With so much to practice sometimes I wonder if I'm going about it wrong. Usually I'll practice each topic for an hour then move on to something else, sometimes i think I should stick to one topic and hammer for 2 or 3 hours so i can to really ingrain?
thoughts
Thanks
ken

What I've come to realize after starting this jazz journey 7 years ago is that even 2 hours a day is nothing when it comes to jazz. I've been out of work due to job relocation so I've been doing 3 to 4 hours. But I believe to get really good you probably need 6 or more hours a day. There are so many areas to focus on.

Yes, but don't leave out playing with people, that's when you discover what you really need to work on. I have a friend who says if you practice for three hours, play for three hours. Many people skip this step and then get wiped out on a gig.

I agree, I was in a jazz band for several years with a singer, we did mostly standards but made me a much better musician

What are your goals? I don't have any illusions about my place in the history of music. I play for personal enjoyment. An hour noodling in front of the TV is therapeutic. I may get to the point where I'm confident enough to play out with a small combo, or duet setting, or maybe not.

Everyone learns differently. The key is to not burn out. I would suggest to always try to apply what you learn to tunes. Running up and down scales and arps is good just enough to get the muscle memory down. If you are really serious, you need to identify how long you're going to practice, and then break that time up into the different areas. Scales, Arps, Chords, Improv, Sight Reading, Transcription, Performance ... etc. Most will say that one hour of targeted practice time is better than two hours of noodling around different things. It's also better to know fewer tunes really well, then to know many not so well.

For tunes, learn a basic standard, a bossa nova, a blues, a tune with rhythm changes and a ballad. That's a set right there and those forms are stepping stones for the majority of vocabulary you will need to build your repertoire.

I wanted to be great at Jazz and didn't start getting serious til I was 51, I never realized that it was going to be so difficult to really be fluent in the Jazz language . I grew up playing Southern rock and blues and thought this would be no different to learn....I was wrong!!!

It's kind of funny because I've actually heard some accomplished Jazz guys in a rock/blues setting who really didn't have good feel. I thought if you could master jazz, you can play anything. Not true. Every style has a language and feel. If I had to do it all over again (and I'm approaching 50), I would have focused more on a single style (jazz). I can play many different styles of music, but really don't have a feeling that I've mastered any of them. At least from an improvisational approach. As far as technique and learning to play a tune, I can do that in most styles, but that's not really rewarding to me anymore. It's kind of like painting by numbers.