5 Lesson Plans You Can Run Tomorrow
One example on screen. Play keeps time. Next brings the next one. Steal these and adjust the tempo.
You do not need a software training day. Put the phone or tablet on the stand—yes, that phone, the one with mysteriously excellent battery life for everything except scales—and run one of these plans as written.
Common setup for all five: open eization, choose or edit an exercise, set meter and bars to match the example length, start under tempo, and stop talking once Play is on. Your job becomes listening and deciding when Next is earned.
1. Warm-up scales that actually visit every key
Goal: one scale per example, full set once, then reshuffle—so concert C stops being the mayor.
- Open: Scales (or type your own list, one scale per line).
- BPM start: wherever they can play cleanly for eight bars. Boring is a feature.
- Bars: enough for one full ascent/descent or one pattern you named in the lesson.
- When to hit Next: after a clean pass, or after the bars fill if you are letting the click advance.
- What you say: “Same sound in F♯ as in C. The click does not care which key feels famous.”
Optional insult to comfort: start the session after they have already played their favorite key once at home. The lesson is for the rest.
2. Rhythm cells without a drummer in the room
Goal: clap or play short rhythm examples against the metronome so limbs stop improvising a different tune from the page.
- Open: Rhythms, or write four to eight short cells, one per line.
- BPM start: slow enough that subdivision is audible, not heroic.
- Bars: one or two bars per cell.
- When to hit Next: after they can speak or play the cell without looking like they are decoding a parking ticket.
- What you say: “If you can only do it when you choose the order, you don’t know it yet.”
Teachers who grew up with stick-control books will recognize the move. The difference is the queue will not politely skip the cell that looks like modern art.
3. ii–V lines from a book they already own
Goal: take six short lines from whatever jazz book is already on the stand—Bergonzi, Aebersold chapter work, Patterns for Jazz, your own handout—and practice them as an exercise.
- How: Edit → one example per line. Do not reprint the book on the internet; type the lines they are working on this week.
- BPM start: half of “impressive.”
- Bars: length of that line or progression.
- When to hit Next: after time and notes agree for one full pass.
- What you say: “The book stays the book. This is the queue for the lines you circled.”
See Books you own for how eization groups practice kinds without reprinting those books. If you want a ready-made student-problem exercise instead, open more exercises and Add or Preview on the device.
4. Tone and articulation as the example
Goal: make “sound” and “how you start the note” into examples the click will revisit, not a one-time pep talk.
- Open: Sonic Nuances, or write your own prompts (long tone / soft attack / accent on two / subito piano—one per line).
- BPM start: slow. Tone does not benefit from panic BPM.
- Bars: four to eight.
- When to hit Next: when you hear the intention, not when they survive the bars.
- What you say: “Same pitch as last time. Different job.”
This plan is also how you stop every lesson ending with “work on your sound” as a cloud with no weather.
5. The homework pack as a share link
Goal: send one exercise home so Tuesday’s agreement still exists on Thursday’s phone.
- In the lesson: build the exercise together (Edit). Keep it short: eight to twelve examples beats fifty lines of optimism.
- Share: from Edit, copy the share link. They open it on their device: Add or Preview.
- BPM start: write the starting number in the chat or notebook next to the link.
- When to hit Next at home: same rule as in the lesson—clean pass or bars filled.
- What you say: “If the link opens, the homework opened. Practice the exercise, not the feeling of having intended to.”
Ask AI can help draft example lines in a chat; when the reply is a block of lines, paste into Edit and Update. The site does not call a model for you—you stay in charge of what enters the exercise.
A five-minute teacher checklist
- One example per line.
- Bars and meter match the example.
- Start under tempo; raise BPM only after coverage, not instead of it.
- Next is a decision, not a fidget.
- Send the share link before they leave the room.
If you want the long version of the practice idea itself, read Practice one example at a time.