Hot answers tagged jazz
18
One of the best ways is to play scales using chords. Set up a metronome, and change a chord on every forth beat. Choose a slower tempo if you can't do it on time. When you get comfortable, try more complex rhythm or a finger picking pattern. Here is an example of the F scale with jazz chords:
Fmaj7
Gm7
Am7
Bbmaj7
C7
Dm7
Ehalfdim
Fmaj7
Here are the ...
14
There are, of course, an enormous variety of chord progressions used in jazz. That said, here are three you should know:
12-bar Blues
The basic 12-bar blues as played in jazz (not as played in blues) usually goes something like:
I-IV-I-I-IV-IV-I-vi-ii-v-i-turnaround
In blues, all these chords would be dominant sevenths. Jazz players, however, ...
14
Great Question, Edgar!
I'm guessing if you've played some of the Real Book and such that you've heard of Jamey Aebersold. If not, you definitely need to check him out and volumes 1, 2, 3, and 54 are very common for beginners.
However, if you've exhausted the Jamey Aebersold path and are still unsure of where to go, my best advice is to listen to Jazz ...
14
If you're well-trained in music theory and good at sight reading, then you've already got some strong and important assets. I have a background similar to yours, so here are some things that I remember from when I got started:
get used to jazz rhythm: if you take for instance 4/4 songs, you'll notice that in many genres the first and third beats are ...
13
In classical theory, the necessity or lack thereof of a particular chord member is generally determined by the note's tendency to lead to another note. That tendency comes most often from the interval of an augmented fourth or diminished fifth. Enharmonically, those intervals are the same, but in context, they are not, and they resolve differently. In a ...
12
Do you listen to jazz?
I think a big part of getting into jazz as a trained musician means experimenting on your own. One of the biggest challenges for you will likely be learning the style of jazz piano, i.e. being able to play and not sound "square".
If you want a listening list, check this out: "100 Greatest Jazz Pianists". The top 5 would be plenty to ...
10
Unless you have a seven string guitar, this chord is impossible to play on guitar if you want all chord degrees represented. Since it is a G-minor chord over an Fm7, you can really think of the total composite chord as an Fm13, which is a pretty standard jazz chord for guitarists. . . or any jazz player for that matter.
What notes you leave out in part ...
9
Jazz and classical music have different traditions and points of focus. In classical music the distinction between composer (or creator of music) and performer is highly divided - only in specific instances is the performer allowed to improvise (in the historical practice of music from the Renaissance, Baroque, classical piano concertos by Mozart and ...
9
You asked "or is this fundamentally just a marketing success?" I think the answer to these sorts of questions always has to take into account the historical background.
The Hammond organ came on the market in 1935. It became distinctive because it came first. It was popular and sold in large numbers. It was the first commercially successful electronic ...
8
I gave an answer to a similar question here, but I'll recap the main ideas.
Miles Davis famously said (something like) "Play what you hear, not what you know." In other words, when you're soloing, you don't want to be thinking, "Here comes a dominant seventh chord; I'll play a mixolydian mode over it!" There's just no time for that, and it leads to ...
8
Be careful with the Maj 7 on I chords (ie DMaj7), which will quite often conflict with the root (D) played in the melody : you tend to get a b9 interval between the 7th (left hand) and the root (right hand) with sounds very bad. In that case, substitute DM7 with D6 which will sound smoother.
The IVM chord (GM in our case) can often be replaced with a IIm7 ...
7
I am a jazz musician who has helped people make this very transition. I would like to add the good comments here by suggesting a few books for study material:
The Jazz Piano Book - a definitive work by Mark Levine
The Jazz Theory Book - another definitive work by Mark Levine
Modern Harmonic Progression - a wonderfully written book on Tertiary Harmony by ...
7
The "Scale Syllabus" page inside any Jamey Aebersold book is a good resource.
And how about that, you can get it for free from his website in PDF format:
Scale Syllabus
7
The Hammond organ is what is called an analog additive synthesizer (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_synthesis) and it works by adding together sine waves that are multiples of the base frequency. A sine wave alone sounds like a whistle or a dull flute, but the more you add up the more interesting the sound can get.
The Hammond organ features ...
7
The problem is that John Coltrane's jazz involves extremely advanced concepts in harmony and music theory. If you have no musical education, you are asking to go to post-graduate university before you have attended elementary school (if I may use a figure of speech). I am afraid that you may need to spend a considerable amount of time acquiring an education ...
