Jazz Improvisation Exercises, A Sounds

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Welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano. Well, it is October. And it means a few things. Number one, a change in the weather, which for all of us here in the state of Texas is fantastic. Cooler weather means that a little more barbecue, and some nice evenings in the Hot Tip number two, October means playoff baseball is upon us. And my Rangers, my Texas Rangers are in it for the first time since 2016. But, but listen, I'm not expecting too much here right, they blew their commanding lead in the American League West and literally handed the division championship to the Astros. But nevertheless, they're in the playoffs. So we'll see what happens. And number three, we're on to the sounds, the primary sounds for the note A, we're heading down stretch. So today, we explore our jazz improvisation exercises for the primary sounds a major a dominant, a minor, a half diminished, and a diminished, we have been following the same format. Right since the start of the new year. We use five specific melodic patterns to focus on developing mobile fingerings mobile hands fingerings that allow our hand or right hand to be in a constant state of movement. And we all know, especially by now that the constantly moving or the consistent moving and positioning of a right hand is crucial for establishing optimal fingerings which are needed to produce a solid and authentic jazz articulation. And of course, making sure we never run out of fingers right. Our fingerings allow us to never run out of fingers especially in the middle of a musical phrase and very awkward. Now, as I mentioned, we have utilized this intentional approach for the primary and alternate sounds since the beginning of the year. And we will continue to do so for the remaining three months of this year. Wow. So today we will follow the same format once again that we used in September with the sounds and apply them to the primary sounds for the note A. So today we are going to discover essential jazz improvisation exercises. And we are going to learn develop mental arpeggio and scale patterns of the A sounds and we're going to play five arpeggio five scale patterns focusing on fingerings and articulation for the primary a sounds of music, again, a major, a dominant, a minor, a half diminished, and a diminished. So as I always like to say regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner intermediate player, an advanced player or even if you consider yourself a seasoned and experienced professional, you're going to find this jazz panel skills podcast lesson exploring jazz improvisation exercises for a sounds to be very beneficial. But before we jump in before we get down to work if you are a new listener to the jazz panel skills podcast. If you are new to jazz panel skills, I want to welcome you and I want to invite you to become a jazz panel skills member. There are various membership plans to choose from so when you have a moment, check out jazz piano skills.com To learn more about each of the membership plans and the various perks associated with each one. Now there are educational weekly podcast packets. These are the illustrations and the lead sheets and the play logs that I developed for every weekly podcast episode. There's also an online sequential jazz piano curriculum, which is loaded with comprehensive courses. There's online weekly master classes online interactive Fakebook. There's a private jazz piano skills online community which hosts a variety of engaging forums. And of course there's also unlimited private, personal and professional educational support. All of these various perks are waiting for you wanting to help help you discover, learn and play jazz piano. So again, when you have a moment, check out jazz piano skills.com And of course, become a member. Now once you get there if you have some questions about the various plans or any of the educational perks, please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I'm always happy to spend some time with you answer any questions that you may have, and of course help you in any way that I can. Okay, on to the question of the week. Today's question comes from Brent Slocum living in Cincinnati, Ohio. And it's a good one. It's a very good one Brent, ask, Dr. Bob, I have to be honest with you. This journey is a roller coaster, there are days and weeks where I feel like I am nailing it. Everything is clicking and makes sense. I feel good about my practice and my progress. Then there are those weeks when I feel like I am the worst jazz pianist in the world. And in fact, in those, I'm not laughing at your brain, I'm just I'm with you. Okay. So, in fact, in those down weeks, I don't feel like a jazz pianist at all. What advice can you give me? On how best to battle through those very challenging weeks when nothing is going well. And progress is at a standstill. Thanks for all that you do I enjoy the podcast and the educational materials immensely. Well, Brent, first of all, like I said, I wasn't laughing at you, man. There's a lot to unpack here. So but first, thank you for being a jazz panel skills member and a faithful podcast listener. I really appreciate it. Now I can tell you right now, right? I know exactly how you feel. Exactly. Now, I typically do not like starting an answer with bad news. But in this case, I think it's a great place to begin. Brent, I hate to break the bad news to you. But the roller coaster ride. It never ends. These up and down weeks, filled with extreme emotions and feelings of excitement, followed by depression are part of the process embrace it never goes away, ever. No matter how far down the road you get on your jazz journey. You just get better at dealing dealing with it. Right. So that's the bad news now. Now let's, let's talk some good news. Okay. How do I deal with the up and down emotions of studying jazz piano? Well, number one, I think it's really important to realize that your journey is a personal one. It's your journey, and no one else's. It's about the musical excavating of your musical voice, your musical ideas, your musical creativity, and your musical ideas and your musical creativity. Right? They're valid. In other words, it is important to know that you do not need to be the best jazz pianist in the world to enjoy and for others to enjoy your plane. In fact, you can be the worst jazz piano player in the world the least you're a jazz pianist. And, and you can still enjoy your plane and others will too. Now this is so important, right? To come to terms with this because you will then stop and we all do this by the way. You will then stop comparing yourself to other jazz pianists, especially the ones that are the best in the world. You know to put things in perspective for you I remember. I remember watching Michael Jordan play basketball during the height of his dominance. And as you know he was a phenom. So far above all the other players so far above that you actually forgot when watching him play that you actually prat the other nine players on the court. They were professional basketball players too. Too often we listen to the greats, the musical freaks as I like to call them and somehow want to label their greatness as like it's the norm, when in fact their greatness is anything but normal Micajah Jordan was not a normal basketball player. Right? So, you know, I remember and I've, I've told this story before, I believe on the podcast, another in another podcast episode, but I had a piano teacher one time.

