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Jazzwee - Sudnow teaches those Bill Evans rootless voicings as well as those colorful right hand voicings under the melody note. The left hand starts with root,7, octaves, or root,5.

The rootless stuff took a good year for me before it went on autopilot.

Different chords on the fly sounds wonderful. I like those Frank Mantooth books that give alternate chord changes.

thanks for the info Barb. It sure sounded Sudnow incorporated jazz voicings just by the snippets I read and the sound of playing by followers like Balladeer. Makes it a very nice base to start from.

Regarding chord substitutions, they are as individualized as there are jazzers I'm sure. I have my own set of variations that I use (not include Tritone subs which are obvious), which I learned from my teacher. The variations make them hard to teach since they can reach from slightly dissonant to highly dissonant, or in some cases they go the opposite route of making the harmony vague by obscuring chord quality. It's trial and error sometimes and then you make a discovery that turns out great.

Jazzwee, I agree. Sudnow is an excellent starting base for that jazzy sound.

You mention Balladeer - isn't he something! What a sound he gets.



I know you are having a grand time on your musical journey. The fun doesn't stop for me, either

Barb,
I had not visited your page in a year or so, and I am really amazed at how good you sound.

Jazzwee,
what's an example of a variation in your arsenal?

++

Thanks, Knotty.

And I just visited your blog spot. I heard some very cool sounds. You are becoming quite a jazzer. Also, was that your kids in the background? Cute!

Knotty, one example is doing subs in intervals of a minor third, particularly on dominants, giving you 4 variations to each dominant that you can try. But I've got it down to something I can do on the fly.

Or another one that others commonly apply is to change the bass note, which has the effect of making a slash chord and changes the quality of the chord. This is mostly trial and error.

Another is sub'ing with a chord a tritone away on non-dominants.

Other obvious ones are quartal subs, with changing roots.

Some of this are tune specific for me, so it's a matter of experimentation I suppose.

Barb, your playing sounds great! I too haven't visited your site for awhile. Obviously you've got those color tones figured out.

Thank you Jazzwee.

RE: those color tones. I guess you could say that the Sudnow method is firmly entrenched in my fingers.

Just going to recap what I'm actually working on just now, before I get too distracted:

1. Integrating pickup notes into the improvisation. Also repeated quavers at the end of phrases.

2. Playing with the 'nome set to beats 2 and 4.

3. Syncopating those 3 notes.

4. Getting comfy with 1/5/7, 1/3/7 and 1/3.

5. Arpeggiating. 1-7-10-7 sounds reasonably OK but 3-5-7-9 is just plain weird. What is my RH supposed to be doing with these rootless arpeggios? If I've just got the melody going then I just end up playing bald octaves on the 3rd of the chord. Not good.

I think that's enough to be getting on with!

Starting on 4'and' is most common in jazz. So that's a good place to start. But you want to be able to start at any time. That's part of how you create surprise.
You could make it an exercise in your solo to purposely start all your lines one something, then something else.

The same rule can be applied to ending. Practice ending at any point in the bar. Again 4'and' sounds most "hip", but change it up a bit.

I would give yourself early exposure to this so you can find what you like.

And the duration of your line if something to play with also. Short lines / long lines. Find a good balance. Again, an exercise could be to purposely do a solo with only long lines 4 bars or more. Then only short lines, 1 or 2 bars. A good balance will make the line sound more like a real conversation.



take care.

Hi TLT - You lost me a bit. Are you using the 3-5-7-9 in the right hand for improvising? I think that is what the 3-5-7-9 is all about. Jazzwee will correct me if I'm wrong here.

Barb

TLT, 3-5-7-9 is played with eighth notes as part of an improvisational line on the RH. So it is useful to practice it. It is a common cliche that sounds good. Now these are only 4 notes so how would you fit it in a bar?

Let me get you thinking here. Obviously you can add notes but skipping that for now, let's look at some options on how to practice this:

1. Don't start at beat1 and don't end at beat 4 - that will already reduce your line. Because the 9 is not a primary chord tone, you should start this at the beat (1,2,3,4) so primary chord tones are on the beat.

2. After reaching the end of the arpeggio, start again with 3. For example, 3-5-7-9-3.

3. Don't make all the notes eighths. For example, the first note could be a half note or a quarter.

4. The arpeggio can go backward too.

5. The notes can repeat. For example, 3-5-3-5-7-9

So there are plenty of permutations and combinations here. The point is that you note to feel comfortable finding this sequence for every chord in a bar and with ease.

Chord tones are the baseline in improvising so these should be always at the ready in your arsenal.

One more aside, remember that for practice, I said start first with a 4+ pickup. So add an approach note to the 3 and you're in business. For example, start from a half step below the 3.

Ah - it goes in the *right* hand! rofl Well, that makes it all different...



I suppose this is how my husband feels when I tell him how to cook. ('What do you mean I was supposed to put salt in it?')

after my long explanation? I hope it didn't go to waste.

I thought y'all might be interested in this version of autumn leaves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBwBhsRo3tM

While this is quite advanced, you can hear and see a lot of what is being explained here.

jazzwee - nothing you say ever goes to waste.

