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

ATTYA is often played in Ab.

Here it is in D.
Melody with 2 hands:
http://www.box.net/shared/31ady06oi9

And 2+2 style in D.
http://www.box.net/shared/q9cr1z8b5a

Everyone's invited to play in a few random keys.

Happy Holidays Everyone.

Knotty, you've been busy. Thanks for posting your recordings. I remember how to do the 1-3 and 1-7, but I've forgotten what the 2+2 style is. What do you do there?

Oh Woody, Barb, Jazzwee....and Chris as usual, so resourceful to help us. It's good to see everyone back here. Beatrice has grown. So adorable! I wonder if Deeluk had finished doing his house.

Woody, you would not believe it! I've been busy teaching piano. Never thought I would end up doing this. I had a summer workshop teaching piano at church and the students have been keeping me very busy, so busy that I got so inspired to write a manual for them to follow. This is the first time I held a public piano workshop and it was fantastic, so fantastic that we used the students tuition to support two orphans (half-orphans) in China. You are probably aware of the devestating earthquake back in May, but that area was taken care of, so we supported the orphans further up north. Happy Holidays to you too.

Rosa

Rosa,

What I call 2+2, LH plays 1-3 1-7 as you say.
The RH simply plays the melody and adds either the 3rd or 7th.

Take care

Chris,

Awesome link!!

(lots of downloadable MP3 play-along tracks)

trying to motivate folks to play stuff in several keys. Here's ATTYA melody and 2+2 in 2 more keys. (and that will be all).

in C
http://www.box.net/shared/to5tp2x3uv
http://www.box.net/shared/d30btds823

in Eb
http://www.box.net/shared/d6is1a5prr
http://www.box.net/shared/q5u2tr09e6

Draw a random number from 1 to 12 and play it in that key.

Take care.

Hey Knotty, thanks for keeping everyone motivated! Thanks for posting the melody too. Still busy so will catch up later.

Hey gang. It's great to see this thread coming back with new life. Believe it or not, I'm still not done with my basement. Haven't really been working on it much either. It's good enough for now. Just needs the final painting touchups and little stuff like doorknobs. I'm just totally consumed with work. I have been making some time to practice, but not nearly enough. Hope to get back in the swing here sometime soon.

deeluk,
Good to hear from you again!!! Hopefully, next year you'll have less work time, complete your basement and still have more practice time.
Happy New Year to all on the Thread!!!
Woody

Yes, Woody, deeluk (glad to see you back)....and I've already stepped into 2009 here in HK. We are about 12 hours ahead of you. So, everyone here, have a FUN 2009 year, esp Beatrice, her first new year!!

Rosa

Happy new year! Deeluk, got to put your expensive keyboards to use

Happy New Year to all!

Happy New Year Gang!

I'm starting this year with 'dem Blues. One of my piano students, (he's 10 years old), is pushing me in that direction. I started him in Tim Richards' Book - Improvising Blues Piano. He loves it. I'm trying to stay a few lessons ahead of him. The kid is not afraid of improvising. What a blast we are both having.

Last year ended on a high note for me. I had a 6 week gig as background music for the local art exhibit. Then, I had a 1 week gig playing Christmas songs for a holiday program for first graders. Of course, I still play each day for dinner hour at my folks' retirement facility.

I don't yet have time to pick up where I left off with this thread, but, will return after I complete the Richards' book.

Happy practice to all.

I haven't found the time to record anything. Been too busy. But just to get some discussion going let me just bring out a comparison here.

A. Keith Jarret's - ATTYA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLCGWh-VZhI&feature=related

B. ATTYA - Another Version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=781x6JXwDCA&feature=related

C. ATTYA - Clearer Harmony
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nb82A08WfQ

D. Barry Harris - ATTYA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7RjVQzpqiA&feature=related


This is not about a criticism on version B found on Youtube. I'm not trying to compare this gentleman to Keith Jarrett, but I'd like to return to the subject of chord tones. Clearly, Keith Jarrett outlines the chords in his solos to my ears. Especially on downbeats.

Version B, there are moments when the harmony is not clear to my ears. The reason is that he is playing chord extensions on the downbeats in some instances. Perhaps, as an exercise some of you can try to identify the times when he is not playing chord tones on downbeats. I've gotten to the point that I can tell immediately.

It's easy actually, see if you can hear the chord quality at each bar. If I can't hear the chord, then it's not chord tones.

Version C, even as fast as the solo is running clearly defines the harmony in my head a large proportion of the time. The exception is the very beginning where I think he was getting in gear. Later on he consistently maintains the harmony IMHO. Now sometimes the gentleman was using substitute chords so this may not be always apparent but even the subs are clearly heard I think.

Version D is Barry Harris who is big on Chord Tones on downbeats too. It reflects in what I'm hearing. The harmony is consistently clear at all times.

