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Jazzwee, you only started playing piano 3 years ago? I can't believe it. Well if I can get that good within 3 years and be so jazz knowledgeable & playable I will be so happy!


Stagerson, welcome to the Learning party. This is LOTS of fun doing it together. We learn best learning from one another.

Rosa

Hi Stegerson, welcome! As far as the melody goes, I've said this many times so I'm sure you'll reread this over and over. Look at the Note Phrasing Link on Page 1. Quarter Notes are played detached (non-legato).

On your LH, notice that when you stab the chord on the LH, the 3rd chord stab is off time. So read up on the Charleston discussions. I would first start with playing whole notes on the LH and ease into Charleston.

Glad to see others joining the fun here. Welcome all!!

jazzwee, your latest solo version is so very helpful. I played it over and over until I could sing the 'A' section. I transcribed it, played it into Band in a Box, printed it out and notated the accents. Got my fingers copying what you had done.
Played this over and over and over.....

Next step - try my own solo once again... 'A' section only this time. Have I gotten rid of that Mickey Mouse triplet feel that I had in my first solo attempt?


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

As far as my playing goes, it's funny that I hear what I WANT to hear, and not necessarily what I am actually doing. That's why I post a lot. I need to know how I REALLY sound.

ps - stegerson - I had to laugh with your comment
"It's late and I must sleep!"

You can forget sleep - jazzwee has created a monster here. I fell into this bottomless pit and life seems to have changed. This stuff takes lots of time ... but time worth spent.

No problem. Glad I could help. At least I'm doing something useful on this thread. I have every intention of posting my latest noodling attempts. I've got a decent backing track and I've been practicing with RH only improv. I'm having some technical difficulties at the moment converting the recording to something listenable. If worse comes to worse, I'll just post a MIDI file....

Anyway, keep up the good work everyone. Barb, your stuff is sounding great. Thanks so much for sharing. I thought the phrasing on your latest attempt sounded much better. We'll see what our mentors think. BTW, I hear 'ya on the metronome thing. Ticking on 2 and 4 really throws me for a loop too.

SB,

SO true about what you think you played vs what you actually did! Now that I'm wired in, I look forward to the critiques.

Yes, sleep. I get off work at 10:30 so the BEST time to play, without kids, is from 11 pm to ??.

Jazzwee,

I know exactly what you mean with the RH, I'll work on it.

In my mind, I was doing a 1 and a +2 with my LH. I'll read some more.

stegerson - I think that 3rd chord stab jazzwee is referring to is really beat 1 of the next measure. That stab may be off just a hair....barely noticeable by us jazzer wannabees.

Of course, I may be way off base here. We'll just wait for our mentor to come on board.

Barb

That sounded a lot better, Barb.

As you develop, you will begin to hear better. Even now, listen to the phrasing I made. There's some subtlety there that I automatically do. Some notes are held longer than you think. There are little pauses, accents and such that are part of the swing feel. At the moment, you probably can't here tham. When you start hearing the little things, it will show up in your playing.

This is the same thing with time. As your ears notice when you're out of time (even a little), then your time improves.

A pro listening to my playing will have a lot to criticize too as I'm not yet hearing what they can hear.

So as a teacher makes you aware of what to listen to, that makes you improve. This is why it's helpful to post, regardless of how badly you think you're playing, because, you've got to learn to hear.

Tips on Creating a Solo

If you listen to my solos, you need to understand that it is completely improvised, warts and all. I have no idea what I'm going to play until I play it. That's taken in one pass.

It comes from hearing the melody in your head and not coming from fingers finding familiar patterns. It is harder to hear large intervallic jumps in one's head. So as an early exercise in this, stay close. Move stepwise, or no more than a 3rd first. Then attempt to memorize the sound of a perfect fifth. Lots of jazz movements of a perfect fifth going DOWN. Intervallic jumps of a full octave is pretty easy, and then move stepwise from there to recover yourself.

Here's another trick. Starting on a chord tone, move a half step away (up or down) then come back. Always come back. This anchors you back to the chord tone.

At the beginning stages, if you're going to make intervallic jumps, do it as arpeggios of the chord. This is always safe and Bill Evans did a lot of arpeggios.

Finally, anchor your moves to the 3rd of the chords. Remember the 3rd's exercise? You should have memorized those thirds in AL now. This will keep you in synch with the changes (which is really important).

All this is just to train the ear. And then hopefully you self generate your own melodies and the rules are set aside.

Today I did the most fantastic thing and got myself a new toy -- METRONOME.

It was so educational.....I thought it would be so easy to just get one and tick tock tick tock...

