least one honest structural criticism of your own EP. · A written practice schedule with percentages, capped at one hour, taped where you practice. · Sibelius installed, the A17 course finis… |
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| A1 | Slow scales up and down the keyboard with proper fingering All twelve major scales, two octaves, hands together, at 40 BPM, five Hesitation Test passes each, even tone from bottom to top. · Three keys extended to four octaves, hands together, at the same tempo and the same standard. · The five-s… |
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| A2 | How to touch the keyboard: the literature and the daily practice The warm-up routine, run on video end to end, under twelve minutes. · Fourteen consecutive logged days of it. · The pressed-versus-struck recording, and your one-sentence statement of what touch controls. · Four octaves of one scale at 4… |
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| A3 | Minor scales, natural, harmonic and melodic, and the blues scale, with fingering for every key All 36 minor scales, four octaves, hands together, at 40, no hesitation. · All 12 blues scales, four octaves, hands together, at 40. · The two melodic-minor right-hand exceptions, played and explained. · Your thumb audit log, with exactl… |
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| A4 | Practice method: the schedule, slow practice, and how not to practice The physical grid, photographed, with thirty dates pre-written and at least thirty marked cells. · Your written weekly schedule, in the format above, with your own minutes per block. · The intention log, two weeks minimum. · Say the caps… |
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| A5 | Basics of music theory: pitch, the staff, intervals, and the keyboard as a map Any named key found anywhere on the keyboard in under a second. · Forty staff notes read and forty written, clean, on the first pass. · Any interval named by number and quality when played, and any named interval played from any starting… |
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| A6 | Triads and inversions, and hearing them Any of the four triad qualities, any root, played within two seconds in either hand. · All three positions of any triad, named and played on demand. · Seven diatonic triad qualities recited in order in four keys, away from the piano. · 1… |
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| A7 | Seventh chords and upper extensions, built three ways and heard Any of the thirteen qualities played from any root, left hand on the bass, quality spoken aloud. · The five seventh qualities built by third-order from black-key roots without recalculating. · The ♯11-versus-♯4 distinction explained in y… |
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| A8 | The circle of fifths, complete All fifteen key signatures spelled cold, in order, in under two seconds each. · One chord quality played around the full circle in both directions at 40 with no stop. · Any of the five common secondary dominants inserted into a progressi… |
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| A8b | Diatonic harmony, function, and the blues progression Any chord in any key numbered and its function named, on sight. · Twelve-bar blues, all twelve keys, shell voicings, clean at 120 bpm. · The fast turnaround in six keys. · Three-and-seven exercise held through a full chorus of a standard… |
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| A9 | All seven diatonic modes on the piano Any of the 84 modes, called at random, played one octave up and down hands together with correct fingering and no hesitation. · The parent key for any called mode, stated before your hands move. · The brightness ordering recited from Lyd… |
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| A10 | All the other modes: melodic minor, harmonic minor, harmonic major, the symmetric scales, and the pentatonics All 21 minor-family modes, called at random, played one octave hands together with the parent named first. · The three parents in all twelve keys, fluent and slow. · Both diminished scales in all keys, produced from any root on demand. ·… |
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| A11 | Chord-scale relationships and voicings: drop-2, block chords, colors and superimpositions Any chord symbol from the map answered with its scale, spoken, in under two seconds. · Sixteen drop-2 shapes on C, played from memory, and any called four-note voicing converted on sight. · A drop-2 ii-V-I comped in all twelve keys with… |
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| A12 | What a motive is and how it develops You can state the difference between a motive and a melody, and say why the incomplete one is the useful one. · You can perform all eight development techniques on a cell you have never seen, at sight, slowly. · You can improvise a choru… |
