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Here's one Barb. It's heavy on quarter notes. But this is not even a swing tempo still he swings his quarters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5ITJEf624M&feature=related

Brad Mehldau playing Blues with Kenny Barron. Pay attention to the quarter notes. There's a lot of it. He drags it and then detaches it and it somehow lands on the second note of a triplet or somewhere around there. He doesn't swing his eighths hard. He relies on landing it on the right spot in time against the rhyhtm section, accomplished usually via dragging.

This is a pretty sophisticated technique that I've observed and shows such and advanced appreciation of rhythm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q97V_CSnqz0

Check out the quarter notes at 1:47
See how he ends his phrases on 3:26 or thereabouts +/-.

This one, the beginning is almost all quarter notes. Very pronounced dragging and it swings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRciRFvRpL0&feature=related

Brad again - Riverman. This one is one of my favorite Mehldau tunes because this gets pretty hairy as he builds it up. Lots of quarter notes here too. It's a stylistic thing with him.

Did I ever tell you I'm a big Mehldau fan? Of course I don't have any idea how to play like him

part1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpUznqHJEZE&feature=related
part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eogNru_bwiU&feature=related

Gotcha. Thank you for the details on exactly where to look. I'm recording those quarters and will be practicing his articulation along with the master.

Jazzwee, you are a FANTASTIC MENTOR

I just posted and here are 2 more from you. Yes, I too love Brad Mehldau.

Barb, I didn't search out these videos in order. It looks like Riverman has the MOST quarters. There's so many there you don't have even look for them.

I was watching his youtube Riverman last week. I was entranced by the whole thing. Unfortunately, my brain didn't say "Hey, I'm supposed to be playing quarter notes like that." My ears and fingers are now ready to learn

Riverman changes in 5/4 meter (simplified):

||: Cmi add2 | Cmi add2 | Eb7 (add4) | Eb7 (add4) |
| Ab maj7 | Ab maj7 | C add 2 G7sus | C add 2 G7 sus :||

The left hand is played like Jarrett does sometimes:
rocking back and forth "1 + + 3 4 5"

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Cool Ritincop! Thanks for the Riverman changes.

Doug McKenzie is so chock full of ideas. It's amazing how many variations he can come up with in one solo.

Guys, watch Doug's swing style too. He's a hard swinger and pretty consistent with his style in all his videos. Maybe he made a MIDI of Autumn Leaves on his website and then we can transpose the MIDI to our key.

Hi Fellow Jazzers, To celebrate leap year, here's a little treat to get you into the improvisation mood :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsBC5C5ERho

I’ve titled this midi “A Moment of Insanity”. It’s just the “A” section with my left hand playing rootless voicing. I’ve been listening to a lot of Brad Mehldau and wanted to see what it feels like to play a lot faster than what I’ve been doing lately. Decided to just let myself go on this one and set the speed to 150 bpm. Sorry about my heavy left hand. I tell myself to go lighter, but I guess I’m just so thankful to hit the chords that I get a bit carried away and just bang it out.

http://www.box.net/shared/p86xhv0sgo

That's really good you did that Barb! I hardly hear anyone practicing the LH especially LH comping with rootless. Whole notes is the best way to start just like you did.

I'm trying to get you to drag the RH though. When the LH is playing something, it is actually easier to drag the RH as there's something to play against. Keep doing this and keep dragging the LH. Evenly dragged at first. If there's anything to pick from Mehldau it's that drag. His quarter notes are dragged back very far (maybe an eighth behind). Not so much on the eighth notes which he may play straight but be off a sixteenth (emulating a triplet feel with straight eighths). I tell you, these concepts can be hard to hear. I've been paying attention a long time and it's finally sinking in what he's doing.

While it's been quiet here, I've been trying to transcribe a little of Jarrett on AL. It is hard to transcribe his rhythm. My teacher says, if it takes me two weeks to transcribe one line it doesn't matter. Well I listen to what I transcribed over and over and each time I listen, I find a variation in how he plays it that threw me off. This is a real helpful exercise.

Transcribing is a real great way to pick up some phrasing and some ideas on jazz vocabulary. So far, Jarrett's actual note selections are consistent with what we've discussed here. No suprise there. But talking about it theoretically does not make it sound like the real deal.

So for those willing to do this, let me tell you how I'm set up to do this. Just this weekend, I bought a software called Roxio RecordNow 9. What it does is allow you to capture any music being played from your computer, whatever the source (for example Youtube). I use this to create an MP3 file.

Then I own this software called "Transcribe!", which allows you to select any portion of the audio and loop it over and over, slow it down, and even autodetect what tones are in there.

From here, I used Finale Notepad (Free from Finale), to transcribe it to sheet music.

With this setup, it is pretty simple and standalone. Before this, I was recording the audio through my Zoom H4, and converting to MP3, and then passing it through Transcribe. So many steps because transcribe only handles Wav and MP3 (no Itune files).

I haven't done a lot of transcribing before but even just doing a little bit, it is already improving my understanding of what's going on, especially on fast runs.

I recommend doing this. Bill Evans was much easier to transcribe because he's using mostly diatonic chord tones and broken chords. It's hard to duplicate in real playing though because of the speed, however it gives great note ideas. Most of it outlines the actual chord shapes (not disimilar to Charlie Parker).

Jarrett is much more chromatic and he mixes it up more rhythmically so it's more challenging, particulary since his version of AL is very fast.

For an introduction to Transcribing, the best first piece to transcribe is Freddie the Freeloader (Kind of Blue - Miles Davis), particularly the Wynton Kelly solo. It's been transcribed by many on the net but you learn more if you transcribe it yourself. Much bigger learning payback.

There's a limited time to spend on the piano so transcribing, which is a big part of jazz learning, could add to that limited time. You can do it in between reading forum posts

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Bump

So were are you at Woody? Got any problems with what you're working on?

Hi Jazzwee,
I'm up to Lesson 8 (Scales). No problems yet - but I am progressing slowly. Been playing a lot of other music in addition to the Jazz Lessons(both pop and started working on some classical again).

Since I play an old spinet acoustic I don't have any recording ability at this time. The only people enjoying my playing is me and those around me.

I saw that the thread was getting down pretty low on the first page and decided to bump it back up to where it should be.

How have things been with you? The teachers still ragging on you for the jazz thread?

No. Nobody ragging. But looks like everyone has such big projects that it's a bigger hurdle to post the next level of improvement.

I still have some lessons that I have to add still so we're not yet done but it's good to have a little rest to build up some energy. Also I'm still trying to digest the approach to explain it (solo piano voicings beyond 2 + 2 and 2 + 3).