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Tell me that I would never I was a big growing up. I was a big asker Peterson fan. Still him. But I was a huge asker Peterson fan, just, in fact, I think I just listened to ask her only. That's how big of a fan I was. Right? And I can remember, I had this teacher say to me, Bob, Hate to break the news to you. You will never ever play like Oscar Peterson. And I remember my heart immediately sank to my feet. You know? I was like, I was like 14 years old. I mean, there's like talking about crushing a dream, right? He said, You'll never play like Oscar Peterson. But then what he said afterwards was absolutely precious and so invaluable for me. And he said, and remember Oscar Peterson will never ever play like you. Again, just magnifying the importance that this is your journey. Right? This is about discovering your musical voice, your musical ideas, your musical creativity. And they're valid. Okay, so Brett number one. And I think this the hardest thing for us all to wrap our mind around when we start this journey, but live with this. Continue to remind yourself of this, that it's your journey. Okay, now that you know that it's your journey, and it's valid, we still need to know how to handle the ups and downs of your journey. Right. So here, here's my top five list of how to handle the roller coaster ride as you put it. Number one, don't be afraid to take a few days off. Right? Don't be afraid to take a few days off. Okay to back away from the piano. When things start to unravel. You start to get frustrated, you start to experience a little burnout. It's a good time to take a break. You know, go do something else. Get your mind off piano for a while. And you'll be amazed when you come back, you'll come back with a whole new set of a new a whole new energy, a whole new energy. So number one, don't be afraid to take a few days off. Number two. How about this? How about play some tunes, right? Just sit down and play maybe some of your favorite tunes that you've that you always dabbled around with no problem to always go back to the well. And pull out some songs that you like to play that you enjoy to play. And just play them for fun, just for fun. Okay, number three, reduce the number of skills that you are currently tackling. So if you've built into your practice routine during the week, you got voicings that you're working on you got scales that you're working on, you got arpeggios that you're working on, you got rhythms that you're working on, you got fingerings that you're working on, you got all all these different skill sets that you are juggling throughout the week to make sure that you practice. Practice each one of these skill sets. Throughout the week that you know what maybe it's time to just kind of zero in on on maybe one right now, but just one. So don't be afraid to reduce the number of skills that you're currently tackling. Number four, return to playing skills, keys, shapes, sounds that you feel good about. Right. So I know practice is always about pushing outside of your comfort zone and pushing ahead. Sometimes during the low points on the roller coaster ride, sometimes it's it's great to return back to some familiarity and some familiar ground that that you can feel good about right. So don't be afraid to go back and play some skills, some keys, some shape, some sounds that you feel really, really good about. And number five, I like to when things are going rough at the keyboard, I like to step away from the keyboard and focus on what I like to call paper practice. I like to do some studying, you know, so this might be sketching out some voicings this might be sketching out some scales this might be working through some fingerings this might be doing some harmonic functions. In practice, right, so sometimes I step away from the piano, and I just do some paper practice. In fact, I remind students all the time that some