Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Jazz Study Group: Autumn Leaves, ATTYA, etc.

Serge88 and Rhonda, trust me on this, focus on accenting the offbeat. Don't do the "Lawrence Welk" swing. If you listen to the jazz masters, it's the accent that makes it sound like jazz.

I played it close to straight eighths as I explained. Someone like Bill Evans or Wynton Kelly makes the first eight longer, but the key in all of their playing is still the accent on the offbeat. That's the critical element here. If you do this, you sound professional.

The other effect that jazz players will do is drag the beat but again it's really dragging the accent so it doesn't fall exactly on an eight note pulse.

All students new to jazz think of the 'Dotted eighth + sixteenth' as the correct swing style (including me). It took awhile to correct this concept through a teacher and listening more closely.

Now sometimes the accent is more subtle. Keith Jarret's accents are not as pronounced. The faster you play the more the accents disappear and you play straight (like 16ths are played straight).

Listen to the Autumn Leaves videos. Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans both have a longer first eighth but it's happening so fast that it's hard to dissect. But all have accents on the offbeat and Oscar and Bill have stronger accents than Jarret.

Jazzwee, I had trouble with your swing example too. Not that it wasn't swinging, but I found myself wanting a longer snippet to listen to. Perhaps not as fast either. Could you post something a little longer if you have a chance?

I've been trying to practice this myself. Over in the other thread, the article about practicing scales with a metronome ticking on 2 and 4 really threw me for a loop. I found it really tough. Then, trying to accent the upbeats and make them shorter I found impossible. But I definitely hear what you're talking about in the phrasing of the pros. There's the unmistakable quality to it that really makes it sing. Errrr swing.

I found a practice routine in Tim Richards' jazz book that I've been using for this. He has you playing arps or scales around a ii-V-I-IV cycle. Then make the I a minor and continue. So, for example, Bm-E-A-D, Am-D-G-C, etc.

Very good discussion of learning swing feel here , including examples of what isn't swing. Doesn't include media files, unfortunately, but the text and scored examples are still very useful.

Hi deeluk, in jazz, the faster you play (particularly at the pace that some of us were playing the melody, about 150bpm or so), the straighter the eighth pairs. Only in slow swing would you need to focus on making the first eight significantly longer (the triplet feel, two notes of the triplet in the first eight and the last remaining note of the triplet in the last eight).

As you go faster, the difference between the two eighths diminish. I re-listened to myself and I wasn't playing it straight really. I could detect that the first eighth was slightly longer.

My advice is to not think about making the second eighth shorter. When we play, the sizes of the eight pairs might keep changing even in a line. Just focus on the accent. When I deliberately make the second note shorter, my teacher will remind me to 'straighten out'.

Mike A, I've read that article so many times a long time ago and until you really hear it, one can still remain confused because the article is a bit advanced.

Garcia talks about mistakes like 'Accenting the downbeat', or playing same note pairs 'Evenly'. But he doesn't clearly explain how to learn swing. It's more like he's debugging someone who is swinging incorrectly.

I wish, he started off saying that one should 'Accent' something, because to a beginner, the biggest issue is that there is no accent.

Great study group idea! :p

Well, here's something I recorded last year.. It's in ballad form in key of G/Eminor with some arps and runs. When I played it for my jazz teacher at the time, he said it was terrible and really needs to be played with a "swing", not as a ballad! (but here it is anyway). :rolleyes: My goal is to learn to "swing it" and also to improvise with the chords.

Autumn Leaves
http://www.box.net/shared/0b668mh13j

That's lovely elssa! It may not be jazz but it's very very pretty, wonderful phrasing (lol, when I read that you can't use pedals in jazz music I pretty much gave up hope )

This is very much the sound I'm going for these days. Do you have a piano solo only version without the strings? You improvised this right?

Jazzwee - Are you are playing your 1/7 progression for the A section using the following notes for the 1?

