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Dave - Yup -- all eyes (EARS) on YOU!!!!


Jazzwee - get back to that piano. You have a lot of work cut out for you.

oh, I expect much more of you, I think you'll develop your own style. And much sooner than when you're 100 !!!

Great recording on Standards Vol.1 One of my favorite albums of all times, and the first Jarrett I ever bought. Some time ago...

i know this stuff is hard man. i was suggesting that you try some 16th notes, but that doesn't mean that i can do them in this style either .

also, my playing winds up being more right hand driven too. it's not that i can't play the lines in my left hand--i feel pretty comfortable doing that. it's just that it's difficult to find the right stuff to play in the right hand against the left hand lines.

this style is really a mind blower! it's going to take a long time to develop--for me too.

but again jazzwee, you should be very proud of yourself. you did a very fine job for your first time out.

That's right, it's the B chord. It's the only one with a flattened 9th, and now it's also got a flattened 13th. You call that diminished? Afraid I only know what that means with the flattened 5th and 7th. And this B has a perfect 5th and a dominant 7th. So this is beyond the theory I did at school!

Hey, I'll happily just accept it, but is there a relationship between the flattened 9th and the flattened 13th?



Well, I think this spells LH scales for you, my boy! And maybe a Bach fugue while you're at it. You might as well learn from the true master of improvisation - Johannes Sebastian.

One of the things I find I don't like about beginning jazz stuff is that it is so neglectful of the left hand. That just doesn't happen in classical. Even in blues and boogie-woogie the left hand gets a good workout. Before I started studying classical a couple of years ago, I used to just play right hand chords over a bass note, to accompany myself singing. I didn't know how to use the left hand. Now with some classical study under my belt I've gotten over that. It just feels like a big step backwards.
And yet I really don't like the sound of playing thick chords in the left hand and a melody in the right. I am more interested in contrapuntal stuff, walking bass lines, an equal partnership between both hands. Obviously at the advanced level this left hand neglect isn't the case, but for my development as a pianist, it doesn't feel like I'm progressing. I think I just need a real live teacher, and preferably one who really uses the left hand.

Nikalette,

I think you have a point. Getting a good teacher will go a long way.
The thing that's different about jazz is that the LH is never written out for you. And giving it some movement takes a lot of work, I believe a lot more than in classical, because you're not just reading. What jazzwee is doing is really advanced.
Also, the main purpose of the LH is to provide harmony, so chords are a must.
Nothing stopping you from learning how to get the LH moving.

I think a couple of things you can do to develop your Lh:
- play scales, melody, hanons, whatever.
- Play arrangements with only LH
- Find written music (jazz) and play it.

Bill Evans doesn't use the same amount of movement someone like Tatum might use, but it's still very advanced and technical.

Thanks a lot, Knotty. I'm going to take leave of these forums because I'm concerned about some of the posts on another forum, but it has been instructive being here.

Nikalette, as background, let me just say that I'm a student of a world class jazz musician that also heads a Jazz program at a major university.

When I first studied under him, the 1st focus was in fact to STOP, and I repeat STOP using the LH. In fact, one of the early exercises was to see if I can define the harmonic progression simply through the RH lines. This was a very important point.

My very first teacher on other hand succumbed to my request that I develop my LH and starting doing walking bass with me. The result: A bad walking bass with bad time, and a bad RH solo.

What my current teacher is trying to train here first is that you can develop these very, very complicated skills with too many distractions. Many people try to play complex LH lines, including some of the "Beginner Jazz Books" and a beginner does not have the understanding yet to see what happens in a solo to integrate the LH.

As you know, I've started on a study to develop solos involving the LH in conjunction with the RH. But a lot went into preparing for this move. For one, as poorly as I played my first try (and I acknowledge that it didn't sound like a fraction of Jarrett ), realize that if you knew the changes to "All the Things You Are", that you could follow every chord I was in, even without a rhythm section. Listen to it again and see if you can hear that.

Now in contrast, listen to a beginner doing a solo. You will most likely find random notes of the scale. The difficulty even when I integrated the LH was not that the LH couldn't play any series of notes very fast, but I had to make sure that every note made sense to the Harmony and down to the level of the beat. That's pretty advanced stuff.

In my experience, admitedly limited to 5 years here, learning the LH is simpler to add. That was the premise of my teacher and it made sense. I spoke early on about practicing Walking bass for two years. I find no use for walking bass in my playing at all because this style is a very old way of playing jazz and is solo piano oriented (Dave McKenna, etc.). Walking Bass is a very specialized playing style and for those who play mostly in this style, then it is worth the work. For someone like me concentrating on a bigger picture, it's too limited for me.