of my best practicing, if not my very best practicing, is always taking place away from the instrument right away from the instrument. Again, just sorting things out upstairs, so that when I get to the piano, they can come out downstairs. So again, number one, don't be afraid to take a few days off. Number two, don't be, you know, play some tunes that you enjoy. Number three, consider reducing the number of skills that you are currently tackling. Number four, return to playing skills, keys shape sounds that you feel great about. And number five, about doing some good old fashioned paper practice away from the instrument? I hope this helps Brent, that's a great question. Know that we are all on the same roller coaster with you and wrestling, wrestling with the same up and down emotions. So experiment with some of the tips that I just outlined for you. Okay. And as always, let me know if you have any additional questions or you would like some further clarification. Great question. Okay. Onward with our exploration of jazz improvisation exercises for the primary sounds of a poor fingerings. Right. I've I've mentioned this throughout the year poor fingerings without question, based on decades of teaching experience, poor fingerings. The number one reason why people have difficulty playing the piano, quite simply is the lack of hand and finger mobility, type of paralysis, hand paralysis, I like to call it that makes it difficult for students to generate melodic lines, scale and arpeggio practice, right you know, I'm a big I'm big on them. But of course, of course, right? It's a great way to begin developing hand mobility. However, however, scales and arpeggios, right do not necessarily reflect how melodies move. Right? In other words, melodies just don't simply ascend and descend in straight lines. Therefore, it's important to begin practicing melodic patterns like the ones that we have been exploring since the start of the year, that challenge us to begin shifting our hands across the keys. Right, so practicing intentional shifting begins to simulate a musical reality like real melodies, right? That pianos must address and this musical reality, the need to always have fingers available, allowing us to move in either direction, up or down, must be practiced in such a way that develops proper musical instincts, muscle memory, if you will, right. So musical instincts and muscle memory that allow us to properly articulate melodies so that they sound like jazz. This is precisely why the melodic patterns that we are exploring today, focus on intentionally creating handshakes within a melodic line, even if it is possible to play the melodic line with no hand shift that All right, we insert one, the objective is to begin establishing and developing hand finger mobility. And in fact, some of the fingering fingerings that you're going to come across today, in the lead sheets include multiple hand shifts within a single melodic idea, even with a single melodic idea that occurs in a single measure. Right. So throughout this year, we have been devoting our effort exploring all five primary sounds of music for all 12 notes, using arpeggio and scale, developmental improvisational exercises that will force us to deal with fingerings to develop hand mobility. We're also using the very same approach to explore the altered sounds of music, right, that altered dominant sounds flat nine sharp nine sharp 11, flat five sharp five left 13 You know, right all the altered dominant sound. Each month, we focus on one of the 12 notes, right. One week of the month we do we devote to the primary sounds as we're doing today, and then one week we will devote to the altered dominant sounds. We've been followed up with a bebop tune To help us apply our new fingerings and articulation, to a musical setting, what a great game plan, right. And we've been executing it since the beginning of the year, every single month. So

