Jazz Improvisation Exercises, G Altered Sounds

Dr. Bob Lawrence  0:32  
Welcome to jazz piano skills. I'm Dr. Bob Lawrence. It's time to discover, learn and play jazz piano. Well, can you believe it? This is it. This is the last stop on our journey of exploring five jazz improvisation exercises applied to the primary and altered sounds for each of the 12 notes of music. I can't believe it. It's it's been an amazing, grueling, yes, grueling, but amazing. And of course, extremely rewarding journey that started back in January and ends. It ends today with our exploration of the G altered dominant sounds. I have stressed throughout this entire year, that over and over, it takes a serious commitment, tons of endurance and patience to develop proper hand movement. In addition to nailing down the correct chord scale relationships, so a huge and I mean a huge congrats to all who have been doing this tedious but necessary grunt work. From the start of the year, you should feel very good about the work you've done even even if it's been just conceptual work. Right? The commitment you've made to becoming an accomplished jazz piano pianist is fantastic. I have reminded you on several occasions and it's important to stress it once again that you are a member of a very small group of determined people destined to achieve jazz success. So let's finish strong and tackle the altered dominant sounds for G sharp 11, flat 13, flat nine flat 13. And of course, the fully altered sound, the flat nine sharp nine, flat five sharp five. So today, you are going to discover essential jazz improvisation exercises. For altered G sounds, you are going to learn developmental arpeggio and scale patterns for altered G sounds. And you're going to play five arpeggio and scale patterns. For the altered G dominant sounds of music. Again, the dominant sharp 11 dominant flat 13 dominant flat nine flat 13. And the dominant fully altered flat nine sharp nine, flat five sharp five. So you know as I always like to say regardless of where you are in your jazz journey, a beginner an intermediate player, an advanced player, or even if you consider yourself a seasoned and experienced professional, you're gonna find this jazz panel skills podcasts lesson. Exploring jazz improvisation exercises for G altered dominant sounds to be very beneficial. But before we dig in, before we get started, I want to as I always do, I want to welcome first time listeners to the jazz panel skills podcast. And if you are indeed listening for the first time if you're new to jazz piano skills, I want to invite you to become a jazz piano skills member. Your membership grants you many privileges that will help you expedite your personal discover, learn and play process. For example, as a jazz panel skills member, you have access to all of the educational weekly podcast packets. These are the illustrations, the lead sheets and the play along with the backing tracks that go along with each weekly podcast episode. Now these packets are designed and developed to help you get the most out of each podcast episode. Right so they're invaluable tools that you want to have in your hands. You also as a jazz panel skills member have access to a self paced and sequential jazz piano curriculum which is loaded with comprehensive courses. All the courses containing educational talks interactive learning medium, the video demonstrations and much more. You also as a jazz panel skills member have a reserved seat in my online Weekly master classes which are held every Thursday evening. And if you can't make the master class no big deal, right, they're recorded so you can tune in and check them out anytime that you would like. Now the master classes again happen every single week, Thursday evenings at 8pm. 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If you have any questions once you get poking around on the website. Please do not think twice do not hesitate to contact me. I'm happy to spend some time with you and answer any questions that you may have. Okay, on to the question of the week. This week's question comes from Anita Hauser. And Anita live in South Carolina has been a jazz piano skills member for years and has has been a guest on the jazz panel skills podcast. And Anita writes, Hi, Dr. Bob. I love your recommended list of jazz pianists to listen to. I just created my own Spotify playlist for this. I love your q&a segment segment each week as well. Will you consider for a future podcast giving your top 10 horn players to listen to and study for pieces of great jazz vocabulary that we can take to the practice room to draw out our own expression. Thanks, missing class later due to lately due to schedule. Thanks for the recordings. Looking forward to seeing you all again next week. Well, Anita, great to hear from you as always. Great suggestion. So as I mentioned last week regarding jazz pianist, some of the big dogs in the jazz piano world may be somewhat overwhelming to listen to for beginning jazz pianist for those of you who may just be starting your journey so that that is why I did not include on my list last week, you may have noticed, I did not include such gigantic icons in the jazz piano world like Chuck Korea, McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson. And heck even art Haytham the greatest of all they can they can be these players as great as they are right they can. They can be information overload, again for the individual starting their Jazz Piano journey. So I put together last week as a Nita referred to put together last week, kind of a top 10 list of pianos that I would recommend to kind of get your feet wet in the jazz piano world and start listening to and