I would definitely keep working on a LH technically with scales and such, but at the early stages, the LH has to master a rhythmic function. Being able to play any variation of comping using a Charleston rhythm, without getting distracted. To me this is the base line skill of the LH. Then you go on from there. But I would never think to go beyond that with a beginner. There's too much to learn about soloing.

My main focus on this thread as far as LH/RH combinations for a beginner has been "Orchestration", i.e. to use range of registers on the keyboard for the fullest possible sound, along the lines of Bill Evans. That's my teacher's style of playing and enforces that with me constantly. So no LH limited to rootless voicings as that is played only in the middle register. So typically the LH moves around a lot, creating variety tonally as well as rhythmically.

Hope that explains the premise of the lessons here. I'm sure I've repeated this explanations somewhere in these couple of thousand posts. But I'm glad of the opportunity to make it clear.

TLT, in answer to your question, I will give you a new discovery:

Did you know that Bb dim, and B7b9 are the same chords?

In jazz they are voiced identically. The difference between them in presentation is function.

|F-m7b5 Bb Dim |
makes no sense harmonically.

|F-m7b5 B7b9 |
Shows a minor ii-V (2-5) or a Circle of Fifth (or Fourths) movement which is typical with Standards.

So since a Bb Dim7 and a B7b9 are both standard "seventh diminished chords" they will have the same symmetrical shape of stacked minor thirds.

There's a lot more to this in application but suffice it to say that re-representing a Dim7 chord a half step higher as a 7b9 chord has a lot of impact in analyzing the harmony, and a big part of Jazz music theory.

Dave, several conversations going on here...going back to our discussion. It seems to me that there's several interpretations of the LH/RH soloing style.

The Bach style of counterpoint, which to me implies simulataneous play (which Mehldau does), or the Keith Jarret style, which seems to be more of a supportive LH.

I'm not sure I can fully absorb the counterpoint approach in Jazz because of it's effect on swing. Rhythmically, I don't know how it fits with counterpoint. Mehdau really interprets it IMHO as two separate meters (not necessarily in ATTYA but listen to River Man where the meters are not in synch).

The Keith Jarrett approach seems like it presents one solid line of improvisation. Just that the thought moves from hand to hand so you're still thinking about a single melody. But being a combined LH/RH, it appears to create a sound that has more tonal range. And I really like this effect.

I might even say I'm addicted to this. So I'm thinking of this outside of the realm of counterpoint.

Now, I mentioned in my response to Nikalette that I'm careful to pick notes that fit the harmony. Integrating the LH with that concept is terribly difficult because for this to work, I have to be specifically aware of which chord tone I'm on on each beat and how to integrate more chord tones than just 1/5/7. That's realy really hard.

I have a specific question here. On the RH, I solo with an open hand shape. And I try not to close it up so that I'm able to reach for notes melodically without thinking. Because my LH is used to comping, it automatically also takes an open hand shape.

But I realize that this open hand shape on the LH makes it really difficult to reach some notes in the popular keys like Eb, Ab, Db. The orientation of fingers 1/2/3 is difficult to establish. (like fingering a typical downward move from Eb-D-C. I have to solve these mechanics first.

What do you think?

Dave, I'm learning a lot from watching your left hand fingering here (particularly when you shift to LH fingers 1,2,3 ascending from an open/stretched shape).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7vr5WRS31E&feature=related

You are fantastic! No one could ever say you don't know how to play.

Question is what do about LH descending stepwise from black to white. No example here for that. So maybe I just avoid that.

Hang on, I want to get this before I move on:



[scratches head]
Bb dim = Bb, Db, E and G
B7b9 = B, D#, F#, A and C

To me, they look different. The B7b9 is a diminished chord (if you leave out the B) on D#, F#, A or C, depending on how you want to look at it.

I haven't been active in this thread, but wanted to comment here.

TLT is right B7b9 is not a diminished chord. You could think of it as a slash chord (D#dim/B), but it is not usually charted that way. It is what it is, B7b9.

Let me first correct an earlier error that I mistyped.
B7b9 is the same as C Dim (Not Bb dim).

Now to resume the explanation. How is a B7b9 voiced?

In Jazz, a B7b9 is voiced
C, Eb, Gb, A.

In other words, a 7b9 chord is voiced as:
b9, 3rd, 5th, b7

GUESS WHAT:
It's C Dim!