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the educational agenda for today is as follows number one, we begin our jazz improvisation exercises for the primary sounds of a number two, we will play essential arpeggio patterns that you need to discover, learn and play from the root to the 13th of the sound, using a Root Entry, third entry, fifth entry and seventh entry. Number three, we will play essential scale patterns that you need to discover learn play, again, from the root to the 13th to the sound using four different entry points, the root, the third, the fifth, and the seventh. Number four, I will be playing all jazz improvisation exercises today using the minor sound, the minor sound. And number five, I will be playing all jazz improvisation exercises using our traditional swing groove of 110. So if you are a jazz piano skills member, I want you to hit the pause button right now take a few minutes to download and print your podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play alongs. Your membership right your membership grants you access to all of the educational podcast packets for every weekly podcast episode. And as I mentioned that every week, you should absolutely be using these podcasts packets when listening to this episode. And of course when practicing. And if you're listening to this podcast on any of the popular podcast directories such as Apple or Google, Amazon, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, the list goes on and on. Then be sure to go to directly go to jazz piano skills podcast.com. To access download your podcast packets, the illustrations, the lead sheets in the play logs and you'll find the act of download links within the show notes. One final, but very significant message that I include in every podcast episode. If you're listening and if you are thinking that the jazz improvisation exercises for the primary sounds of A and the various skills that we are about to discover, learn and play or over your head then I would say to you no worries, please, just breathe in, breathe out, sit back, relax, continue to listen and grow your jazz piano skills intellectually by just listening to this podcast episode. Keep in mind every new skill. Every new skill is overheads when first introduced, but this is how we get better. We're not afraid to place ourselves smack dab in the middle of conversations where we're hearing things that we've never heard before. We're hearing words we've never heard before concepts that we've never heard before. But but in doing so we were forced to grow intellectually. I say it all the time, our musical growth begins upstairs mentally, conceptually before it can come out downstairs physically in your hands. So simply just sit back and listen to this podcast lesson now to discover and learn. The play, as it always does, will come in time, I guarantee it. Okay, now that you have your lead sheets in your hands in front of you, I want to point out a few things you will see that lead sheets one through five deal with arpeggio motion while lead sheets six through 10 deal with scale motion. You'll also notice that the jazz improvisation exercises are the same for all five primary sounds major dominant minor, half diminished and diminished. And the exercises are of course modified to reflect the proper sound. Now you'll also notice that my fingerings are included for every note of every exercise for every sound. And of course, you can feel free to modify the fingerings. Again slightly, but be careful remember, the fingerings are well allow you to play with the proper jazz articulation. Right and also remember that we've intentionally put hand shifts into the fingerings to help begin developing hand mobility. So do not remove the hand shifts because you're defeating the purpose of what we're trying to achieve. Right. And remember, you might think that your fingerings are more comfortable or easier right now, but you're easier may be actually setting you up for failure down the road when patterns get a little bit more difficult, right? So just be careful right Stick with the fingerings that are notated. If you have any questions about the fingerings, let me know. But just remember, intentional hand shifts are placed in within every pattern, right of every exercise for every every sound, okay? All right. So let's dig in. All right, I want you to grab out of your lead sheets packet, right, you have 10 lead sheets there, I want you to grab a lead sheet three, scale three. And I want you to grab lead sheet eight, skill eight. Again, we're focusing on the minor sound today. Just for the sake of time, I can only model everything using one sound, you're you're going to actually use these lead sheets to play these patterns for all this major dominant, half diminished and diminished sounds as well. But anyway, grab lead sheet three, scale three, lead sheet, eight, scale eight. These are arpeggios and our scale patterns for a minor. And of course, everything will be based off the Dorian mode today a minor as the two chord coming from the key of G major. Okay, so lead sheet three, scale three, we have letter A, B, C, D, and E are five melodic ideas, improvisational ideas that we're going to play through but letter A, you can see as always just starts with a very simple arpeggio with the from the root from the third from the fifth, and from the seventh to the sound, a four note arpeggio. However, there's the look at the fingerings we have our hand shifts built in there with our fingerings. So let's bring the ensemble in I'm going to model this for you going to play a minor up top for about four measures and then I will play each pattern four times before moving on to the next entry point. So four times from the root four times from the third from the fifth and from the seventh. And try to keep a nice relaxed ascending field through this arpeggio using my the fingerings that I have notated there nice and relaxed, a nice jazz articulation so let's bring on CyberLink let's check it out here we go.