of course, there are others that are not included on that list, but at least that list is a good launching point. Right? So the same could be said about the about instrumentalist as well, right? So I like to recommend to folks who are starting to listen to horn players, I like to recommend some players who are not who are not overwhelming, for example, John Coltrane, right. At the beginner listening to John Coltrane, that might just be a little bit of information overload. So here's my top 10 list. So grab a pencil. Here's a list of horn players that I that I turned to on a regular basis for improvisation inspiration. So here we go. You ready? Number one, Ben Webster. Number Two Gerry Mulligan number three, Zoot Sims. Number four Paul Desmond and number five, Scott Hamilton. These are all sax players that I just mentioned. The first five are all sax players Ben Webster, Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, Paul Desmond, Scott Hamilton. Now, on the trumpet side. I love to listen to Harry sweets, Edison,

Dr. Bob Lawrence  10:32  
Roy Eldridge, Clark Terry, Chet Baker, and James Morrison. James Morrison is kind of a twofer, right. He's a great trumpet player, but also a great trombone player as well. And there's another, there's a bonus I'll throw in here as well, rich Madison, on euphonium. And then John alread, as well on your phone, IEM and trombone. I studied improvisation with rich at North Texas State University University of North Texas. And John Hall red actually is born and raised in my hometown in Illinois as well. So both of those players are wonderful and worth checking out. But what I want to do right now is I want to turn to my top 10 list. I want to play just a couple quick examples Harry Addison walk in with sweets recorded in 1956 and Ben Webster who's also on the on the list is performing with him. But check this out. This is what I'm talking about. This is not overwhelming. In fact, this is this is jazz heaven right here. So check out Harry Addison walk in with sweets here we go.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  14:57  
Wow I could I could listen do that all day. I have to cut it short, a little bit but I would just because of the sake of time of the podcast, but definitely check out anything by Harry Sweets Edison one of my all time one of my all time favorite horn players, jazz trumpet players, no question. No doubt about it. So okay, next little sample I want to play for you Gerry Mulligan. All right, Gerry Mulligan with Chet Baker. Again, one of my favorite and he's on my list as well. So here's a little sample of Gerry Mulligan quartet playing I'm beginning to see the light 1953 By the way, the Harry Edison record in 1956 I can't remember if I mentioned that or not but here's Gerry Mulligan 1953 again doesn't get any better than this how fun check it out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  18:54  
So soap, good, right? So take my top 10 List cradle Spotify playlist you won't regret it. These horn players like I mentioned earlier, I turned to them all the time for improvisation inspiration. They are really easy on the ears, great melodic lines. And they will literally transform your piano plan so I need them. As always, thank you for your suggestion. And thanks for being such a great friend. I hope this helps and hope this gets you started listening to some amazing horn players that will help you shape your melodic plan on the piano. All right. So let's discover learn and play jazz piano Let's get after these jazz improvisation exercises for the altered G dominant sounds, as I mentioned throughout the entire year, on just about every podcast episode, I believe that students struggle with improvisation more often than not Not because of poor fingerings not because of a lack of skill or theory familiarity but but just simply due to immobile hands, and mobile hands resulting from poor fingerings. And this is why we devoted literally devoted the entire year two addressing various fingering issues and trying to answer various fingering questions such as What, what constitutes good fingering and what what should we look for when establishing a fingering? For a certain musical phrase? What What should we be trying to accomplish with our fingerings? Is there always a fingering option that reigns supreme over all of the other options? Right, and what about that golden rule? I've mentioned this before, too, right? Where we're always taught to avoid that thumb up on the black on the black notes. Right. Is that true? Should we right? So the whole point of our journey this year, was to establish some definitive answers for these types of questions. And to hopefully circumvent any type of fingering dilemma. In other words, we need to establish a simple a simplistic approach to fingering and in doing so establish unimpaired mobility for our right hand, so that improvisation becomes a possibility. Improvisation becomes a reality. Sounds good? No, of course it does. Because deep down, you know, that if you can get your right hand to easily move around the keyboard, you'll be able to play the tunes that you love, and embellish them with melodic improvisation, just like we heard, Gerry Mulligan and Harry Edison do, right. So to simplify our fingering approach, to establish a fingering conviction that will allow us to successfully practice our fingerings for all 60 chords using typical jazz patterns, we turn to these five essential jazz exercises that we have been utilizing for the entire year. So today is going to be no different. We're gonna take those same five jazz exercises, and apply them to our G altered sounds. So the educational agenda for today is as