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An surprising amount of classical and even modern music was originally intended to be for practice or for tuning. I was just wondering how much was out there.
I'll give two examples:
Mozarts 12 variations on Baa, Baa Black Sheep (I don't feel like referencing his original title) was apparently a practice piece for his students.
Kansas' "Dust in the Wind" was based on the practice chord progressions that Livgren was practicing on. His wife insisted that there was a melody to be found in it.
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Tush by ZZ Top started out as a sound check.
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There are many more.
Bach's Inventions and Goldberg Variations, Chopin's Etudes, lots of other etudes (Alban, Czerny, ...), etc. ad absurdum.
However, it's important to realize that practice was not the *only* purpose behind the pieces.
Bach, Chopin Mozrt, etc. were very well aware that they were composing masterful, artistic, top shelf practice pieces which should reflect not only their didactic knowledge, but also their superior composition skills.
Chopin's Etudes are far more that just finger exercises. To the casual listener they sound like nice pieces, but for the player they demand extreme skill in, e.g. using the two right fingers of the right hand totally seperate from the other three fingers while the left hand jumps all over the keyboard.
Bach's Inventions train certain basic finger skills, but are also considered to be the most fundamental and important exercises in harmony, counterpoint and polyphony in Western music.
The best are always the best, no matter what they do.
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Which, incidently, is not a novice piece to learn, I tried and failed.Originally Posted by Kaptain K
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Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water, according to an interview I caught on the radio, was also a sound-check-turned-song.
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Life in the Fast Lane by the Eagles was built around a Joe Walsh practice riff.
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"Music Box Dancer" by Frank Mills. It was his warm up exercise
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