Seems some of you have gotten off key with our purpose here so please start listening again to the music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAgaqALyJJ4

Spend 25 minutes of your precious time listening to great jazz and learning from it instead of reading 25 minutes of nonsense.

Interesting video.
Why did Bill improvise with only the right hand?
Thank You very much.

No dbvjazz, you got it all wrong.

THIS IS JAZZ

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/32/5847.html

*p.s*, great link dpvjazz

What a great pianist Bill Evans was!
I have never heard about someone who does not love his piano music.
I have read some critics even about Keith Jarrett and other great jazz pianist but "Everybody digs Bill Evans".

Great video. Thanks for the link.

Ed

[QUOTE] Piano-pianist
Why did Bill improvise with only the right hand?

If you look at the video again and notice all the other players are reading their parts as written by Mr Russell. On top of the piano you will see the sheet music and I suppose Bill memorized his part which at that point was right hand alone. Most times you do get freedom in your playing on certain jazz gigs but there are some where you have to play what is written exactly as the composer wanted.

jazzwee thanks for those great links always love Bill's thing not to mention what a great guy he was. Bill struggled a lot about his worth as a player but a perfect example of lot's of hard work a dedication. DPVJAZZ

Ah, OK.

However I have read that sometimes Miles Davis told his pianists ( Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett for example) to improvise with just one hand ( the right one I mean ).
Jarrett himself tells this in his book.

Moreover many times I see jazz pianists improvising with only the right hand.

I believe because in this way the pianist can improvise with greater freedom, also without thinking too much about changing chords.

What do you think?

Thank you very much.

PS:
Bill was lefty.

Improvising and practicing with one hand will always help your playing. If you spend one month with your left hand and play all your major seventh arpeggios major,minor,dominant,augmented and diminish and in all keys. Really memorize them and you find yourself playing nice bass parts and you will see the chords open up while your playing. And then do the same with the right hand you will notice much nicer melodic lines. It is that simple to improve your playing. DPVJAZZ

dpvjazz, I have been looking for some exercises to develop my left hand playing, and this looks like it should help. (Funny how if popped up in an otherwise unrelated thread.)

When you say play these arpeggios, do you mean in runs up and down some number of octaves, or play in one octave in root position, then first inversion, second, etc? (I do both kinds with my right hand.)

Thanks for the idea.

Ed

We are talking left hand practice only now. And if I wanted to sound like a basic bass player I would keep it two octaves to start with and keep your range to low C to C one octave below middle C. Pick out some jazz charts All the Things You Are or Night and Day are good ones or what ever you want to play and with just your left hand play the arpeggios along with a metronome and jam records or midi’s and stick to the notes in the seventh arpeggios at first. Example the first chord of All the Things is F- so play F Ab C Eb in the left hand that’s right 1 3b 5 7b you can play and add chromatic notes choices later.
Since we are talking about getting our left hand prepared to accompany our right hand by playing charts along with the jam records or midis will provide the different rhythms and tempos and yes by all means go through all the keys and inversions and start on different places. When you listen to records of the best bass players in the world they will establish a groove and keep there most the time. Same for the best piano players and that is our first goal by developing a left hand that makes sense and keeps the groove and pulse going start to finish and it is pretty hard not to sound good by sticking to the most basic notes of the arpeggio.
Another great practice is to play root note of the arpeggio with left hand pinky then choose two notes in the arpeggio to target in stride fashion then three then four always sticking to the root, third, fifth, octave for note choices. When you practice about 15 minutes with the metronome or band in a box turn it off and practice for about 10 more with out it just trying to feel or hear the tune through the left hand arpeggios.
After a bit of this simple kind of practice maybe a month you will start to notice your left hand note choices when PLAYING just increased and they all sound good. DPVJAZZ

DPVJAZZ,

Great idea.

I practice a lot with band-in-a-box files with drum and bass accompaniment, and I am modifying them for drum and guitar only, so I can use them to practice playing walking bass or stride.

So I started this routine today. In a month or so I'm sure I'll be playing walking bass on Cherokee at, oh, 350 - 400.

Yeah.



Thanks again for the suggestion,

Ed