Whenever I am discussing practicing with my students, I always make it a point to remind them to "make it musical". Here's what I mean: when you are drilling yourself on notes, chords, intervals, or any other musical information as if you were taking a test, you're only engaging the information processing and analytical part of your brain, while the musical and creative part of your brain is not even in the picture. To engage this part of your brain, you have to actually PLAY music.
So the best thing you can do for your musical skill is to drill that information while playing music!
Here's how to do it:
•Do a search on YouTube for "chord play along" and browse the results for songs you like. You can even do a search for a specific song plus the words "chords lyrics play along". My favorite channel for this is "Chords For You": https://www.youtube.com/@ChordsForYou/videos
•What you are looking for is a recording of the original song with video of the lyrics that include chord names over the words or syllables that they change on. It doesn't matter if the video features guitar chords are not- the chord names are the same no matter what instrument you're playing it on.
•Choose a song you like, and play root notes of the chords as they come along in the lyrics. To do this, just play the single note that the chord is named after - including any sharps or flats, and ignore everything that comes after.
Ex:
Gm: play the G note.
E♭Maj7: play the E♭ note.
C#m7♭5: play the C# note.
•I recommend playing the notes in the lower bass (left hand) range for this, but you can use this to drill your right hand as well.
•If the song is too fast, you can experiment with slowing down the speed by pressing the little gear icon on the right lower corner of the YouTube video and experiment with "Playback speed".
•Change up songs often to keep things fun and fresh, and to give you more of a variety of notes to work on.
•Most importantly, have fun! The more fun you have playing along with your favorite songs, the more you're activating the music part of your brain. When this happens, it's like you can just pour the knowledge and skills straight in painlessly. If it's becoming a chore or too difficult, the whole point is lost - switch up to a different, easier song and make having fun playing along with your favorite songs the top priority.
You can modify or level up this exercise however you want- play the same note at different octaves in both left and right hands at the same time for an added challenge, or play simplified versions of the chords you see in the right hand, or right hand chords and low root notes at the same time in your left. Whatever you do, make sure it's well within your comfortable playing level so that it's easy enough to play along with and you can actually have fun!
Tyson Farmer
www.lessonface.com/TysonFarmer
What a great tip! I imagine it can apply to other instruments, too. Thank you!