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Right underestimate the importance of playing, practicing ascending arpeggios from the various entry points, just the four note arpeggio so much can be accomplished with this apparently simple exercise, which as you'll find out, not that simple. So anyway, letter B, we take the same idea, we have our arpeggio, but now we add a little contour. So instead of a straight arpeggio, up the piano we're going to add a little shape to this line. I love it. Now. I'm playing in your lead sheet. You'll notice I'm playing everything down in Octave that that's notated in your lead sheet. You can do it either way. Whichever way you prefer. You can play it as written in the lead sheet. Or if you prefer to bring it down an octave feel free to do that as well. Okay, just a little side note. All right, so now we got letter B, we're sticking with our four entry points, the root, third, fifth and seventh. We've added a little contour to our arpeggio, we still have our fingerings that have intentional hand shift built in to deal with. So let's see what the sounds like let's bring the ensemble in let's have a little fun here we go.

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Right so we are on to letter C, look at the fingerings on letter C, right, right away, you know something is up look at this 1414211 Yes, so, we have some hand movement here, obvious hand movement here taking place with this motif. But, you know, again we keep the entry points the same consistent throughout all these exercises the root, third, fifth and seventh. We've added obviously, some more contour to our arpeggio here, right, so, we've gone from straight arpeggio to adding just a slight hand contour and now we have some shifting taking place. So let's bring the ensemble in let's check out letter C. We should be very familiar with all of these exercises since we've been doing them since the beginning of the year and just applying them to different primary sounds. But let's bring the ensemble in and let's check out Letter C here we go.

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Love Letter see that's a great little exercise. Great little pattern moving the hand my entire hand is shifting and moving. Spend some time with letter C for sure. Well, you're gonna have to spend some time with letter D to write because now we're we turn our attention to the eighth note triplet, hard little rhythm to execute. You'll find yourself rushing when playing eighth note triplets. Again, it's very normal. Everyone does. Spend time just practicing getting relaxing that triplet feel right Nice relax, play it without the play alongs right play without the play alongs and then of course play with the play alongs Listen, listen to my articulation here, try to emulate that. And of course, with all of these rhythms, all of these motifs, right hopefully you're kind of singing those inside as you play them right? Let Your Voice guide your articulation as well. Okay, so let's bring letter D, the ensemble in and let's take a listen to letter D, focusing on the eighth note triplet. And again, as always pay attention to those hand shifts those fingerings Okay, here we go check it out.

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Okay, we're on to our final arpeggio pattern for today letter E, we're back to eighth eighth notes, our lines now are extending through the bar line plane through the bar line. Again, we have our hand shift, so we have to deal with our fingerings we have our four entry points, our root, third, our fifth and our seventh. And again, you can play as written on the lead sheet or if you feel more comfortable as I am doing today with all the examples I'm playing everything down in octave from notated in your lead sheet either way is fine. So let's bring the ensemble in and let's check out check out letter E our last arpeggio focused exercise for today for the primary sound of a minor here we go.

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Okay, we're on the scale movement scale motion. So grab lead sheet eight, skill eight, again dealing with the A minor sound. Now however, instead of the focus being arpeggio movement, we are now focusing on scale movement and letter A starts with just basic straight up scale movement from the root to the seventh. Then from the third to the ninth, from the fifth to the 11th, and from the 11th to the 13th, we want to play with the proper fingerings we want those hands moving the hand moving across the keys. And of course, we want a nice relaxed jazz articulation as we play these scales. All right, so let's bring the ensemble in and let's check out Letter A here we go.

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Just as I mentioned with letter A with the arpeggio movement from the root, third, fifth and seventh straight up the arpeggio for note arpeggio, how important it is to practice that exercise that pattern and do not. Do not write it off quickly as being way too simple because it's not, I can say the exact same thing for letter A with the scale movement. Practicing from the root, the third, the fifth, and the seventh, exploring the entire sound taking you from the root through the 13th through the sound playing a nice seven note scale for each entry point and playing it with the right fingerings and the right articulation, I cannot stress adequately express how important that is to do. So spend some time with letter A for the arpeggios, spend some time with letter A for the scales for all of the primary sounds and you will be doing yourself a tremendous favor. Okay, so now let's look at letter B. Just as we did with the arpeggio, you know, we went from a straight arpeggio and then we added some contour to the line. Same thing here, right we're gonna go from a street scale to adding a little contour to our line. Wow, starts by not sound so much like a scale when we do that, just a simple contour. So now let's bring the ensemble and let's check out letter B, same four entry points, root, third, fifth seventh, exploring the entire sound, minor sound from the root through the 13th. We have some fingerings to look at and handshakes to take care of as we do these patterns. So pay careful attention. So here we go. Letter B. Check it out.

