Hello everyone, I started building an application (desktop for now, but Android in the future) about scheduling piano practice. This would be for personal use but I might consider publishing it in the future depending on how it goes.
I want to use it mainly for 2 things:

• Scheduling my practice, for example inputting 1 hour of practice, and getting 20% scales, 30% repertoire, 50% trascribing (in minutes). This would change depending on my monthly or general goals (for example if I want to compose I should transcribe more in relation to sight reading).
• Keep track of my practice progress with data/graphs, meaning I could see my practice days in calendar, how much time each, what category I practiced. Then I could see with radar graphs my "strength" in each element (technique, theory, etc).

On to my request now. Because I'm a relatively beginner/intermediate pianist, I would like help categorizing practice. I have already created a list:

• Scales
• Modes
• Chords
• Chord Voicings
• Chord Progressions
• Sight Reading
• Repertoire
• Arpeggios
• Transposing
• Transcribing
• Improvisation
• Composing
• Ear Training

My question is, how would you categorize these in basic categories (technique, theory etc)? Do you have anything else to add? I really want to keep it as simple as possible, that's why I want to categorize these into simpler categories.

I would also like having the user choose a "profile", like "I want to improvise" or "I want to perform classical music", and then create a personalized practice profile for him (40% improvisation, 40% chords, 20% scales for a jazz pianist). I don't know how feasible this is yet, because I would need tons of teaching experience for that.

Sorry for the long post, and thank you!

EDIT: I have created a spreadsheet with the categories as I imagine them here.

Some comments on your list:

• Chords: Is that knowing what the chords are on paper or practicing chords on the keyboard? The latter is a technical exercise.
• Sight reading is a practical skill, not theory. It should be part of musicality.
• Composing is theory. Unless you're doing it at the keyboard then it's part of improvisation.
• Transcribing is part of ear training.

I would seriously question the value of making such a detailed list. General categories, yes, but not specific things like arpeggios. You will quickly find out that there are many other things that you can do in a practice day. Are you going to add them to your list and split your time into fractions of a percent?

Personally I use Excel. My general categories are:

• Lessons
• Ear Training
• Sight-reading
• Pieces (practicing)
• Repertoire (playing)
• Etudes (e.g. Czerny)
• Technical Exercises (e.g. scales, arpeggios)
• Improvisation

I don't count theory as part of my practice time. That just shows my priorities. Yours may be different.

Thank you for your reply, maybe you're right about the detailed list. I was thinking of creating a few fundamental types of practice, like technique, theory etc, then have some more detailed subcategories. I'll think about it.

And yes, I'm thinking it as this: If I have 1 hour and 20 minutes available for practice time today for example, I would input 80 minutes, and the app would divide that time into fractions of a percent. Like 20% (16 minutes) of scale warmup and so on.

I would question you're taking on all of this list while you're in Alfreds Book 1. sight reading will not come until much later as sight reading skills will lag two grade levels below your skill level. Ear training does not need to start at level one either. You need to focus on learning the skills that are directly related to learning to play...

Do you have a teacher? If so you should discuss this entire concept with him or her If not, I would suggest you focus on the skills in your method book and don't run through it ..... you need to absorb it.

The quickest way to burn out is not making progress, and spreading yourself so thin that you do not see progress is not helpful