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| A13 | Goal notes: a whole lesson You can state Greg's two-ingredient definition from memory and name the placements that make an arrival audible. · You can play the guide-tone line of a standard from memory and sing its upper voice. · You can improvise a chorus where ev… |
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| A13b | Motivic consistency and voice-leading as continuity You can name the four things a piece can hold constant and say which one your piece holds. · You can play the Ferrante chain in at least four keys with an identical voicing shape. · You can voice a full standard under the nearest-note ru… |
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| A14 | Musical progression: how a melody and a chord progression move forward You can define consonance and dissonance functionally and apply the test by ear to a chord you have never played. · You can play a twelve-bar blues at three harmonic rhythms and say what each is for. · You can write a progression with a… |
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| A15 | Rhythm foundations: time, feel, polyrhythm, odd meter at the piano 20 consecutive bars at 73 bpm in the sitting drill, clasp on the click. · Left-hand ostinato held for 16 bars at 40 bpm with one click every two bars, eyes closed. · Scale played on the sixteenth after the beat and on the sixteenth befor… |
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| A16 | Transcription and Bach: the two habits that make a composer One full transcribed chorus, played at tempo, from memory, with the record's feel. · A written analysis of eight bars of it, every note accounted for. · Two bars of it playable in all twelve keys, forwards and in retrograde. · BWV 846 pl… |
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| A17 | Learning Sibelius Sibelius installed, MIDI keyboard connected, shortcuts PDF printed. · Step-time entry fluent: a 16-bar melody entered in under five minutes without the mouse. · BWV 772 engraved from the score and visually matching the urtext. · A one-pa… |
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| A18 | Sight-reading enough to write sheet music 60 consecutive days of the ten-minute routine, logged, with no page repeated. · Harris Grade 5 or 6 pages read at sight, straight through, no stopping. · A previously unseen Riemenschneider chorale played hands together, four voices, slo… |
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| L1 | Hearing as a composer hears Five-pass log complete on one piece, with a vertical paragraph of real length. · "Bleed" custody calls correct at all three timestamps, three passes running. · The "Everything in Its Right Place" loop played at the piano from your own ea… |
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| L2 | The interval as expressive force Character descriptions for all twelve intervals, written from memory. · Interval profiles for one known melody and for one line of your own from "Cloud Speak," with your two overused intervals named. · One tritone recontextualized under… |
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| L3 | The motive: three or four notes that generate a world Twenty or more distinct ideas generated from the cell C, D flat, F, with the count written down. · A full chorus of "Autumn Leaves" soloed out of time on one three-note cell, goal notes named one chord ahead. · BWV 847 subject played fro… |
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| L4 | Horizontal and vertical: polyphonic hearing Three-pass listening done on BWV 772 and Inventions 4, 8, and 13. · Eight bars of the F minor Sinfonia's middle voice hummed accurately. · Play-one-sing-one working both directions on the first eight bars of BWV 772. · Sixteen bars of th… |
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| L5 | Consonance, dissonance, and tension Both halves of the chord-level and key-level experiment, explained in a sentence, and three suspension types in four keys held two beats. · A full "Autumn Leaves" chorus on thirds and sevenths, no missed changes. · One recorded blues cho… |
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| L6 | Pulse, grid, and the layered meter: Meshuggah's method against Stravinsky's Play "Bleed" and name the custody chain in real time. · Hold 17 bars of 4/4 with the foot while cycling 17 sixteenths with the right hand. · State the LCM re-alignment point for any cycle length against 4/4 without a calculator. · Explai… |
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| L7 | Rotated riffs and unexpected beginnings: rotation as a structural operation Play any of four rotations of an 11-sixteenth cycle on request. · Produce a correct 6x6 rotational array from a hexachord, by hand, in under ten minutes. · Play three columns of that array as chords and describe their harmonic character.… |
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| L8 | Additive process: Dream Theater, Reich, and Babbitt's time points Play a 3-4-3-5 unit at tempo with the click on the unit's first beat only. · Demonstrate linear and interrupted additive processes over the same ostinato. · Complete twelve phase shifts of the Piano Phase pattern. · Recite Babbitt's time… |