Well, there were so many to choose.
Of course I didn't get a traditional one.

I got one that had a human voice that would count out loud for me PLUS even some crazy looking rhythm patterns to fool around. Oh this should be interesting and not boring.

Jazzwee is going to have a shock to hear that I have been playing piano for 20+ years for my church and never owned a metronome. You probably wonder where I learned my piano -- in the no man's land of the greatest school -- DIY method (Do It Yourself). LOL!!! So my music world never had to count.

I recorded the following Autumn Leaves with LH shell voicing and only whole measure hitting.

http://www.box.net/shared/9ic88f5gcc

Keeping my fingers crossed that I am on the right track......ready for Charleston?

Rosa

The new mentra: It is late and I must sleep.
Off to bed.

OK Rosa, just a slight adjustment. The way you're playing the melody is slightly off on the first note. Start the 1st note an eight later. Your 3rd note is longer than the second note. They should be the same.

So the first melody 8th note should land on + of 2. Those who play the 1st note as a quarter note will start at beat 2 instead so changing the notes require moving the melody in the measure.

Jazzwee, your feedback is very helpful.

I understand what you are saying. Today I did it again but I turned off the human voice counting in the metronome so less interference to my feeling through the groove of the RH swing.

See if this is better:

http://www.box.net/shared/zog6zay804

So that everyone knows, the recording is Lesson 3A LH shell voicing with LH whole measure.

Rosa

That sounds pretty good Rosa!

Now this is an 'advanced' feedback. To improve on this, don't rush the melody so much. Lay back a little. There's a term for how you're playing in jazz, it's called 'pushing' the beat. I'm giving you advanced feedback because you've done the basics successfully so we want to give it more liveliness. So the idea is to drag the RH a little from the LH. This is very slight, it's like making the RH a little lazy .

This advice is for everyone by the way, not just you. If you took the exact MIDI of my version of the melody, you will find I don't play it to the exact proportions of the measure.

This is something done in jazz OR in Classical Music! (I was just watching an instructional video in classical and it was talking about the same stuff, including accenting). So music is universal it appears.

I don't know how to explain this, you'll just have to listen closely to the way I play the melody to see if you detect a little dragging.

In most straight ahead jazz playing, pushing the beat is uncommon. Typically dragging the beat is stylistically appropriate. Ritincop referred to this earlier and as he says the delay is in milliseconds. As my playing got more relaxed, it just happened naturally. You develop the ability to stretch things a little.

This isn't going to come easy but keep it in the back of your head that a jazz groove is a relaxed thing. Imagine the piano player having a conversation as he plows through some nice lines in a very easy going manner.

Think of some singer that drags their melody a little.

Jazzwee, your post is very interesting. I like 'advanced' feedback.

I am not sure which midi file you are referring to because so far I've only been listening to your mp3 -- AL simple swing melody -- to hear how you do the legato and the marcato.

Can you point me to which specific midi you are referring to?

Rosa

Rosa, it's the Melody backing track MP3 on page 22 I believe. Before Lesson 10. I also posted it on Page 1 as AL Combo.

I just had to repost this again (since it is buried so far back). THIS IS WHY WE'RE DOING THIS THREAD. To get to 1% of this.

Keith Jarrett - Autumn Leaves (once again)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io1o1Hwpo8Y

Just listening to this again leaves me in awe. I don't think he repeated a melodic idea once.

Anyone out there remember Perry Como or Dean Martin -- or are you all just too young?

ROSA - good job! When you mentioned that you had a talking metronome, I wondered if that would be a distraction for you. Glad it's working out now.

Barb, I doubt if any of us on this thread is too young

Good morning all,

Another day, another try.

jazzwee, I loaded all of your solo tips into my brain. As I was playing this, I incorporated as much as I could remember as I was speeding along at mm = 140.

http://www.box.net/shared/gwhm6lgg0s

I printed out the solo to see what I had played. I played a couple of 3rd jumps, 5th jumps, I went 1/2 step and back to the chord tone. I also tried to repeat an eighth note at an Em7 phrase ending (halfway into the piece.)

Looking at the Band in a Box printout, I see dotted half notes. I wish I held them down - they sound like eighth notes. Do you agree - it sounds too choppy?

Anyway, there is a lot to remember at one time.

I do feel an "after the fact" printout is most helpful at this point. What is your take on seeing the solo in print?

Thanking you in advance for much appreciated feedback.

Good grief - you can tell I lose track of time when I'm doing this stuff. I should have said "Good Afternoon" - it's 12:38 pm now in NC