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Nice. Well, we had to deal with the eighth note triplet with the arpeggios Of course, we're going to have to deal with the eighth note triplet with scale movement as well. So letter C, we do just that. And you can see we have 4/8 note triplets to deal with and measure one we play across the bar line. And to measure two, we have quite a few handshakes to take care of with our fingerings. So pay attention to that as well. And as I mentioned, with the arpeggio, it's easy to rush fingerings it's easy to, you know, feel like you're running downhill, you know, when your body gets out in front of you. And you're going like Oh, I'm going to face plant well that's kind of the feeling you get sometimes when you play triplets and you start to rush, so be consciously aware of pulling back and not getting out in front of the beat on these triplets. Okay, same for entry points, root, third, five, and seven. And again, we're exploring the entire a minor sound from the root through the 13th and doing so. So let's bring on Samba Lin. And let's check out the eighth note triplet letter C here we go.

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Not easy not easy at all. So, be patient. Give yourself give yourself some slack as you practice this right don't be too don't be too critical too soon. And also, you know, I'm playing everything at 110. Today, as I mentioned in every podcast, play it templates that allow you to succeed, right when you start playing these exercises and these patterns and incorporating these fingerings. So don't be afraid slow it down to 6070 right 80 Keep it nice and relaxed, nice and comfortable. Alright, so onward to letter D, and we're back to eighth note patterns here. Again, we're going to be playing the motif or the melodic idea gets longer plays through the bar line which is nice. We have the same four entry points again and we have fingerings that have intentional handshakes built into them. So without any further delay, let's bring the ensemble in and check out letter D here we go.

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Hard to believe we're down to our last last exercise for today letter E using focusing on scale movement for the A minor sound. Again, our line our melodic idea motif just gets a little bit longer we're playing through the bar line all the way through count to the second measure, we have our intentional our fingers in there that create intentional hands shifting through the pattern through the idea. So same entry points, right we keeping things as many variables the same as we possibly can as we work on focusing on working on our hands shifting so Letteri, our last scale pattern of the day, let's check it out here we go.

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Well, as always, as always, right, we've unpacked an enormous amount of information in one very short one very, very fast hour. And again, even though I play these jazz improvisation exercises, today using the minor sound only, be sure to practice the exercises for the major for your dominant for your half diminished and diminished sounds as well. They're all laid out for you in your lead sheets podcast packet, with fingerings included. And remember, you can make some modifications but do not remove the hand shifts because you will be literally defeating the purpose the objective that we've set out to achieve by inserting those those fingerings those with that include the intentional hand shifts, right? Always great idea to continue practicing everything from the root, various entry points, root, third, five and seven. That have you exploring the sound all the way through the from the root through the through the 13th. Right. And always remember articulation of each musical phrase regardless of the entry point, right? The articulation should sound the same. Right? So you have a ton to tackle this week, no doubt about it, right, so use your practice time wisely. And next week. Next week we jump into jazz improvisation exercises for the A altered dominant sounds. I want to encourage all you jazz panel skills members out there be sure to use your podcast packets, your illustrations that help you with these primary sounds today. The lead sheets of course to play alongs all of these packets in the materials educational materials are there to help maximize your musical growth. Right. As always be patient. Developing mature professional jazz piano skills takes time. In fact, that takes a lifetime. So just begin structuring your improvisation development. After the plane demonstrations I modeled for you today in this podcast episode and I guarantee it you will begin to see it you and hear your progress well I hope you have found this jazz piano skills podcast lesson exploring jazz improvisation exercises for the A sounds the primary sounds to be insightful and of course to be beneficial don't forget if you are a jazz panel skills ensemble member I'll see you Thursday evening online at the jazz panel skills masterclass, that's going to be 8 pm Central time to discuss this podcast episode lesson exploring jazz improvisation exercises for the A sounds in greater detail and of course to answer any questions that you may have about the study of jazz in general. You can always reach me if you have some questions by phone 972-380-8050. My extension is 211 here at the Dallas School of Music. If you prefer email, my email address is Dr. Lawrence, drlawrence@jazzpianoskills.com. Or you can use the nifty little SpeakPipe widget that is found throughout the jazz piano skills website. Well, there is my cube. That's it for now. Until next week. Enjoy the jazz improvisation exercises for the primary sounds of hey, and most of all, have fun as you discover, learn and play jazz Piano!