Start on A1
up to D2
down to G1
up to C2
down to F#1
up to B1
down to E1

Thanks

Thanks, Van! I guess this is more "cocktail" than "jazz", but I really enjoy all styles of piano music myself. I honestly don't know how to get rid of those strings - I recorded it live with piano and strings together (no overdubbing or whatever they call it) because that's the only way I know how to record. When I learn to swing it, though, I'll definitely just use piano - no strings.

"You improvised this right?"

Well, I sort of learned it by ear. I've been a member of PianoMagic for about two years, and though they don't focus on jazz, they do discuss various chord patterns found in jazz a lot such as 2-5-1, 1-6-2-5, as well as the Circle of 5ths, so that was a big help.

wow elssa. **** MAN! that was awesome!!!!

How can you play that well ?!!?!!!

Im amazed!!

keyboardjungle, I'm not home so I'm not certain but I'm going to guess that it's octave 2 and 3 instead of 1 and two. You don't want the seventh to much past middle c.

Hi jazzwee,
Thanks for this great thread! I think this is just what I've been needing. As I said in the other thread, it seems that I'm not unique in having a pretty good collection of jazz theory books but somehow never really finding ways to to apply the intimidating amount of theory they tend to give.

In this thread, already, you've gotten most of us off the dime and learning some cool shell voicings! What a great way to learn - teaching something we can apply immediately and make some music that actually sounds good!

Now, my question - could you please elaborate a bit on your answer to Cathy above? I would like to really try to understand this notion.

A (possibly) related question - early in this thread, you said we need to "learn the key centers intimately." What are key centers? Synonymous with "changes?" Or something else?

Thanks!

Steve W and jazzwee,

Ditto here. That answer struck me as odd in several respects.

in jazz we use chords that consist of the notes of the scales (diatonic). So the B 7 9 chord must have a C, because we move in E minor, which has a c in the scale on the 6th position.


thats why we have to use a C for the 9th chord in Em because the c sharp is only a part of E major.
and not available in E minor.

and an octave with from c to c and + a minor second from c to c sharp = Minor 9th or 9b.

Boy, you guys ask tough questions. It's tough because it's hard to answer in short form. I'll give the quick answers on the specifics first and flesh it out later.

quote:
Originally posted by jazzwee:
Actually B7 (unaltered) would be in the key of E...


[BRAIN EXPLOSION ALERT]
When you see a dominant like B7, you need to immediately assume it's the 5th degree of the scale. So this is the fifth in E Scale (E, F#, G#, A, B). If this were a Bmaj7, then it could be the 1st or 4th degree of the scale because only those have Major 7's thus it could be B scale or F# scale.
[/BRAIN EXPLOSION ALERT]


So to fully understand this quickie answer requires an explanation of Scale Degrees. This is so important to jazz so it is worth explaining. But of course, this is nothing new. It's in all the theory books. I will attempt to find a summarized and simple explanation.

But if you're eager to learn, here's an example of a complete resource on theory.

http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory1.htm

Stay tuned for a very long explanation...

BTW - I've invited some jazz pros to read our posts and so they are out there lurking and giving us the Thumbs up

ganymed, welcome! Are you a pro jazzer? And thanks for answering part of that question.

Theory - Scale Degrees

First we need to pick a scale. We will use C scale in my example but to reproduce this in any scale, just figure out what the scale notes are and it will turn out the same way.

So in the key of C, the notes of the scale are all the white notes. For this exercise, I will repeat some of the notes in a second octave, so that 13 notes are displayed.

C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C,D,E,F,G,A
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13

Now we're going to build our first 7th chord starting from C. A seventh chord has 4 notes: 1st (Root), 3rd, 5th, 7th. In other words, you skip every other note in the scale.

So using the scale above, the chord will be:

C E G B.

Since we started on the first note (C), we will call this the '1st' Degree. Don't be put off by the term 'degree' but you know it's the first of a series.

Now we will start with the second note (D), which we will call the '2nd' Degree.
D F A C

Next we will start with the third note (E), which we will call the '3nd' Degree.
E G B D

Are you with me so far? All I'm doing is starting with a specific numbered note and picking every other note after that. If you do this up to seven times you will arrive at the following chart for C Scale (you will come up with a different one for every major scale).

