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Hi Rosa, we're getting close here. What I'm seeing is that the melody is low. You're pulling out the third of the chord and just working with the 7th and the melody.

I think you should do this first without the melody. When I play this with melody, my fingers don't disappear from the chord. It stays put and sustains.

If you're playing this without the melody, make sure to double the 3rd or 7th, 3 7 3 to 7 3 7 with the pinky being the last note and the thumb being the first note. This is an octave stretch so I hope it's comfortable.

There will be cases (when melody is added) where to play the pinky requires a stretch of greater than an octave but I just want to make sure that you are on a solid harmonic base on the chords below it, where all the chord tones are sounding evenly (that you're not pulling up early, which I saw a lot of).

I want your fingers to get used to the span of 3 7 3. The pattern of the hand is very consistent with this. The left hand is pretty fixed and I think that's ok in your playing.

STEP 2
As a next step, I want you to add only the melody note on the 1st beat of the chord. So this is what the pinky will play. In most cases, this will not alter 3 7 3 as you know. But it will on occasion.

Your hands need to remember this constant shape, with the 2 thumbs close by and the stretch being almost constant.

One more thing I noticed: Part of your problem may be that you play the LH too high. On some of the chord changes you make, I would go down, not up.

In some cases the 9 will go past your RH thumb so the two hands will overlap. This is also ok, just as long as your hands maintain less movement and more control over the voicing.

Unfortunately this is a lesson that's easily explained when seen. On the internet, our ability to crosscheck what you've done is limited to a "day" wait. But it's better than nothing right?

Hi Jazzwee, to be able to crosscheck within one day is VERY GOOD already. For a live teacher, I need to wait a WEEK but I don't have one at the moment. So we are faster

This time, I did RH only 3 7 3 & 7 3 7 with LH just hitting one note of the base chord. In this way you can see my RH easier -- moving mostly the inner finger half steps and at times moving the outer fingers one step.

http://www.box.net/shared/mewcw5tcs8

I can only do 3 7 3 and 7 3 7 hitting the chords but not the melody tones.

That looks good. Now the LH was not playing 1 5 9 and I know you will add that but in order for the LH to line up nicely with the RH, make sure to move the root down appropriately.

At times it is ok for a little overlap between the hands, especially when you do the V chords (because the 9 will be over the 7 played by the RH thumb). This is OK.

Before you add the melody to the finished product here, just make sure you're paying attention to the orchestration of all the voices underneath the melody. This means, as I said before, that the pinky may have to stretch past an octave.

I hope you can see here the different ways of playing solo piano. This same tune works nicely with the LH 1/5/7 shell voicings as well and is good to do when soloing. The reason it works here is that the 3rds are in the melody so they get a lot of attention anyway, thus the important notes are always sounded (root, 3 and 7). In this alternate approach, you don't shift from 1/7 to 1/3. You always do 1/7 or 1/5/7 -- again the reason is that the 3rd is already being played on the RH.

There are many ways to play a tune and sometimes you will have to experiment which voicing style works the best.

What you've learned here, LH 1/5/9, RH 3 7 3, can also be used for comping and in that case you actually do keep playing the double 3 in 3 7 3 or double 7 in 7 3 7 and it will work.

One more thing you should put in your arsenal to practice is to play these same notes but arpeggiate them. This is a ballad solo piano style.

Thanks Jazzwee for the guidance. The reason why my LH clashes with the RH is because I am playing on a 66 keyboard so my LH can't get lower than 2 octaves below the middle C.

I understand what you are showing me about the 1/7 and 1/3 working well with AL and now for ATTTYA since the 3rd is taken care of in the melody, then LH 1 5 7 or 1 7 or 1 5 9 work well with this song. I love the 9ths in there.

Next, I will try to do that ballad solo you are saying. Appregiate my LH and also keep those RH voicings intact along with the melody line.

Jazzwee,
Still working on my Evans arps. Not as easy as I had thought it would be.

I heard Connball Adderley's AL. The piano comp sounds almost Legato with the base behind it? Is that how I should be playing the left hand?

Here guys: Ballad of ATTTYA

http://www.box.net/shared/4kwr54swss

Hope you enjoy it as much as I had in playing this.

Rosa - WOW!

I smiled the whole time I was listening. I love the way you break up those chords.

Thank you for sharing.

Rosa - Was that impressive or what?! EXCELLENT!

On AL make sure you start working on rootless voicings and in solo piano style, it is done by hitting the root, pedal then hit the rootless chord. The effect of it is a lush sound full of jazz sounding chords and then your right hand can arpeggiate like you do here.

In other words I want to make sure you can incorporate full jazz voicings, with more alterations than you've done so far on ATTTYA. This is where you get the full jazz effect. The rootless is starting point for this.

I just listened to it Woody, and the comping is very light in the background. There is no fixed comping method. If you listen closely, the pianist will change the pattern of comping regularly. Sometimes whole notes, sometimes stacatto notes. The timing will be varied and usually made to fill holes. Comping others is not something I've discussed much here. What we're doing is comping the RH. But you can learn a lot from Hank Jones. You can see that comping does not have to be regular. Sometimes it is absent. It provides color and interest. Also the voicings change for variety.

.

I did notice that sometimes the piano was "up-front" and bright while at other times just in the background and one of the other instruments wer "up-front". It sounded to me that only the base was kept constent in the backgound. I actually recognized by hearing it the same 7th/3rd chords on several of the piano "up-fronts" (I don't know what else to call them) you had us playing way back when.

The bass provides the rhythmic structure together with the drums plus the bass sets the harmonic structure as well so they are designed to play consistent legato quarter notes most of the time. You will find this in most of jazz.

If you ever do your own recording of a bass line, you will need to follow this. I discuss walking bass lines in a lesson and I discuss this very same thing (legato and accenting 2 and 4).

Rosa, that was great! You've been working hard on this and it is really starting to show. Keep it up.

Barb, jazzwee, rintincop and deeluk....thanks for your interest and listening PLUS feedback.

Rintincop your 2 cents is worth a million. Once I get comfy with these chords, I will have more freedom to accelerate and do wave like motions. Love those descriptions there.

Jazzwee, I'll start looking into the voiceless lessons.

For those of you who are interested in transcriptions of Keith Jarrett, I found the following link:

http://www.keithjarrett.org/transcriptions/

Rosa,
I just had a chance to hear your ballad version of ATTTYA. Excellent job! I played it a second time just to enjoy it more. You should feel proud!

Rosa - That is a very cool KJ link. Thanks so much for passing it on.

Thanks Woody for your kind comments. Yes, I am proud of this thread. I never thought Jazz could be EZ to learn until NOW. It used to be all greek to me.

Barb, that is a cool link cuz it contains a lot of pdf files for you to download to print out w/o doing your own transcriptions.

Hi everyone,

Here is my latest work on AL.

http://www.box.net/shared/ok0d2o1cso

Rosa gave me the incentive to start putting the song together. Over the past 2 days, I voiced the song - using LH rootless and color tones under the RH melody. I learned how to work with color tones from the Sudnow Method.

This morning I began learning what I had voiced. Just to break up the monotony of the learning process, I started with the bridge. You will hear the last 16 measures - bridge to the end.

Jazzwee, Rintincop, (Chris too, if you are through burping the baby) - feedback and suggestions please. I am unsure if those upbeat accents are appropriate in a ballad style version.

Barb, that sounded great! Now I hear you doing those little runs. Why aren't you using those in a medium tempo solo? They are great sounding.

Especially at this tempo, you can do Rubato on the melody and speed it and and slow it down in relation to the constant beat. This will make it more interesting.

Love your voicings BTW!