So you MUST look at a 7(b9) as a Diminished shape harmonically. And In fact a B7b9 and a C Dim share exactly the same scale. We refer to the Diminished scale starting at B (root) as the HALF-WHOLE diminished scale and the diminished scale of C Dim as the WHOLE-HALF diminished scale. If you plot the notes of these two scales, they are exactly the SAME notes.

Once we have established that the VOICING of a 7(b9) chord is the same as the Dim Chord half a step up, then you can now conclude that HARMONICALLY speaking, these are all substitutes and communicate the same chord qualities.

We already know that all Dim Chords are substitutable by another Dim chord a minor third away. There are 4 possible substitutions and thus can be thought of as INVERSIONS.

Now I'm adding the concept that 7(b9) chords are part of this substitution concept when looking at Chord progressions.

The only thing that differentiates a B7(b9) chord from a C Dim chord is what I play in the root.

Dave, maybe I've figured out the finger issue on the LH just from watching your videos. Looks like I have to get comfortable putting the LH thumb on the black keys and playing the white notes in between the black keys. I haven't tried it yet, but intellectually, that seems logical (for example playing Eb D C descending).

I'm confused. C, Eb, Gb, A is a Cdim, sometimes called a dim7 when the A is included. There is no B in this chord: How could you call it a B7b9?

B7b9 has a B root, and so is not a Cdim in the true sense.

Hi Joe and welcome to our little thread here and I'm glad you decided to drop by. You have to forgive my Jazz terminology here which is not necessarily the same notation in non-jazz.

Yes, I meant Dim7 since for all practical purposes, in Jazz we play seventh chords.

When we voice chords in Jazz, we select the notes that will impart the chord quality and will often skip notes and add some.

For example, when I play a Dm7 chord, I will not play it as D F A C (1-b3-5-b7), but instead I will play it as F A C E (b3-5-b7-9). Notice the absence of the D root. Notice too that when I see Dm7, I will be playing an FM7 chord.

There's a specific reason for doing this. A combo setting is typically assumed which means there's a rhythm section (Bass Player, Drums). The Bass player will definitely hit the D in Dm7. But the piano player will not waste that extra note duplicating the root. We will use the maximum number of LH fingers we can to impart the most tension. So that's why the 9th is substituted for the root in this example, but further up the voicing.

In contrast, we could also play just the guide tones of 3rd and 7th and play it as a shell voicing. This makes an assumption that our RH will participate in the harmony to add all the other missing notes.

So in jazz, it is very typical to leave out the root, or play it occasionally as a separate bass note. So although B7b9 has a B root, it is the b9 sound that really defines this chord. So the b9 has the higher priority.

This is a foreign concept to non-jazz music but that's why jazz has "jazzy chords" (which I define as more tension).

Now harmonically, how would you look at CDim7?

To me that is the same as EbDim7, GbDim7, ADim7. Different inversions (rootless concept).

Thus I also know that as a quick voicing rule, I can substitute B7b9, D7b9, G7b9, Ab7b9 for each other.

When reading jazz standard leadsheets, this really simplifies reading the chord progressions when you can visually see this at all times since the inversions matter for minimizing movement and voice leading.

Returning to the original tune (Autumn Leaves) and the functional significance of this notation change, it would have been possible for the composer to state the chord progression of AL as |F-7b5 CDim | Em7 |

but this makes no sense in functional harmony.

| F-7b5 B7b9 | Em7 | makes more sense since it's a 2-5-1 progression (in minor).

But understand that the notes and sound is the same. Try it on a keyboard.

hey jazzwee,

i do the left hand fingering without really thing about it that much. i do have my thumb on black notes a lot. it can feel a little awkward at first, i guess. but, i'm sure you'll get used to it after a while.

what kind of fingering were you using on your version of all the things?

yes i agree. i was thinking about that when i was practicing yesterday.

there are at least a few different interpretations of the lh/rh linear thing:

there is the way where the lh hand plays broken arpeggiated chords that outline the harmony while the rh plays melodic the lines. then there is the mehldau way, where each hand is playing lines simultaneously that are equally melodic and complex. then there is the jarrett way, which is kind of a combination of the two approaches.

and any of these styles can be done straight or with a swing feel.

i was trying something yesterday that gave this stuff a completely
different sound:

usually when i'm playing in this style i'm playing the lh lines in the bass register and the rh lines in the middle of the piano, or slightly about the middle. but yesterday i tried bringing the voices closer together. the range of voice separation varied from about a 10th to a 3rd apart.

with the voices that close it really starts to sound like bach.

Dave, I was trying to avoid putting the thumb on the black key unless it was part of a 1/7.