follows. Number one, we're going to explore jazz improvisation exercises for the G altered dominant sounds. Number two, we will play essential G altered arpeggio patterns that you need to discover, learn and play from the root of the sound all the way through the 13th of the sound. And we'll do that using various entry points, the root, the third, the fifth, and the seventh. Number three, we will play a central G altered scale patterns that you need to discover, learn and play again, from the root of sound all the way through the 13th to the sound, and in other words, the entire sound. And we will you utilize the same four entry points, the root, the third, the fifth, and the seventh. And number four, I will be playing all jazz improvisation exercises today using the G seven flat nine flat 13 sound. Of course, you will be applying these exercises to all of the altered sounds. And number five, I will be playing all of the jazz improvisation exercises today using our traditional swing groove of 110. So if you are a jazz panel skills member, I want you to hit the pause button. Take a few minutes right now to download and to print your podcast packets, your illustrations, your lead sheets and your play logs. Now, your membership grants you access to all of the educational podcast packets for every weekly podcast episode. So I mentioned it every week. I'll mention it again here today. You should be using these podcast packets when listening to this episode to get the most out of the episode. And of course you should be utilizing these materials these pod this podcast packet when practicing as well. So if you're listening on any of the popular podcast directories that are out there, Apple, Google Amazon, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora and so on. Then go directly to jazz piano skills. podcast.com That's jazz piano skills podcast. dot com to download your podcast packets, and you will find the active download links within the show notes. Okay, and one final but very significant message that I include in every podcast episode. If you're listening, and you're thinking in the back of your mind that the jazz improvisation exercises for the G altered sounds, and the various scales that we are about to discover, learn and play, if you're thinking that, wow, this stuff is way over my head, then I would say to you, no worries, relax, it's okay. Continue to listen, continue to grow your jazz piano skills intellectually by just simply listening to this podcast episode. After all, every new skill is overwhelming is technically over our heads when first introduced. But this is how we get better. Right, we have to place ourselves smack dab in the middle of conversations where we're hearing things we've never heard before. We're hearing words that we've never heard before. So we're actually we're forced to grow intellectually. And I say it all the time, all musical growth begins upstairs mentally before it can come out downstairs physically in your hands. So if you're thinking all this stuff is going to be overwhelming for you. Just sit back. And listen. 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, I want to point out a few things. Before we jump in, you will see that lead sheets one through four deal with arpeggio motion, while lead sheets five through eight deal with scale motion. You'll also notice that the jazz improvisation exercises, right, the five exercises that I've been mentioning, are the same for all for alter G dominant sounds the same for the sharp 11, the flat 13, the flat nine flat 13. And the fully altered sound, which includes the flat nine, sharp nine, flat five, sharp five, the exercises, of course, are the same, but they're modified to reflect the proper sound. Now you will also notice that my suggested fingerings are included for every note of every exercise for every sound. And of course, you can modify the fingerings slightly, right. But be careful, right, do not modify the fingerings to remove the intentional hand shifts, because now you're you're actually wiping out the entire objective that we've we're set out to accomplish, right. So even if you have a four note musical phrase, a musical motif that you're playing, and you can play it without any hand shift. Don't do that use the fingerings that are notated. Right. So but you can make you can make some modifications as long as you're not removing fingerings and that we're just removing hand shifts. But I would just also throw caution to the wind. And that sometimes you may be inclined to make a hand make a fingering change thinking that it's going to make things simpler for you initially, and it may, but it also may end up making it more difficult for you down the road. So I'm just again, just be careful. I'm just throwing caution to the wind, okay. Okay,

Dr. Bob Lawrence  28:48  
so I want you to grab from your lead sheets pack and I want you to grab lead sheet three, skill three. And I want you to grab a lead sheet seven skill seven. Both of these lead sheets deal with the G dominant, flat nine flat 13 sound, skill three arpeggio motion, skill seven scale motion, we're going to take a look at skill three with the arpeggio motion first. Okay, so you have your lead sheet in front of you. We have our five jazz panel skills exercises, improvisation exercises, letter A, letter B, letter C, letter D, and letter E. letter A. You can see it's just a four note motif, with the Root Entry, third, fifth and seventh entries. Now the root entry for notes from the root to the seventh, the third entry from the third to the ninth, the fifth from from the fifth to the 11th. And then we have the seventh entry from the seventh to the 13th. Again, we're exploring the entire sound from the root through the 13th through the sound We're doing it using four, four note, arpeggios, ascending arpeggios, you'll see the fingerings notated in there that each one of these four note, arpeggios has a hand shift, the hand is moving, so you're not just playing it with your hand, stable station, and static, right, it's moving so do not remove those fingerings. Okay, so let's bring the ensemble in, I'll set up the sound first, for about four measures the flat nine flat, 13 sound, then you'll hear me play each motif four times four times with the Root Entry four times with the third entry four times with the fifth entry, and four times with the seventh entry. I'm going to follow this same format throughout all the exercises today. So here we go. Let's bring the ensemble and let's check out letter A.