Presented by Dr. Bob Lawrence
Jazz Piano Skills
https://www.jazzpianoskills.com
Jazz Piano Skills Podcast
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Office: 972-380-8050 Ext. 211
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Keywords
jazz piano, improvisation, beginner etudes, music education, chords, arpeggios, jazz skills, music practice, learning jazz, piano techniques
Summary
In this conversation, Dr. Bob Lawrence addresses a beginner jazz pianist's question about improvisation. He emphasizes the importance of starting with basic chords and arpeggios, providing practical exercises to develop improvisation skills. Dr. Lawrence encourages the use of rests to assess playing and highlights the significance of proper articulation and feel in jazz music. He invites listeners to join the Jazz Piano Skills community for further learning and support.
Transcript
All right, the question of the week this week, it's a good one, coming from Paul Conway, living in Cleveland, Ohio. Paul writes, am a jazz piano beginner, played trumpet in my youth many years ago. I am learning my chords and enjoying making musical sounds again. That's great. I'm extremely excited about learning how to improvise. Are there any beginner jazz improvisation etudes I can begin practicing?
begin developing my improvisation skills. I know I may have the card ahead of the horse, but I thought I would ask anyway. Thanks in advance for your help. Hey, Paul, great question. And no, you do not have the card ahead of the horse. No better time to begin improvising than the present. And guess what, man, no better etudes than the chords themselves. And so I'm assuming that you're working on learning your 60 chords, 12 major, 12 dominant, 12 minor.
12 half diminished, 12 diminished. I'm also assuming that you're learning those as seventh chords, right? So if I go to the piano that you're learning C major seven, C dominant seven, C minor, C half diminished, C diminished. Okay? So the way to begin improvising is to practice ascending and descending through those sounds. So if we just take the C major, I want to practice root to seven. Simple arpeggio up and then a simple arpeggio down. Notice my fingering, one, three, one, three. I'm not doing this.
I want the hand to shift. I want the hand to get used to moving. Because eventually I'm gonna be playing arpeggios at lines that go all the way to the 13th of the sound and back down. So the hand has to be constantly moving. So it's one, three, one, three. Okay? Now, I've set up in band in the box a simple C major seven exercise to demonstrate for you. You ascend in measure one, rest in measure two, ascend in measure three, descend in measure three, rest in measure four.
Those measures of rest, by the way, those measures of rest are so important because those measures of rest is where you're going, I call it rest and assess. It's where you get to assess how well you just played that arpeggio. Did you play it with the right articulation? Did you play it with the right feel? Are you playing it in time, right? Are you using the correct fingerings? All of these variables play a huge part and you actually sounding like a jazz musician, like a jazz pianist. So what I want to do is I'm going to turn on Band in the Box with this C major example and I'm going to demonstrate for you what I'm talking about. So I have a tempo of 110. Simple swing groove. Not going to do anything fancy. Here we go Measure rest at the top. Measure rest at the bottom. That's it. Nice and relaxed. Better improv.
That's it, Paul. That's it. Now, I know that that sounds like incredibly simple, but I'm going to tell you, man, I've been teaching a long time and very few students are capable of pulling that off when I ask them to do that. So really no need to talk about doing anything fancier than that improvisationally until you can actually ascend and descend through your chords, a simple arpeggio with the proper articulation, proper feel, right? Do you sound like a jazz musician? And if you need the fingerings, let me know. Happy to send those to you. I have the fingerings for all of the 60 chords with an intentional hand shift built into each of the four note arpeggios. All right, so just let me know if you need those. Happy to get those to you. All right.
Great question. I can't wait to hear your success, so feel free to send me any recordings. Happy to hear you play and give you further suggestions and guidance with beginning your improvisation journey. Those of you who are listening or who are not members of Jazz Piano Skills, I want to invite you to join. We'd love to have you part of the community. Check it all out at jazzpianoskills.com and of course become a member.
Happy to help you discover, learn, and play jazz piano. Talk to you soon. Bye.