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| L9 | Euclidean and maximally even rhythms: rhythm and pitch as the same mathematics Generate any E(k,n) on paper, correctly, in under a minute. · Play seven Euclidean patterns from memory with the click on cycle-start only. · Explain why E(7,12) produces the diatonic collection. · State Saltini's caveat about direction… |
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| L10 | Odd and mixed meter as melody, and how to tell technique from folklore Play the *Blue in Green* head in 4/4, 5 and 7 without the melody losing its shape. · Play a 5/8-plus-7/8 eight-bar unit against a 12/8 layer and count to realignment. · Define complete and incomplete cycles, and the three formal function… |
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| L11 | Tempo as material: metric modulation, Nancarrow's canons, Ligeti's études Play the accent ladder with a provably constant pulse, verified on a DAW grid. · State what "Lights Out" actually does in two sentences, including the dotted quarter at 144. · Play a 3:4 tempo canon to realignment, three times running. ·… |
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| L12 | Foundations of counterpoint for guitars, bass, and piano: species over an ostinato Play the D Dorian ostinato at 60 bpm for two minutes with the hand visibly relaxed and no drift against the click. · Play and sing the first-species counterline from Exercise 1 over sixteen bars of "All the Things You Are." · Play a four… |
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| L13 | Bach's Inventions against interlocking guitars Play both voices of BWV 772 hands together at 60 bpm from memory, and play each hand alone as a melody. · State the BWV 772 subject by note name, say where the left hand answers it, and say what the left hand is doing by bar three. · Pla… |
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| L14 | Fugue thinking in a band Play bars 1 to 9 of BWV 847 at 62 bpm with the hand relaxed, and name the bar in which each of the three voices enters. · State the BWV 847 subject by note name, identify the one note where the answer departs from a strict transposition,… |
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| L15 | Rhythmic counterpoint: the riff against the kit State the realignment length in bars for cycles of 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 17 sixteenths against 4/4. · Play first species over the seven-sixteenth ostinato through a full realignment at 60 bpm, click on beat one only. · Clap the "Rational G… |
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| L16 | Counterpoint beyond Bach: gesture, mass, and the line you never play Name three gestural types in Form IV and describe an overlap. · Play the five-against-three accent exercise for sixteen bars at 50 bpm, both accent chains audible. · Play the white-note against black-note improvisation for three minutes… |
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| L17 | Modal harmony in rock and metal: function without a leading tone Play all seven modes on three different roots, derived by flatting, without reference to a parent key. · Play both flat-side progressions in all twelve keys in all three voicing syntaxes. · State Biamonte's reading of ♭VII–IV–I and Evere… |
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| L18 | The Lydian universe: Russell, Clement, and whether the fourth degree can be home Derive the Lydian scale by stacked fifths from three roots and explain the ceiling. · Play the shuttle over a pedal in all twelve keys. · State Russell's vertical and horizontal distinction in his own terms, and name two published object… |
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| L19 | Symmetric scales: Messiaen's modes, Holdsworth's system, and what a collection with no leading tone is for Play every transposition of all four symmetric collections and state the count for each. · Explain, in one sentence, why a symmetric collection cannot produce a leading tone. · Play the diminished lick, name the functional subset inside… |
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| L20 | Voice-leading: Schenker, Bill Evans, and harmony without a structural dominant Play a ii-V-I in guide tones only, any key, on request. · Play the Evans rootless set in six keys at 70 bpm. · Play the Ferrante chain in all twelve keys and its mirror in at least one. · Execute P, L and R from any major or minor triad,… |
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| L21 | Negative harmony: what Levy wrote, what Collier does, and what actually transfers State the axis in any key on request and derive it correctly. · Reflect any triad or seventh chord at the keyboard without counting on your fingers. · Play the A7 to C cycle and its mirror, re-voiced. · State the transmission chain from… |
