Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Jazz Study Group: Autumn Leaves, ATTYA, etc.

sorry about that (and many typos and unclear statements). I've been really busy so I'm doing all these between phone calls and emails...

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Look guys, I found this:

Bill Evans Solo on Autumn Leaves.
No need to transcribe yourself.

http://pianologist.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/bill-evans-solo-on-autumn-leaves.pdf

Good find! I wish we knew what album it's from though.

One thing to add though. There's nothing like doing your own transcription. For some reason, it is so intense a process that the sounds gets integrated into your style quickly. Sometimes you're on one line for hours so by the time you're at the piano, you can hear that line over and over. You don't even have to do much transcription initially to get the benefits.

Hi Jazz Mates,

I've been working on a new practice tactic. I know that when I try to do a solo, I'm a bit hesitant about going to different registers of the piano. It feels safe to stick in one area. I thought of a way to help me over this hurdle.

To deal with this issue, I decided to experiment traveling around playing the AL melody and using rootless in the LH. When playing the melody, I'll play a couple of bars at a time in different registers. It is starting to feel better now traveling over 3 octaves.

I'll Blog too Barb. It might be interesting for you guys to know what I'm working on since I'm past the basics.

Here's one.

When I listen to the Jazz masters play, in particular I was looking at my teacher, and Kenny Werner, both heavily influenced by Bill Evans, I noticed how they are able to play legato even when playing sixteenth notes.

First of all it took awhile (just recently) until I could even solo with some sixteenth notes. It was tough. But as I demonstrated it to my teacher, he said to play it more legato. At these high speeds that's pretty tough to do but that's the characteristic sound I've been trying to get. BTW some players never try to sound legato at high speed.

The other thing I wanted to achieve in addition to sixteenth notes legato, was the ability to play a complex two handed solo piano without pedal. This was another legato issue.

My model here was Kenny Werner playing this beautiful version of My Romance where he played these legato lines instead of the usual jerky stop and go of the jazz vocabulary.

So with this task at hand, I've been working on this for months just studying my technique, getting scales at higher and higher speeds. I found this particularly good exercise at maintaining even articulation was to play LH against RH with a different pattern like 1:3, 1:4, etc. and also making sure I correctly accent the top of each set on the RH.

This was gruelling practice. In the last couple of weeks, I've noticed some really solid improvement. I went back to playing My Romance with a shell LH like 1/5/7, thumb and index finger of RH and melody or solo on the 4/5 fingers of the RH. The middle voices are played usually on beat '1 &'. And I noticed that I can maintain a constant cantabile sound without pedal. And of course with swing.

This is really exciting for me because playing a tune correctly is one thing, but playing and coming out with one's voice is another level. My voice is coming out!

Many players are recognizable by the way they play. And in a way this is a personal search.

This is like another level of my search which is similar to many of you finding your 'swing' voice.

Who's blog is next?

We'd love to hear that new voice of yours whenever you are ready to share it with us!

Bump

I'm trying out the rootless voicing. Since I want to do the modern stride (only 2 beats for each measure), the bass note hit on the downbeat 1. For the rootless voicing, should I just let it go and hit on the 3rd beat, or should I slow down and strive to hit on the + of 2?

Rosa

Usually you'd hit the + of 2. I don't know if I'm understanding you right but to describe how I do it, I would hit the bass note irregularly. In Autumn Leaves, it would be approximately once every two measures.

There's also a couple of ways this is done. In some cases, some players will hit the bass staccato almost, just to lightly suggest the root.

Some would pedal to the first rootless chord, which could get muddy on the RH solo.

But Autumn Leaves changes chords every measure. What is the reason for hitting the bass note on every 2 measures?

BTW, did someone do a midi on this so that we can see what they did?

Thanks.

Hi Rosa,

I just recorded some modified stride to the A section of Autumn Leaves. I can't do a midi file any more because my digital has been moved to another room (where my hubby and I practice our vibes, piano duo stuff). It's pretty obvious, though, to hear that bass note plunk.

http://www.box.net/shared/iqnjjn0o44

I didn't spend any time working this up, so you won't hear any rootless plunks on the + of 2. I just played what came natural to me.

Hope this helps.

Hello Swingin' Barb-

How are the practices going with you and Tom?

Hey Woody - It's fun jamming together. We do have our work cut out for us before taking the show on the road

Thanks Barb I hear that you skip chords, that is you play every other measure. So you only did rootless voicings to every other chord -- Am7, Gmaj7, F#m7b5, Em7, Am7, Gmaj7, F#m7b5, Em7.

Is the reasoning behind this that these chords have long measures?

Rosa - I did rootless for EVERY chord. But, for most of the A section, I plunked the bass note once every two measures as Jazzwee had talked about.

LOL...I don't have jazz ears.

What is then the reasoning behind plunking the bass only at every other measure and not every measure?

All I was doing was playing an example of what Jazzwee was talking about. I could have played it once for each measure, though.

Barb, The important part is it's fun! Nobody minds working on something if it's fun.

OK I'm back.

The idea is not to duplicate actual stride which will make the tune sound too oompah-oompah, which is not the "modern" sound.

Bass notes are occasionally "plunked" just to restore the tonality to the listener, which becomes vague with rootless voicings. Why every two measures? It's a balance. Hold the bass note too long and you lose the tonality. Do it too often and it sounds rote. So I picked something in the middle that would be typical.

It depends on the tune too. If the tune stays in one place, you won't need the bass note too much. My judgement call here is that, when I play AL, the ii-V sequence becomes obvious enough to my ears by playing one bass note for each ii-V.

To emulate a modern stride, the bass note would be played irregularly, so that pretty much excludes doing it every measure. Should you skip every two measures, three measures, four measures...? It's up to you but note that skipping the bass note raises tension which eventually needs to feel like it should be released. Two measures seems to be a moderate amount and your LH is not jumping around too much like a real stride playing.

Remember too that in ballad playing, the bass note is pedaled so you really don't have time to switch to rootless to bass.

When you hear someone play modern stride, then it all makes sense. A player might skip all bass notes for a chorus then bring it back in. It's all about the effect/atmosphere desired.