Knotty - what a fantastic find. I bookmarked that link. How do you find that great stuff?

knotty - that one is fantastic! Now I notice, I hear better when I can see it too.

jazzwee - I was simply thrown because we started discussing arpeggios in the context of LH strategies. And you guys talk such wierd stuff, right now I'd believe just about anything.

Knotty, thanks for that great find!

Barb, you are way too kind

TLT, one these days, you'll be talking weird like us too and you'll be playing Bach with a little bit of swing

Yes, I can see that, and I think JS would approve!

Today is our last day of school, so I thought I would post a few reflections here on the learning process so far. Tomorrow I won't have a much time and peace!

Learning jazz has been very different from learning blues. Blues forms you can boil down to a few quite simple things, stick them in a book, which I can pick up and work through relatively easily. Now, I'm not saying I've mastered blues or anything, but I can certainly make a convincing sound, and that's after only a few months reading a single book. It's not so very different that I can't apply my classical skills.

Jazz, like I say, has been a different story. It has its own language, which is different enough from classical that I am very much, at sea. It is, as Cathy (jotur) said in another thread, a question of being a complete beginner again. The rhythm (but not just the rhythm, the accents too), the harmony, the sense of melody, everything needs to be relearned. Added into that that I also want to improvise.

So I'm a novice and I want to be an expert. The problem with that is that when you are a novice, before you can be an expert, you need to go through different phases that really sound nothing like 'the real (expert) thing', before you can get there. Fortunately, we've all here learned at least one musical instrument before, so we're all familiar with the process.

So what I've done to help break it down is taken the Associated Board's 'manual' for teachers and students and the Grade 2 syllabus (aka: jazz for 8-year olds) and made a start on that. And this has been amazing. Maybe it's because I grew up with the AB exams, maybe it's because the guy on the CD talks like me, but this material really speaks to me.

The ethos is that it has to sound musical, right from the start. So, for improvising, they start with clapping Q&A exercises. Then they give you 2 notes to improvise with over 2 bars. So these boundaries that they give you (see what you can do with only 2 notes) are really helpful. A lot of the advice is just the same as what I've learned here (improvise from the scale, improvise from the chord, be prepared to start on any beat or off beat of the bar) but it's presented to me in more manageable chunks. And I can, reasonably swiftly, produce a musical sound.

I'll give another example. Knotty has said here, to listen to jazz musicians and emulate them. Good advice, I'm sure it's a great technique. But I listen to real jazz musicians over a 5-minute period (they never play for less than 5 minutes) and I don't know where to begin. What I'm hearing is complex and my ear just doesn't pick up things it doesn't understand. Show me the written music at the same time (as with that youtube clip) and it's somewhat better, but still way over my head.

Then I take the same task to the grade 2 CD and suddenly it makes sense. Yes, I can notice that little bit of syncopation, and I see here where he deviates from what's on the page, and I can work it out and play it myself.

My goodness me, I haven't half rambled here! Anyway, I made a recording and put it on the July piano bar, of one of my favourite pieces from grade 2, Becky's song. Naturally, as I'm doing this without a teacher, if anyone has any comments (here, there or privately), they will be appreciated. And I will continue, both from the AL angle and from the AB angle, because they do seem to be complementing each other. And if you're still here, thanks for sticking with the post!

interesting post. Jazz is certainly a fascinating journey, and I think everyone approaches it in a different way. Especially because we are adults and --unlike children-- we don't just accept whatever is fed to us. We challenge, and based on our past experience, we think we know what's best for us.

I will pick up on the following because I think my message didn't come out clear:

It's a good idea to put Coltrane in the CD player. And listen. If anything, enjoy one of the most satisfying tone ever. No-one plays lush life like Coltrane.

But obviously, don't expect to understand much of what he's doing. Just enjoy it.

If you want to hear everything that's going on, you have to start simple. And that is why I recommend early stuff. You see, jazz musicians learned from who came before them. So it's good to go chronologically.
Louis uses less scales, chromatism, passing chords and chromatisms than Parker. So start with Louis, not Parker.
Dont just play the CD once and voila.
Put it in a piece of software that will allow you to loop over a small 1 second section. And sing that section perfectly.
I use Transcribe!, so I can slow it down. You actually get to hear a lot of the mistakes, and notes in between. But that gives you an opportunity to really hear.
So there's nothing complicated about this. One second at a time. It's nothing but discipline. There should be no question on where to start this exercise. If you want example of which specific record to transcribe, let me know. (it's not Hello Dolly )
How detail you want to go about it is up to you. But if you manage to -in the end- sing a whole solo. You've made progress.

The other option is to just listen to the same record over and over again. I listened to tons of Lester Young as a kid and I know of lot of his solos by heart from that time.

This is something you can do when you're sick of playing, or need a break.

This is getting your ear to understand the jazz vocabulary.

In the same way, do you think someone could be a good writer unless they had read thousands of books. Theory is all good, it is, it helps. Knowing how to apply theory is even better.