1 - C E G B
2 - D F A C
3 - E G B D
4 - F A C E
5 - G B D F
6 - A C E F
7 - B D F G

No, this is not a secret code chart for decryption . This is quite meaningful in music.

Now although, all the notes above are organized as alternating notes in a scale, someone thinking carefully will notice that the gap between notes is not the same. The reason is that the black keys on your piano are not evenly distributed. Remember Db, Eb, Gb, Ab, Bb? (or translate to sharps if you wish). The point is that the intervals will actually vary between these notes. So if you actually convert them to chords, it will look like this:

1 - C E G B - C Major 7
2 - D F A C - D minor 7
3 - E G B D - E minor 7
4 - F A C E - F Major 7
5 - G B D F - G7
6 - A C E F - A minor 7
7 - B D F G - B minor 7 b5.

To remind us of what kind of chord naturally occurs at each scale degree, we will often express each scale degree in Roman Numerals. We capitalize for major and use lower case for minor. So this will now be:

I - CM7
ii - Dm7
iii - Em7
IV - FM7
V - G7
vi - Am7
vii - Bm7b5

You can do this for any scale. Since we are doing G scale for Autumn Leaves, let me just give you the scale degrees in G:

G Scale: G, A, B, C, D, E, F#, substituted below.

I - GM7
ii - Am7
iii - Bm7
IV - CM7
V - D7
vi - Em7
vii - F#m7b5


Now this is just the miniscule beginning of theory but note that, to answer the earlier question, there is only one place where you will find a Dominant 7. And that is always the fifth degree of a scale. If you think to any music and find a dominant 7, at that point in that music, count back to see what this Dominant 7 is 5th of, and you will find what key you're in.

In Autumn Leaves, we have D7 so we automatically know we are in the key of G. So jazzers are trained to look for Dominant 7's since they are a unique marker. More likely, in Jazz Standards, you will find a pair consisting of the ii degree and the V degree. This is the clincher to key identification. So in Autumn Leaves, we always have a paired Am7 and D7 (ii & V), and that tells us that we are in G.

The difficulty in jazz theory is that in complex jazz tunes, a tune might be in several keys. Some tunes like giant steps will change key at every measure or so.

In Autumn Leaves, the key shifts between G and Em. Now there is another exercise to find the scale degrees of minor scales but let's leave you to mull this over to this point.

Now it is another matter to apply this basic information and it will be quite a revelation for many. Stay tuned...

In music theory (all music, not just jazz), chords in various scale degrees have a function.

Some chords have a tension to them, like it makes you want to move the music. Some chords gives a feeling of stability (or in music we say 'release').

V chords (Dominant 7's) are very high tension chords and these naturally want to go to the I chord (Major 7 chords). I chords don't feel like they want to go anywhere. Other chords have intermediate functions that have a leaning as far as direction goes. The two maj7 chords are the most stable.

Many folk songs, rock songs, classical music, and the blues will commonly use the I, IV and V degree.

So in C this would be the CMaj(I), FMaj(IV), and G7 (V). In other music, typically chords are only triads (first three notes), so the seventh is skipped. In jazz we use 4 notes. If you know the I, IV, and V chord of any scale, you could play 90% of popular music. And this is the basis of many a 'Quickly Learn to Play Piano by Ear' course. They will teach you to recognize the I, IV, V pattern.

Jazz is tremenduously more complicated because other than for the Blues, you will not find this simple chord pattern too often.

Jazzwee, you deserve a medal for this! I've always wanted to learn to play jazz and now I think I've found the path!

By the way, in your recording of Autumn Leaves are you simply playing roots and sevenths in the left hand and just the melody line in the right? It sounds so much fuller than mine so I wondered if there are some occasional added notes.

Thanks, jazzwee!

I agree with the medal idea!

It is starting to make sense - will have to re-read a few more times and give it time to soak in.

How about the concept of "key centers?" Where does this come in?