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

westarm, Good job for your first attempt. You really did sound like you were very self-conscience about playing for someone outside the house. To me, it sounds like a little more practice and your ready for the next step. Keep practicing where you are at and how about another recording in the next couple of days. I have to go sell the idea of desparately needing a Zoom H2 recorder to my better half. Wish me luck!!

Very helpful Chris! Thanks for posting this!

Nice touch Westarm! Sounds great. I would practice with a metronome to get that even time going. Very critical in playing jazz. All the mechanics sound great, LH vs. RH balance is cool. It's a bit hard to hear on the headphones.

I can't tell how accurate your Charleston is on the LH due to the varying tempo but I like the length of the LH stabs.

You're on your way here.

Enjoyed those postings of Wynton Kelly, ritincop. Thanks! He will be our Jazz Master of the Week.

I heard that Brad Mehldau spent a lot of time emulating Wynton so you can see how important he is to the new crop of jazz masters. Transcribing 'Freddie the Freeloader' on the Kind of Blue Album is like standard beginning fare for phrasing with any jazzer. That's Wynton Kelly playing it. Miles Davis switched from Bill Evans.

Anyone wanting to learn how to swing can learn a lot from Wynton as he can do hard swing or play straight. He can swing hard at very fast tempos too.

Here's Freddie the Freeloader from Miles Davis (with Wynton Kelly playing piano)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeECkXU_xEA&feature=related

Listen to the phrasing, particularly phrase endings, and repeating notes. I consider this jazz phrasing 101 right here.

Of course, not to be ignored is Miles Davis himself...but we can discuss that when he's Jazz Master of the Week.


What would we do without youtube? Great resource for this thread.

OK gang, here's a quick recording of my most recent arp practice:
<a href=http://www.box.net/shared/oakawnfgg4>http://www.box.net/shared/oakawnfgg4</a>

There's an obvious contrast between the first half and the second half. The first part is definitely more precomposed (though not completely). While in the second half I tried to stick with the arps and truly improvise. Obviously, I can't come up with a steady stream of eighths at will.

Thanks for listening.

Westarm, nice going!!! Now that you started, you can't stop now....keep the recording coming and you will not even notice the red button there anymore.

Deeluk....very nice arps & variations & you even have some improvisation!!! You are sure leading the way. I do hear long strings of 8ths. Do you write everything out or do you do them on the spot?

Deeluk - it was fun listening to those arps. You are doing something I haven't tried yet with that exercise --- improvisation. Thank you for posting and shoving me along. I do need that occasional push every now and then.

Way to go!!! Interesting recording deeluk. Given the fact that we are both using the same chords, I would have assumed that our arp runs would be similar, They're not and I like yours better. Yours are much more melodic. Also, your left hand sounds like your on two keyboards with sustained left. I assumed you were driving a digital piano but this recording sounds more like an organ???

Thanks guys. I've been having fun with this arp exercise, believe it or not. It has certainly been very challenging. And I have a long way to go yet.

Woody, I made that recording on a synthesizer workstation. The backing track is the same one I've used throughout this thread. Well, I did modify it once somewhere back there. But, my solo and arp practice I'm doing with only the RH. Just to make it easier and focus on that. When I play both LH and RH together, my solo tends to fall apart.

The track has drums, bass and a rotary organ track. I played one of the chord exercises on that track. The 2+3 voicings.

Rosa, I don't write anything down. But I have played the precomposed parts of that pattern several times and now they're memorized. The only improv there I suppose is that I did make up the pattern. And it doesn't always stay exactly the same each time I play. But I still wouldn't call it true improvisation.

That explains a lot. I'm still doing both hands and makes it that much more of a work out espically using a swing tempo.

As far a having a long way to go... I like to think of all of us as works of art - in progress.

Deeluk, just in general, I can hear major improvement even in your phrasing and just general touch. You are growing by leaps and bounds here Pretty amazing actually for a short time.

Now that you're doing these arpeggiation exercises, how about doing more repeats on the arpeggiations? So let's say on Am7 you're doing
C E G B, learn to vary this to
C E C E G B
or change so values to quarter notes, or break up the arpeggios into two phrases.

The repeats are particularly important because that's really the major aspect of the jazz vocabulary.

Here's another example to test your brain. This is going down and the first two notes are quarter notes

B B G E C
bold are quarter notes.

I'm giving these more advanced goals here since I can see you are already learning to vary the arpeggios.

Remember that the common mistake of every improviser (me especially) is the use of two many notes. So repeating the notes is very important. Especially if the repeated notes plays a little motif, the audience tends to like to hear it repeated for emphasis.

You may want to re-listen to Bill Evans playing all his arps in AL and you'll hear all the repeats he does. The main notes are the same 1-3-5-7-9 but how he organizes these notes is important to learn. Amazing how many combinations you can come up with such a simple sequence.

Keep at it Deeluk. Each recording you post shows you've crossed another barrier.

Bump

OK, Woody & Gang, here's my All Things arp.

http://www.box.net/shared/2zvtacaccc

Rosa

Great job, Rosa. Those accents are sounding very nice!

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday I was having a time of it trying to understand the concept of "swinging" at different tempos. For some unknown reason, I have been trying to keep the eighths "even", at all speeds, while accenting the upbeats. Jazzwee helped me to understand that at slower tempos, the "hard" swing is more of a triplet type feel. I have been suffering a great misunderstanding for the term "hard" swing. I thought that just meant that the upbeat accent is greater - while still keeping the eighths "even".

Jazzwee suggested that I do the same exercise at different speeds. Here is a portion of Donna Lee, played at 3 different tempos - 100, 120, 140.

Hopefully, I am starting to "GET IT". Jazzwee, what do you think?

http://www.box.net/shared/dmxg7unswo

.

.

.

Rintincop - Thank you so much for your detailed feedback. You described me perfectly here - bumpy, mechanical and stiff. I do wish I can relax old Donna. My brain seems to be working too hard on those accents.

I'll try some deep breathing before playing this one again. That has a way of relaxing me.

Hi guys, changing computers here so, I'll catch up to you shortly. I can't listen to anything right now...

But in general, Ritincop makes the point I was trying to make to Barb. "Triplet Feel" or an exact 2:1 is not the authentic jazz feel. It is usually some number in between that and 1:1. It will tend to vary but generally more swing at slower tempos and less swing at higher tempos.

Since we were doing AL at a fixed tempo it is easier to describe but as we play tunes at a wide range of tempos, it will be important to now emphasize this difference in swing feel.

This discussion (via PM) came about with Barb because I thought that a tune she was playing at a slower tempo (around 100bpm) didn't swing hard enough. As you slow it down it will need to swing harder and straigthen out as you go fast until you get to speeds emulating sixteenth notes (like 200bpm) where there is no swing at all.

Hopefully, I'll be able to listen later as I get my computer running.