I spend a lot of time tapping my foot, counting out loud, working with the drum machine or metronome and clapping the rhythms. I also have two ear training programs on board my computer. They are great tools for clapping rhythms.

Eric Baumgartner's Jazz Abilities is also a good training tool for reading rhythms. You clap a rhythm and then apply it to a 4 bar blues etude. A line a day of this is what I assign my students.

Hi Pete,

I have your Pop Piano Pro book and going through that and am also really interested now in the Latin stride, using it with pop songs and with standards such as Begin the Beguine. Any tips? Thanks!

Fellow PPP'ers and TTL'ers,

I haven't been in the forums much lately, but I have continued to work on PPP. For our piano studio's Dec. recital, I played the prelude again, about 15 minutes, and I mixed in 3 tunes from PPP along with some Christmas music:
Journey into the Lights
Not Mad at the World Anymore
and Sleeping Through September.

I don't have any video to share of that because I did not like the way the lighting washes out the video in the performance hall, so you'll just have to trust me that these were OUTSTANDING versions, and I'm sure the round of applause at the end was for my performance and not the fact I was finally finished :-)

Since the Dec. recital I have been working on As Tears go Dry from PPP. I have managed to get a decent video of it.
Enjoy:
http://www.box.net/shared/4061f04fvh

GregF


PS As an added bonus, I dusted off my recital closer, Christmas Time is Here, and made a video of it.
http://www.box.net/shared/vuz63nmlmv

Elssa: The Latin pattern is very versatile. You can use it on a standard bossa. I try to break the pattern up, even for 1 measure, just for a little variation. So if I have the chance to go to locked hand or even just blocked chords, I will do that just to break the pattern. I do that with stride too.
Most of my students are young so I use the latin stride pattern on pop tunes that fit the 8 beat rhythm category. If you want to play very articulated, the latin pattern can be used for a tango. I have a student that uses this on Hotel California and it rocks.
While looking on itunes I found Lisa Harris #30 Tango Piroutte 4/4 Tango medly. Check out the Latin pattern in L.H. #33 Begin the beguine is very nicely done.
I go fishing for good tunes and arranging ideas on itunes regularly.


Greg: Thank you so much for your contributions to the thread. Your playing just keeps getting better. It is fun to see the pieces performed in far away places.
Christmas Time is Here is a favorite of mine. I had a lot of students playing it this Christmas season.

GregF, beautiful!
One of my favorite songs in the book.
An inspiration to us all.

Thanks for the good ideas, Pete. I play what I think is called a Bolero rhythm pattern with Begin the Beguine, Besame Mucho and some other Latin tunes. What do you think of that?

Elssa: If you would like to share your pattern please post a link. I found 200 patterns here: http://www.poppiano.com.sg/200_Left_Hand_Broken_Chords_pat.html

Hi everyone!

Just to introduce myself to this thread...

I played piano classically as a kid, and then didn't play for many years. Lately I've been getting back into piano again, and I'm trying my hand at blues and some jazz. I want to do some pop piano too. Mostly I'd like to be able to improvise, or just to sit down and play.

I got hold of Pete's book (Take the Lead 2) and got curiously addicted to the first piece, Five Stars. It's so beautiful, quite simple, and I think it's a good one for me to practice improvising over.

So far, when I improvise, the whole thing pretty much grinds to a halt.

Here's what I can do so far. This is from memory and I've ad libbed a little:

http://www.box.net/shared/mj9ln6uyjh

ten left thumbs: Thank you so much for sharing. I am glad you are enjoying 5 stars.I enjoyed your ad libs. I heard some pentatonic harmony being added to the melody. Nice! I have a little exercise that you can use to build up some chops using that idea.
http://www.box.net/shared/grfultpvgf

Also, you will hear me use some hammer ons in my improve. You can stay on a C chord over the whole progression of the piece and get some nice sounds with that idea. I added that to the previous download sheet.

I like your improv ideas. I think sticking with those ideas longer, by repeating and expanding on them will help tighten things right up. You have some sequencing of the intro going on in your improv. You could mess around by moving the pattern around to different scale degrees (sequencing).
You will see an exercise for that on page 6 of Take The Lead 2.

Thanks again for posting. It is a thrill to hear the pieces come back from far away places.

Thankyou for your post Pete. Unfortunately I'm having to deal with a crisis at work, so I'll need to come back to this later.

OK, now I know what to call it!



Interesting, I'll try that out. Lots of parallel fourths, sounding curiously like what I was taught to avoid like the plague in harmony class, many years ago. Also sounding curiously like those parallel fourths from Smoke on the Water - which (goes to check on piano) - are also pentatonic.



I do hammer-ons on guitar, but I don't know what that means in piano context. From the example, do you mean 'fast notes on the way to a target note'?



Yes, I think sticking at it is important so that I don't need to think too much about the LH and can concentrate on the right. I'll try what you mentioned about sequencing.

Now, in the context of simply running up/down a scale, I'll mention something which was suggested to me in another thread regarding jazz improv. That is, to practice playing a scale and, at random and quite spontaneously, don't play a note. Keep going, just put in a rest rather than a note. I've tried it before and failed miserably. How can something so simple be so difficult? I tried again with 5 stars, and again got nowhere. But I'm thinking now it's possibly worth persisting with this one? Let me know what you think.

These pieces are worth playing, even in far away places. (I have no idea I lived in a far away place. It seems quite close to me! ;))

OK, another recording. This one's called 'aimless wanderings with pentatonic harmony':

http://www.box.net/shared/l4dkteslv0

ten left thumbs: I was with you all the way. I hear each new phrase embellishing the one preceding it. Nice and connected with no sudden tangents to left field. (If that was aimless, I would like to hear what you sound like when you know where you are going.)
I am answering back with a pentatonic solo. http://www.box.net/shared/jofpnb6ver
I am adding some hammer ons, and waterfalls, coming down the pentatonic scale using a short motifs, to the harmony exercise. Try and work a few of these technics into your solo practice.
If you want to here a classic masterpiece of pentatonic skillage, with a few blues notes added, check out the piano solo on Jessica by the Allman brothers. (This is also available on Chuck Leavell's DVD. Not for the faint of heart.)