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  32:25  
Night nice, right, pretty straightforward. You want to play these arpeggios with a nice relaxed feel, do not rush right Do not rush each of these motifs nice and relaxed, utilizing the fingers that I've fingerings that I've notated there. Now, letter B takes the same for our pitches, but now we add a little contour to our shape right? So instead of a straight arpeggio. Right, we just get a little contour. Nice sounds already sounds like jazz right? Again pay attention to the fingerings pay attention to the hand shifts that are taking place as a result of the fingerings. Again, we use our same for entry points root third, fifth seventh, which is which allows us to explore the entire sound from the root to the 13th. So let's bring the ensemble in let's check out letter B here we go.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  34:56  
All right on to letter C and letters See, you'll see that we even have more contoured to this motif, this shape and checkup fingerings the fingers tell you something's up right 141421 Right, it's forcing us to really move the hand not only shift the hand up the keys, but into the keys right toward the key toward the soundboard. Right? So okay, so now we have the same idea here where we have the Root Entry third entry, fifth and seventh entries, we're exploring the entire sound from the root through the 13th Letter C may very well be my favorite of the entire year just because of the hand shifting and and we ended up getting our thumb comfortable up there on some of these black notes as well. So here we go, let's bring the ensemble in let's check out Letter C arpeggio motion.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  37:25  
Very nice, well, letter D. You know we've we have intentionally dealt with the eighth note triplet rhythmic idea throughout the entire year. And here it is in letter D applied to the G seven flat nine flat 13 sound but you know we're keeping a lot of the formatting the same and that we are starting with four entry points the root, third, fifth and seventh. And we're exploring the entire sound from the root to the 13th. As I've mentioned in previous podcast episodes, the eighth note triplets at a tough rhythmic figure to to get to play relaxed, right, we tend to want to rush triplets when we play them. So I'm going to try to intentionally lay back as much as I possibly can and relax. I'm going to be consciously aware of that. And I'm going to be very careful attention to my fingerings that I have notated here, because the last thing I want the eighth note triplets are hard enough on their own. The last thing I want to do is add difficulty to the eighth note triplet by utilizing poor fingerings. So let's bring in the ensemble let's check out letter D, G seven flat nine flat 13 explored from the root to the 13th using eighth note triplets. Wow. Here we go. Check it out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  40:23  
Okay, we're down to our final exercise today dealing with arpeggio motion for the g7, flat nine flat 13 sound. So we're back to eighth note, the rhythmic motifs that expand now pass the bar line into the second measure. So our musical phrasing is getting longer, we have quite a few hand shifts to deal with here in these fingers with these fingerings to pull off the this line to pull it off smoothly. And of course, I've mentioned this before as well, right regardless of the entry point, right, the root, third, fifth and seventh, each one of these modalities should sound the same, right? Regardless of our entry point. So keep that in mind. So okay, here we go. The last arpeggio motion exercise letter E, for the G seven flat nine flat 13 sound, let's bring the ensemble in let's check it out here we go.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  42:54  
All right, we are on to lead sheet seven skill seven. We're staying with the G seven flat nine flat 13 sound but instead of focusing on arpeggio motion, we now turn our attention to scale motion. So letter A, we're going to use the same, we have five same five exercises that we've used throughout the year for our scale, scale motion. But letter A starts as it always does with simple ascending scale motion from the root from the third from the fifth to the seventh, right nice and relaxed. We have hand shifts built in and we're exploring the entire sound. So you have to know the scale, right? We're playing the entire sound from the root to 13. And getting comfortable with being able to enter into the sounds from different entry points, right? We're trying to become root independent, root independent. So here we go. Let's bring the ensemble in. Let's check out letter A. Here we go.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  45:27  