6
Other ideas that might help:
For all of the different types of chords that you know how to play, try out each of the twelve possible harmonic intervals that you can play above the root of that chord type, and understand the kind of sensations and emotions that each sound evokes.
Once you discover that you love the sounds of particular harmonic intervals ...
6
Mark Levine's "The Jazz Theory Book" is quite popular, and very thorough. If you have classical theorical background, you will definitely be able to peruse it. It is however not meant as a course, more like a reference text.
Jazz Theory Ressources by Bert Ligon (3 vol) is also a nice introduction.
6
The number one thing you should worry about is developing your ear.
That's probably 70% - 80% of a professional musician.
So...
Transcribe songs you like (and some you don't) and practice them, especially the parts that give you a hard time.
Use a metronome for songs that are too fast. Play them slow and gradually increase speed.
5
If it is not yet part of your "II-V-I" variations, you want to learn about the tritonic substitution concept, which consists in changing a V7 chord in a progression with a bII7 chord. The interval between V and bII is 3 tones == 1 tritone == diminished 5th == augmented 4th. The progressing IIm7 -> bII7 -> IM7 adds some nice chromaticity opportunities.
Try ...
5
It really depends. If you want to play in big bands, then yes! Sightreading is a huge deal. If you play in a small group that plays lots of arrangements, then this would be important also.
Personally, I play in 3-4-5tets and we don't really use music, we just call out tunes that everyone knows. I've had the pleasure to play in Paris as well, and there it ...
5
The order might vary, but usually it is arranged so you get the ones that you will use the most first, but it doesn't really matter. You can google pages and pages that have fingerings for these.
One benefit we have with a stringed instrument is that there are patterns and shapes that each scale makes. The shape you learn for one major scale is the same for ...
5
Jazz is a collective, public and free art. You can train yourself alone, in private, up to a certain point, but a jazz pianist is someone who plays piano with other musicians (sometimes they are only there through their musical legacy): the improvisation component is the important point, not the themes or they origin.
In fact jazz artists use any theme from ...
5
Before you replace chords with 3 or 4 notes with those with 5 or 6 notes (or even more), re-harmonize a melody by applying these 2 complementary strategies recursively (i.e. each is applicable to the result of applying them, so you can do it in many passes) to chord changes:
1) replace one chord with two (duration of 2 chords in new version =
duration of ...
5
The Hammond B3 is by far the Blues organist's instrument of choice. Why? Hammond organ is the first electronic organ that uses "mechanical tonewheels that rotate in front of electromagnetic pickups." Yes, all the additive synthesis stuff is important but more importantly is how it is implemented by mechanical means, and uses 'drawbars' to mix and blend the ...
4
A few more suggestions -
Play Blues - not Delta guitar-style blues, but jazz blues, with turn arounds. There are hundreds of sets of jazz blues changes available ( http://www.jajazz.com ). Instead of jumping into the complexity of the full blown jazz repertoire, blues is a great way to get your chord voicings and soloing going. You can take blues a ...
4
I think this might interest you.
The most important part in Cuban music/Latin Jazz is the rythmic pattern known as Clave.
This is in essence what defines the music. Harmonically, you often do very simple V-I or I-IV-V-I or II-V-I over this pattern. The piano is essentially used as a percussive instrument and for providing the harmonic background. So ...
4
It all depends on what your goals are.
Do you want to be able to play with other jazz musicians? Especially piano and horn players? They will NEVER have tab for you. NEVER. If you say "hey, do you have tab for that tune" they will either laugh at you or tell you to leave. They have standard notation that you will have to read off if you want to play a tune ...
4
The answer to Your last question would be Yes.
I think You should differentiate sight-reading with so called a-vista reading.
First is ability to translate notes into music on Your instrument, and second is ability to do it on the spot on performance level.
I think when You wrote about pros and cons - You were talking about a-vista. Which is a huge effort ...
4
What I am going to write below is just simple jazz harmony fundamentals, and should naturally be considered as school stuff !
You have to understand the role of each voice in a chord, to define what should be played, and what can be omitted.
Mandatory voices
The root note defines the root of the chord, and must be played globally. I mean, if you have a ...
4
There are theories that apply to more than one of 'improvised music ... dance, drama and pictural improvisation':
rank/order (in jazz or pictures, consider FG/MG/BG too)
strategies/tactics (in dance or drama, consider body/space too)
excerpts from the above links:
"The main ingredients of improvisation ...
Presence and projection are the premises of ...
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