Pete, you are too kind. I do hope one day to know where I am going. Your solo is beautiful, and I will study it more carefully.

Now, can we have a vocabulary check-in please? (My dictionary isn't helping.)

- hammer ons
- slide notes
- waterfalls

Thanks

I have found the term Hammer ons and slip notes used to describe the same thing. The lick is attributed to Floyd Crammer and shown here.
Printed handout here: http://www.box.net/shared/dh24gtcq89

Hammer on Audio here: http://www.box.net/shared/u04n34ki22

Waterfall Audio here: http://www.box.net/shared/si1ooo3nqf

I think I've got it. So the hammer on is that specific lick, and there are the two forms of it, and then you also do lots of grace note-combinations, which sound like the first half of the hammer. Is this right?

Got the waterfall, thanks.

Yes you have got it. You can mess around with the rhythm of the hammer on so they sound like grace notes or slow them up. The great thing is that by playing a C chord over the Am Dm of F chord nice things start to happen. (You are playing extensions 7,9,11).

Pete, I don't know if you have Richard's Exploring Jazz Piano (I) as a reference, but he describes something similar to the hammer on. He just calls it top harmony - and suggests 5 over 2 or 3 or root over 5 or 6 (p 19).

I see what you're saying about the ii, the IV and the vii chords.

It is fun noodling with this stuff!

So, another recording of noodling. This one's called 'OMG, my top E's gone flat!'

http://www.box.net/shared/uh6uk6nnm9

I also looked onto Red Sky Romp, though I don't feel ready to improvise to it:

http://www.box.net/shared/9ybz0jx51c

ten left thumbs: Yes I have Tim Richard's book. A while ago, (couple of years?) I invited him to join the Improvising Blues thread and he showed up here at Pianoworld.

Noodles on piano is fun. It is how I get my students to stay with piano lessons. It takes a while, but you start to see theory in action on the keyboard just by messing around. It develops the ear and gets the eyes off the page. Now it's just about you and the sound.

Tim would be a great asset to the forum. I post a fair bit of his stuff in the piano bar. I can only hope I do it justice. I also have some of his recordings, and he is a fantastic jazzer!

ten left thumbs: So I went back and compared your E is flat solo with aimless noodle a few posts earlier. Your phrases are longer, you have more legato and variety of texture in the flat e solo. Nice!. And this shift occurred in a couple of days. So much for your earlier post that everything grinds to a halt when you improvise. Please change your mind about that.

I start my students with the pentatonic scale so that there is almost instant success. Frame of mind has to be positive or this will never take.

If you take your 5 Stars solo efforts (C pentatonic) and slam them over the chord changes of Onion Soup (A minor pentatonic) you may notice that the licks and tricks work in either piece. For the Right Hand, there is very little difference between the two. To the ears, the same licks are higher in the extensions so you might think you are jazzier than thought you were on the last piece.:)

Thanks for your comments Pete!

Now, I tried Onion Soup and just didn't get on well with the RH. I know you're suggesting putting the 5 starts RH over the onion soup changes, but I tried that too, and got some very strange results. The slash chord progression is OK, depending on what RH notes I use, but I can't get anything to work with the E min.

Here is a piece that I am working on from Take the Lead, book 1. I was having a hard time getting both hands to work together, and this one seems to be helping me with that. Far from perfect, but it is the best recording I could get so far. Seems hard to get all the way thru when the mic is on.

5 finger blues


Dale

If you are planning to improvise the chord changes in the second section, you will have to be careful playing a C in the RH against the Em chord. One way around it is to change from scalar thinking to chordal thnking. So hammer ons in G will take care of that: http://www.box.net/shared/k0j2v5203s
If you use a B instead of C,for the Em bar, you will be playing Em pentatonic which would also work. Change back to Am pentatonic over the Am chord.
Here is avoiding the C on a strong beat by using quartals off E http://www.box.net/shared/q02xyoij9u

Nice going Dale! You manage to keep the rhythm steady. I have the same trouble with the mike.

Pete - I'm afraid you've gone a couple of steps beyond me. You started off by suggesting putting the 5 stars RH over the LH onion soup. Strange. I think probably I need to stick with 5 stars till I'm more comfortable and in control of what I'm doing.

I see what you're saying about the E min chord and G pent, I'm just not sure I'm doing myself any favours with it.

What are quartals?

Ten left thumbs: What I am suggesting is that the licks and tricks on 5 Stars will work on Onion Soup. The waterfall licks and hammer ons that were used in C major work over the first section even though it is in Am. Here is a sample: http://www.box.net/shared/57gmvgj2cf
I start with C hammer ons for 2 bars, messing around with single note pentatonic scale for 2 bars and then waterfalls for 2 bars and take the melody out for the last 2 bars.
Quartals are stacks for perfect 4ths. I was running an arpeggio E-A-D up the keyboard over the Em chord.

Dale: Putting the HT on the boogie stuff is a tricky business! You did a great job. I second the motion. Your sense of the beat is solid as a rock. I do not sense any gaps between the chord changes either. Thanks for the post.

Sounds good Pete! I'm going to be travelling over the next few days, but will let you know when I get a chance to try this out.

I have updated the last download. I got files mixed up trying to get this done in a hurry.

mucking about when I have a train to catch:
http://www.box.net/shared/nvc2t04ksc