All right, so you know, just like we did with the arpeggio exercises, we add a little contour to our arpeggio, we're going to add a little contour to our scale right? So instead of straight scale motion where we're doing or now we're gonna have just that little change right just makes it sound that much more jazz like so. Same entry points root third, fifth seventh, exploring the entire sound, G seven flat nine flat 13 scale motion with a little twist, so here we go. Check it out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  47:38  
Well, we had to deal with the eighth note triplet using arpeggio motion of course, we're gonna have to deal with the eighth note triplet, triplet using scale motion, and that's what we do and letter C. We have eighth note triplets on count one, count to count three, count four. So back to back to back to back, we stretch over the bar line in the measure to what a great line what a great exercise right again, you must pay attention to these fingerings the eighth note triplet again is hard enough on its own. Let's not make it harder with poor fingerings. So check out Letter C G seven flat nine flat 13 scales scale motion, exploring the entire sound from the root to the 13th Various entry points focusing on the eighth note triplet, here we go check it out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  49:59  
Easy It's not easy at all the eighth note triplet, but you know, we have to deal with it, it's lace through all of jazz literature. So we have to get comfy with that rhythmic idea that rhythmic motif So alright, let's move on to letter D we're back to straight eighths again, our phrase crosses over the bar line in the measure to pay attention to the fingerings as our phrases get longer so do the number of hand shifts increase so pay attention to that but we're staying with the same format as always root third fifth seventh entry points and we're exploring the entire sound G seven flat nine flat 13 So here we go check it out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  52:12  
Wow We are down to our final exercise of the day letter E. Again, sticking with the G seven flat nine flat 13 Sound scale motion using our four different entry points root third, fifth and seventh our musical phrase is getting longer and so do the number of hand shifts increase as well so pay attention to to the fingerings Okay, so here we go letter E the last altered sound of the year I can't believe it here we go check it out.

Dr. Bob Lawrence  54:18  
Well, we've done it again, as always right unpacking a ton of information and one very short one very fast our now even though I played these jazz improvisation exercises today using the dominant flat nine flat 13 sound only. Be sure to practice the exercises for the dominant sharp 11 dominant flat 13 And of course the dominant fully altered sound as well right. They're all laid out for you in your lead sheets packet with fingerings included. Now remember, you can modify the fingering slightly to suit your hands but don't remove those hand shifts right. They must be intact remain intact so that you develop a hand mobility getting used to moving that hand around on the keyboard. Okay. All right, you have a ton to tackle this week, so use your practice time wisely next week as always, we will explore the the head of a bebop tune, closely examining the various melodic shapes and their fingerings and extract from those melodies, some nice improvisation vocabulary as well. Once again, I want to encourage all of you jazz panel skills members, be sure to use your podcast packets, your illustrations, lead sheets and play alongs to guide you as you're practicing right as you're studying these essential jazz piano skills. The Pat podcast packets will help you conceptually physically and musically master these skills. And most importantly as always Be patient developing mature professional jazz piano skills takes time takes a lifetime. So began structuring your your development your practicing after the plane demonstrations that I modeled for you today in this podcast episode and I guarantee it you will begin to see feel and hear your musical progress. Well I hope you have found this jazz panel skills podcasts lesson exploring jazz improvisation exercises for the G altered dominant sounds to be insightful and of course, to be beneficial. Don't forget if you're a jazz panel skills member I will see you online Thursday evening at the jazz piano skills masterclass. That's 8 pm Central time to discuss this podcast episode lesson exploring jazz improvisation exercises for the G altered sounds in greater detail and of course to answer any questions that you may have about the study of jazz in general. If you can't make the class again that the recording will be available through your dashboard jazz panel skills dashboard that you have access to watch that at your convenience. You also have access to those jazz piano skills courses to maximize your musical growth and you also have access to the jazz panel skills online community. So get out there, get involved, contribute to the various forums and make some new jazz panel friends always a great thing to do. If you have any questions, you can reach me by phone. My number here at the Dallas School of Music is 972-380-8050 my extension is 211 if you prefer email, Dr. Lawrence, drlawrence@jazzpianoskills.com. Or you can use the nifty little SpeakPipe widget that is found on every jazz panel Skills website page. So feel free to use that technology. Well, there is my key. That's it for now. And until next week, enjoy the jazz improvisation exercises for the G altered dominant sounds and most of all, have fun as you discover, learn and play jazz piano!