The training on the use of "Forward Motion" as taught by Hal Galper, et al (chord tones on downbeats) is just a discipline. When I play, I don't think about it at all. I'm just listening. It gets to a point when one is hearing the notes in ones head and it is just executed on the keyboard. If you know the harmony, you listen to your selected notes and know that it follows the harmony, even without a rhythm section.

What differentiates an amateur like myself from a Jazz master is that the masters can hear this notes at an incredible pace. I found that fast playing is not really memorizing of licks as much as a brain that has been trained to absorb so much musical data in a short amount of time.

Anyway, back to the original point, the idea of Chord Tones on Downbeats is a really solid soloing approach, particularly on standards, and it characterstic of the sound I hear when listening to the masters. It really makes their solos stand out.

By the same token, it is the lack of this characteristic that makes a non-master stick out.

So listen to the videos above and see if you can hear what I'm hearing. Remember this is not a question of speed or rhythmic quality, I'm limiting this discussion to chord tones.

BTW - I'm noticing that there are quiet lurkers out there who are participating in this thread and downloading our sample MP3's. Please enjoy yourself and perhaps you will come out and ask questions about Autumn Leaves. We are still willing to help anyone who has started from the very beginning.

Please do not be perturbed that we are starting a different tune.

interesting post Jazzwee.

Would be interesting to transcribe 8 bars from the solo of each version and analyse a bit...

If I had a few hours ahead of me.

Knotty, that's what I'm trying to teach here. The knowledge of how to discover if the player is using chord tones can be derived without resorting to transcription. The concept is simple: at each bar, can you hear the harmony implied by the chord? So if you know what each chord is supposed to sound like, you will hear if that chord is not defined.

So I can identify for example, where in Version B did the player not use chord tones. He did use chord tones for the big chunk of his playing so it is segments.

I will do this later. I'm just opening the discussion. My question first is can any of you hear what I'm talking about? Then I will highlight an area and demonstrate.

The concept I'm discussing is to emphasize how important your exercise was in just trying to solo with Chord tones (1,3,5,7). This careful selection of notes distinguishes the finer players IMHO. And this is what has been taught to me and I'm passing on this knowledge, albeit with a different approach. It also demonstrates that limiting the notes is not much of a limitation in real life.

It is interesting how young jazzers tend to focus on the dissonance in jazz and will try to do things like "play outside". Yet the reality is that the masters "play inside" (the harmony) and when it sounds outside it is because (a) they have performed a chord substitution, (b) they played the chord ahead or behind in time.

Jazz, thus follows classical harmony more so than is expected. It is also interesting how easy it is to come up with melodic lines when one is guided by the chord tones. This is in contrast to what I feel is non-melodic pattern playing. That has it's place too but successful jazz music tend to lean towards clear harmonic definition, i.e. you can clearly hear the chord progression in the solos without any rhythm section.

I'm hoping this is more of a discussion and maybe get agreements and disagreements since that's how we learn.

jazzwee,

I'm busy with a (longer than usual) post.
After I'm done, I'd like to come back to this.

I haven't reached that level where I can identify what's being played on the spot. But I'd like to dig into that. As of now, transcribing remains my only dependable tool.

Knotty, I'm glad you're planning on giving it a try. I personally believe that soloing is based on "Ear Training". To me, learning the use of major chord tones in playing is just an ear guide. It's not about memorizing arpeggio shapes.

This is why I think that it is particularly important topic. A couple of years after embarking on and active exercise chord tone playing on downbeats, my note selections seems to be ear based, i.e. listening to I am playing and reacting to it.

It is hard to hit chord tones accurately at all times as the videos of the non-masters show.

But when an attempt is made to structure solos in this way, the solos sound musical to me. There's something about this exercise that trains the ear and affects one's playing style forever IMHO.

BTW - I've been working on Giant Steps the last couple of days. Not easy to hit chord tones on it because the progression is not easily heard in one's ears. So there, I'm forced to think more along scales and thus it is more intellectual to me. Fortunately, that's not most of what we play.

Later on, I will try to dissect what I'm hearing in the above videos.

For those not understanding what I'm talking about. Please consult the following book by Hal Galper, in this link: http://www.forwardmotionpdf.com/ (it's not free).

jazzwee, just listened to the examples above re: chord tones on downbeats. I think I hear what you're talking about. The sense I get is that volvox (version B) is playing "outside" or chord extensions a lot of the time. The others (C and D) are much more "straightforward". Traditional harmony maybe? volvoxburger has some other great videos up there on the youtubes too. His simple little Rhodes funk improv video is cool.

Jarrett, well, I don't get that dude at all myself. He's just so far beyond for me that it all goes over my head or something. Thanks for the samples, it was an interesting exercise to go through those examples. Now if I can just hear myself hitting chord tones when I want to, I'll be golden.

BTW, been working on ATTYA myself. I've got a little backing track going. Trying to learn the changes and I am working on the chord tones only exercise. Hope to post something soon.

for an ATTYA backing track, check Chris' link a month or so ago. It has free ones. including attya.