Q. OK so im a drum set player of many years. I was accepted to study percussion at Cal Northridge in California, I also have experience playing drumset in jazz groups of varying styles, just never piano. I decided to study Finance and do music on my own time. ( long story ) I have previous piano experience as well, been taking piano lessons on top of my 13 units of study. My teacher studied at U of Oregon, good teacher but we go over more traditional classical training. Ive been putting in at least 2 hours a day since we began in may 2012'. I can play through at least 3 or 4 preludes and fugues from Bach's WTC book1 . Im deadly serious about music and although im a finance major. Id rather play piano or drums for a career if the opportunity arose. SO HERE'S MY POINT, AND MY QUESTION
What material should i work on to become a capable jazz/blues pianist??? Right now i go over arpeggios, M & m scales , octaves ect with my teacher. My classical technique is getting quite good but I want to bring it to sound jazzy and bluesy. I recently downloaded a pdf file with the Blues scales and the pentatonic scales. This has greatly helped my tech.Ive also been going over songs in the real book " blues for alice " , " have u met miss jones ". So im improving.
IS THERE ANYTHING I SHOULD BE DOING TO BECOME A BETTER JAZZ PIANIST. OR DO I NEED TO JUST KEEP ON THIS ROUTE AND BE PATIENT.?????????????????????
A. Mike-
It sounds to me as if you are on the right path and you are correct-- be patient. Unfortunately jazz careers are mostly imaginative and only occur with luck, knowing the right people and being at the right place at the right time. The same can be said for other genres, but there are music careers possible if you are versatile. After many years in the music business I went back to school and eventually earned an MBA-accounting. Finance is an excellent field and has a good cross-connection with music. Music is a business and it never hurts to be "jiggy" with the financial side of it. Especially if you become successful at music, you will draw on your background in finance. It is also possible to work for a successful music star, a recording studio or an internet music company.
I was "lucky" to have a father in the business and became a professional musician when I was 15. I started on piano but soon gravitated to drumset. I have been able to swap sets back & forth from piano & drums, usually with one of my brothers, and even added in bass also.
Your development as a musician seems to be going well. Any chance you have to attend live concerts will be helpful, especially if you can get close enough to observe and maybe interact (ask questions) with the musicians. The Real Book(s) is an exceptional tool. Listen to various recordings of the tunes and take notice of how different artists approach the tunes as well as how they were originally performed.
Scale books are useful as additional information, but you need to develop your ideas with your ears and your heart more than with your eyes and your brain (the analytical part). Of course your creative ideas will also come from your brain, but not analytically. One bridge you might enjoy between classical and jazz is the Dave Brubeck transcriptions in TIME OUT and TIME FURTHER OUT. His very classically inspired playing is carefully written out and are some of the only jazz transcriptions you can find. Also pay attention to the ways Brubeck and Vince Guaraldi approach VERY simple popular tunes such as O TANNENBAUM and CAMPTOWN RACES.
Be careful with practicing arpeggios. I used to accompany a pianist on big-band gigs who was a very good player who knew a TON of songs, but his improvisations were largely just arpeggios on vanilla chords and it was annoying! Practice arpeggios in all 12 keys and use as many chord voicings as you can muster. Also, vary the tempo, timing and meter. I have developed a set of arpeggio exercises based on a m7+11 five-finger chord. It sounds good enough that I use much of it to warm up at a strange piano when the audience is already arriving. Vary the meter of your arpeggios by doing duplets, triplets, quartets, quintets... as far as you can go. It gives the accents on different fingers every time. The same with varying the timing. Pick a rhythmic figure- say Beethoven's 5th Da-Da-Da-dum or Phantom's descending Da-Da-Da-Da-dum rather than duplets & triplets. But all the while using the m7+11 chord. I have also incorporated some of the more complex Schaum scale-book techniques. This not only gives you the needed physical exercise, but your ears will pick up on some of the tonal combinations and you will be able to fit them into your playing for an audience.
