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On Thursday night I had my first night out at a jazz gig in town where a good friend of mine played jazz piano accompanied by a vocalist, clarinet player and drummer.

After the gig I started looking around at ways of getting into jazz piano and found myself here.

Can anyone suggest the best way of getting into jazz - full piano arrangements or lead sheet. Or is there any other alternatives?

I just posted some suggestions on another topic, so I'll be brief. Check out the topic "Autumn Leaves" here for some instruction, check out jazzpianolessons.com which has a 3 free day trial and after that is only $25 per month. There are a bunch of suggestions on the very long AL topic (186 pages long).

Nikalette, the jazzpianolessons look really good. Thanks

hey keyboardclass,

check out youtube also. youtube is amazing! you can find videos of all the greats playing...oscar peterson, bill evans, chick corea, herbie hancock, mccoy tyner, art tatum, and the list goes on and on.

there are some great instructional videos on youtube too.

I think the best way to learn is with a good teacher who can show you things. Mark Levine's Jazz piano book will be a good place to start in terms of learning chord voicings.

I personally wouldn't recommend getting transcription book/full arrangements.. I just don't think a beginning student can learn much from oscar peterson solo through sheet music, even if they have the chop to play them, because you won't be able to understand what you are playing. It's like starting classical piano with chopin etudes.

I wrote this on an another thread..

"It's true most of jazz can be learn by ear/aurually, but it's important to realize that it is learned through imitation. If you are starting out, I suggest you pick easy Miles Davis/Chet Baker solos, and transcribe them, analyze them, and learn to play with it note-to-note with the CD.. pretty soon you will see vocabulary common to many jazz and you will learn to internalize it... the more you steal, the more ideas you will discover.. its a lifetime thing and there is no end to this."

Throwing a lot of theory and reading at a beginner can make them pretty frustrated. Sometimes just getting your fingers around easy patterns without necessarily knowing the theory can jump-start the process.
I like to start out all of my Jazz students with immersion into the Blues; starting with the most simple I,IV,V7 pattern and the basic blues scale. We listen to a lot of recordings and try to get to the point where the student can hear the changes and start playing along. I teach them this 'cool' rootless left-hand voicing right away that sounds good with the scale and we jam through the lesson.
Left hand plays:
F13 Eb, A, D
Bb9 D, Ab, C
C7(+9) E, Bb, Eb
Right hand plays:
F, Ab, Bb, B, C, Eb, F (repeat up and down in 2 octaves)
I've had new students playing this very quickly and surprising their friends!

Thanks for the responses.

Up to now I have been trawling through the websites that teach jazz in one form or another. I have found Sudnow, PianoWeb and jazzpianolessons.

They all have their appeal but can anyone reading, who has first hand experience, share their experience.

By the way, I am playing piano now for almost 2 years.

I forgot to tell you about LearnJazzPiano.com, Scott Raney's site. Lots of jazz pianists put up free lessons and stuff here.

As for me, I'm going to bite the bullet and try to find a good jazz/blues/boogie piano teacher. Even tho' you can get far on your own, I think I'll get there a lot faster with a live person.

Re: Willie Myette's site (and if you run a search here you'll find lots of opinions):

A few years back I bought the monthly subscription to jazzpianolessons. I liked it a lot, but wasn't using it enough because of my schedule.

A few months back I bought a special from Willie for jazz gospel piano, which is a newer website of his that doesn't have as many lessons yet. It's only $9.99 a month. It was really good, but I used up all the lessons in about 4 months, so I've gone back to jazzpianolessons and am learning a lot. There's no other jazz piano site on the web that is as good as this one. He also has a monthly radio show. The subscription is about $25 a month.

He also has a funkpiano site.

There are so many lessons, hopefully you've had a chance to try the 3 day free trial and sample a few.

Right now I'm working on the 4 Blues and Boogie lessons, a chord voicings lesson, a lesson on When I Fall in Love, and Autumn Leaves (more advanced).

I'd suggest buying it for a month or two, it's easy to join and to quit....then you can really browse around the website. Make sure to watch his introductory tutorial. He added something new, called Plans, which are guidelines for beginner, intermediate or advanced players, with suggested lessons. Meanwhile you can print out all the great PDF files he has for each lesson, listen to the midi tracks, and watch the videos. Even if you decide to go elsewhere you'll have lots of stuff to practice.

For lead sheets, try Wikifonia. They are free, and you'll find many of the great jazz standards there.

On the Autumn Leaves forum, someone recommended Beginning Jazz Keyboard, which I just ordered, with a CD. I've been very disappointed in most of the jazz books I've bought, that's why I switched to videos. If you run a search on U-tube of jazz piano tutoring or lessons, you'll get a lot of hits on pianists who have posted many lessons.

I don't recommend Mark Levine or Tim Richard's books. They're hard and not well-written for a beginning jazz player.

Hi there,

I have 3 1/2 years of Sudnow experience. I learned how to play standards from a fakebook. If you are interested in hearing some of my arrangements, pop in to my website. Before Sudnow, I had 4 years of classical lessons as a kid -- then many years of no piano at all.

Barb

Swingin'Barb(like the name), with over 3years of experience at the Sudnow group are you able to play without the aid of sheets. Can you play from memory?

I like the idea of playing songs from memory if asked to perform. I would cringe if asked to play that I needed to pull out a song book.

Edit: If you are a member of this club, do you do any other style of learning. Are you purely this method. I listened to your songs - nice sounds on the chords.

So Barbara do you recommend the Sudnow metod for an intermediate student?

Keyboardclass - Yes, I play a lot from memory. But, after my repertoire reached 40 songs, I decided it was best to use lead sheets. My poor memory didn't want to store any more songs. All I need now is the melody and chord symbols and I can play songs with those lush sounding chords. I have around 150 songs I can play this way. Plus, I have several different fake books with loads of tunes, so I can play through anything a few times and add it to my repertoire.

I am still active on the Sudnow site, but, I have now expanded into learning jazz. I am working from Baerman's Beginning Jazz Keyboard book that was mentioned a few posts above by Nikalette.

Barb

Nikalette - We have students joining Sudnow who have absolutely no piano experience. And we have students who have had 10 years of classical training. It is for everyone who is motivated and enjoys playing solo piano.

Barb

Is the forum a bit like this one?

The Sudnow forum is specific to the Sudnow method. No need to discuss other online courses since we all have the same goal. Newbies to the method get all the help they need. We post questions, post songs, discuss music related topics.

If I decide to try it (and it's an upfront expense), it's quite a savings to join both of the sections. I won't hold you to it or anything, but do you recommend that, or just dipping a toe in with the first group?

Nikalette,

I joined both. That was the only way to go as far as I was concerned. I craved that sound in a big way.

Do you enjoy standards of the 30's, 40's, and 50's? You will be playing a lot of those songs from the fakebook since they are the songs that do well with those jazzy chords and harmonies.

Barb

SwiningBarb, does the guy who runs the club ever post here?

I am looking for something that I can get involved in, where I know there will be someone to answer my questions and give me good advice on how I am progressing.

Can you download songs from the forum?

Withholding comment for now.

Hi keyboardclass,

Yes, the forum administrator is a member of Piano World. His screen name is Markham. He, as well as other advanced Sudnow students, are active on the Sudnow forum.

Just to give you an example of the type of support available, there are several newbies who have set up their own thread. They ask for suggestions and post their progress regularly.

We post our songs using boxnet. So, naturally it is all downloadable.

Just so that you understand, there are no videos with this method. There are pdf files for printing out, and audio downloads. The Sudnow approach is different, but it worked in a GRAND way for me.

Hope this helps,

Barb