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| L22 | Haydn and the art of surprise Play a four-plus-four period from memory in three keys, naming the cadence at each half's end. · Complete Greg's two-note return, three consecutive cycles, once from a dissonant pair. · Play a variation, a variation with a tag, and a rev… |
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| L23 | Mozart and concealed symmetry Sing the goal-note line of Autumn Leaves and of the K. 545 first theme from memory. · Play a chorus of closed phrases inside one octave, with real silence between them, in three keys. · Play four responsive pairs where the answer inverts… |
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| L24 | Beethoven and the expansion of drama Play four blues choruses on two goal notes, with a lay-on-it chorus, and have a listener name them. · Play a phrase whose goal note is enclosed at a distance and never stated, and have a listener name it. · Play the thirty-two-bar pedal… |
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| L25 | Sonata form as a way of thinking, not a mold Hand over your "Close to the Edge" diagram beside Covach's, disagreements marked. · Describe one Classical exposition using only harmonic events, no theme labels. · Play the dominant chain home from three chromatic starting points, track… |
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| L26 | Form as harmony against form as rhythm Play the four-boundary exercise and have a listener rank them. · Hand over the ten-piece audit. · Play the "Money" parameter trade and name what changes in each hand. · State Everett's and Biamonte's positions on flat-seven to four to on… |
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| L27 | The twelve-tone method as a riff generator Row sung from memory, intervals named, matrix built and printed. · Four riffs derived from four row forms, recorded, each one identified by its form. · One distributed passage where the handoff between two voices is audible. · The 32-bar… |
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| L28 | Combinatoriality and hexachords: riff families that complete each other The six all-combinatorial hexachords written from memory with correct labels and correct orders. · Four complementation pairs verified by hand, plus the whole-tone transposition rule derived independently. · Riff A and riff B recorded, c… |
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| L29 | Wolpe's pitch constellations: the riff as a field, not a line Twenty-minute constellation exploration recorded, eight distinguishable characters from one cell. · Six audible interruptions in three minutes. · Your own cell realized as four different objects, all four recorded. · The Meshuggah pitch… |
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| L30 | Stravinsky's rotational arrays: rotating a riff into a chord progression One array of your own, built on paper and entered in Sibelius, arithmetic checked twice. · Six rows played as melodies, six columns played as chords, twelve chords recorded including drop-2 versions. · One of your own riffs rotated the S… |
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| L31 | Three paths through serialism, and a fourth Three passages from one collection, recorded, one per method. · Four sets of adjectives, plus the sentence on what is similar. · Five dated paragraphs on *Arie da Capo* and one observation confirmed by Scotto after the fact. · Four bass… |
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| L32 | Gesture and physical space: sound as a body that moves Play a five-finger pattern with contrary-motion touch, no arm push, no tension in the wrist, for two minutes. · Demonstrate one pitch in eight distinct physical qualities and name each. · Play the overlapping gathering-and-scattering imp… |
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| L33 | Form as process: set it up, load it, let it run Six successful cycles of the eight-bar return exercise, three from a dissonant starting pair. · Thirty seconds each of accelerating phase and subtraction phase, and what differs. · The 17/16 ostinato accurately for eight cycles against a… |
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| L34 | Timbre as structure: the same notes, entering the world differently The twelve-color ladder over a fixed root with a held top note, both directions, from memory. · One passage in three registers, and what each register does to the same intervals. · One chord in eight attack and pedal states, ranked by we… |
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| L35 | Virtuosity as compositional material Four written verdicts from exercise 1, including one honest negative. · The grow-and-shrink sequence at 60 bpm over its ostinato. · The eight-bar deletion étude engraved and playable. · The 4:5 canon engraved, realignment point marked on… |
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| L36 | The threads between, and the capstone The four-threads essay, one page. · The analysis of one modern piece, 900 to 1,200 words, sourced and caveated. · The technique inventory, twelve populated rows pointing at bar numbers in your own score. · The score and parts as a Sibeli… |