Just keep working continuously and prepare as if you have a gig the next night. Who knows, you might! But above all of this, enjoy your playing whenever and wherever you can. Sorry to be so long-winded but your story sparked me and you are a drummer/pianist as I am.
JAZZ sheet music for violin and piano?
Q. Hi. I'm looking for some Jazz sheet music for violin with piano accompagnament. Is there any hope for me? I would like something free, downloadable and in PDF or JPEG format. I know the violin isn't very popular in Jazz, but it used to be a common instrument in Jazz bands. Please help.
A. I can't help you with straight-up sheet music, but you could probably manage very well with lead sheets, depending on the piano player.
If you are not aware, "lead sheets," as they are commonly called, typically contain a melody line, along with chords written above the staff. If the piano player is good at "comping" over chords, then if you play the melody line (and hopefully you two can trade off on solos, perhaps?), the audience won't be able to know the difference.
Though it is rarely notated or explained in lead sheet books, typically songs are organized as choruses. Most are, for example, one big repeated section, that you, um...repeat. The layout in performance practice with you two is usually as follows:
1. Soloist plays melody, with accomp. playing chords as they see fit.
2. Soloist solos, with accomp. still playing chords (note: this can occur for many repetitions of the chorus)
3. Soloist lays out, and accomp. solos for one or more choruses.
4. Soloist plays melody with accomp. playing chords, as they did the first time.
5. End as fitting. Usually a tag (repeated short section, usually consisting of last 4 or 8 bars or so) is added.
Now about those books. Collections of jazz leadsheets are found in what are called "Fake Books," or also "Real Books". I can't remember why the humorous distinction exists at the moment. Search around, and you'll find them on the internet. There are several volumes, which each contain many jazz standards. I don't know if you can find them for free. I doubt it, but good luck on that.
Hopefully I was coherent enough. If you have any more questions, feel free to email me at flame122112@yahoo.com and hopefully you'll get through the spam filters. If not, I'm stupid and probably deleted it by mistake, and try again soon. Good luck.
Dan Whisler
BME Major
Wichita State University
I want to learn Jazz Piano, where do I start?
Q. Hi,
I've been listening to a lot of jazz piano improv and its amazing!!! I want to do it too: I know what diminished chords and augmented are but I'm not really sure what to do with them.
2. How do you find which diminished chords go with which notes? I see people doing improv and they can match chords w/ notes so easily and how do you pick and choose? Thanks!!
A. There are literally hundreds of styles of jazz. Most of what you hear, the real flashy stuff is bebop orientated - frantic tempo's, disjointed progressions, extended harmonic vocabulary, odd phrasing, and mostly the song exists as a vehicle of 'self-discovery' or what musicians call noodling.
So - Jazz isn't just playing some dim/aug chords and fucking around the C major scale, just as french isn't oui/non and good to go. Where to start?
Get a fake book - it gives you the melody and the progression. Learn the melody by heart, learn the progression by heart. This big ass pdf is a good place to start. The songs are old and Broadwayish - but it'll get you started playing real jazz songs.
http://www-irma.u-strasbg.fr/~vigon/amis/partoches/jazz/fichiers/Fake%20Book.pdf
From there you'll notice that certain songs have all fucked up progressions - like C major to Ebmaj7 - well, how the hell can that be? Then you'll notice that G is in the Cmaj chord as well as the thirst of Eb. So in Jazzland, as long as the note is in there somewhere (given that it's not just 'out there' or part of a weird chromatic passage, or leading into another note) it's good to play, and can transition you to a new scale. When you start to make up your melodies, write the melody and the reharmonize with more complex chords and google substitution.
Remember, the SONG comes before the solo. Learn some songs and you'll start to connect the dots on what scales are used over what chords. IMHO, most of the really hard stuff to solo over are showtunes. Find a jazzer who can make those progressions sing is really something - because everyone already knows the song/lyrics yet wants to hear something new and exciting from the jazz man. Whatever. It's all bullshit anyhow, no one listens to this crap anymore.
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