Jazz Piano Book

[Dominik Ransom]

Jazzpiano is a collective term for the techniques pianists use when playing jazz. The piano has been an integral part of the jazz idiom since its inception, in both solo and ensemble settings. Its role is multifaceted due largely to the instrument's combined melodic and harmonic capabilities. For this reason it is an important tool of jazz musicians and composers for teaching and learning jazz theory and set arrangement, regardless of their main instrument. By extension the phrase 'jazz piano' can refer to similar techniques on any keyboard instrument.

Along with the guitar, vibraphone, and other keyboard instruments, the piano is one of the instruments in a jazz combo that can play both single notes and chords rather than only single notes as does the saxophone or trumpet.

A new style known as "stride" or "Harlem stride" emerged during the 1920s, predominantly in New York, United States. James P. Johnson was a prominent adherent. The left hand was used to establish rhythm while the right hand improvised melodies.[1]

The next step is learning to improvise melodic lines using scales and chord tones. This ability is perfected after long experience, including much practice, which internalizes the physical skills of playing and the technical elements of harmony, and it requires a great natural 'ear' for extemporaneous music-making. When jazz pianists improvise, they use the scales, modes, and arpeggios associated with the chords in a tune's chord progression. The approach to improvising has changed since the earliest eras of jazz piano. During the swing era, many soloists improvised "by ear" by embellishing the melody with ornaments and passing notes. However, during the bebop era, the rapid tempo and complicated chord progressions made it increasingly harder to play "by ear." Along with other improvisers, such as saxes and guitar players, bebop-era jazz pianists began to improvise over the chord changes using scales (whole tone scale, chromatic scale, etc.) and arpeggios.[2]

Jazz piano has played a leading role in developing the sound of jazz. Early on, Black jazz musicians created ragtime on the piano. As the genre progressed, the piano was usually featured in the rhythm section of a band, which was typically configured as one or more of piano, guitar, bass, or drums, or other instruments, such as the vibraphone.

Jazz piano moved away from playing lead melody to providing foundation for song sets; soon, skilled jazz pianists were performing as soloists. In the 1940s and 1950s, a number of great piano players emerged. Pianists like Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell helped create and establish the sound of bebop. Bill Evans built upon the style of Powell while adding a distinct classical influence to his playing, while Oscar Peterson pushed rhythmic variations and was influenced by the style of Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson and Nat King Cole. Wynton Kelly, Red Garland, Herbie Hancock, and Keith Jarrett were also exceptional pianists who played with Miles Davis. Tommy Flanagan was featured by John Coltrane on his hit album Giant Steps. McCoy Tyner is also an influential player who played with Coltrane.

To continue with our metaphor, learning jazz tunes is the equivalent of us truly being able to speaking in sentences. Once you know tunes then you can apply any new musical idea you learn to jazz songs.

So, the first step should be to spend some time actually learning some jazz music. A good starter point for any new tune is to just start by learning the melody and the chord changes.

You can start and learn jazz standards like Satin Doll, Blue Bossa, Misty, Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are, or Fly Me To The Moon, etc. If you need more ideas of beginning jazz tunes I would recommend you read this beginning jazz standards to learn article.

To help me study things more closely I like to use a music loop and slow down program called Transcribe. I use it on a daily basis and I find it very helpful to study faster or more detailed music at a slower and more manageable tempo.

Listen closely for things like note choices, articulation placement of rhythms, syncopation etc. This kind of stuff can be very different than classical. Especially when it comes to beat placement and where accents are played.

Learn some fundamental jazz piano chords and some chord voicings. A good place to start with music theory would be these chord lessons on shell voicings, rootless minor voicings, rootless dominant voicings, or even a I-VI-II-V-I chord progression. You can even start by learning some solo piano chords.

There are tons of licks from the jazz masters to learn as well. You could start with this Barry Harris lick, or this Bud Powell Lick, a Charlie Parker lick, a Red Garland lick, or even a Bill Evans lick.

We have a step by step course that shows you mind blowing jazz improv techniques. We feature great artists like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Horace Silver, McCoy Tyner and more. You can check out the jazz improvisation course here.

What do you once you learn some licks and chords? Make sure you spend time figuring out what makes each piece of vocabulary work. How are they built? What are the building blocks? What are the core components?

As a fun assignment I highly recommend you take a new tune and find an audio recording or video recording you really enjoy. Take the list from above and really get into the recording.

I'm a classically trained pianist. Took lessons all through my childhood. I've continued to play and read classical literature all my life. But I never learned anything about jazz piano. I also know a lot about music theory, am a good sight reader and have a good ear.

At this point in my life (>40) what's the best approach to try to learn to play jazz piano music? This could include improvisation, but looking for some tips on how to get started. And some things I can do on my own.

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".

The best jazz musicians learned by doing. They learned the "rules" in an intuitive sense just by going to gigs and using their ears. Now we have jazz educators, of course, so that process can be made a little less painstaking. One such jazz educator has written the well-regarded Jazz Piano Book that may be enough to get you off the ground if you don't want to go out and find a teacher.

You can also find plenty of books to get you familiar with jazz voicings through notation. The extremely popular Jamey Aebersold Play-A-Long series contains a selection of transcribed piano voicings from the existing play along CDs.

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:

about reading: jazz pieces swing, which means for instance that two subsequent eighth notes should approximately be read as "dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note". I'm sure this sounds obvious to jazz players, but it confused many excellent classical piano players I know when they had to sight-read some of the pieces I was practicing.

listen to it of course, to get the hang of the overall feeling, because there will always be a point where you'll learn and understand things much better if you've first heard them (but then that also applies to many other genres).

get your hands on "The Real Book" volumes, which are standard books in jazz and contain many interesting tunes. This will also help you get acquainted with the above points, and help you learn frequently occurring patterns of chords (like 2-5-1) so you'll have a better idea of the big picture. In my experience, this is another big difference with classical music, where my training was more about playing a given sequence of notes rather than about getting the general structure of a song.

keep your excellent technical skills provided by your classical training, but try to be more flexible. There are a few chords in jazz music that might sound dissonant when you first hear them, especially when coming from a classical background, but you'll get used to them. This is also relevant to improvisation, if you want to avoid merely using scales.

it's frequent in jazz that the left hand keeps playing a rhythmic part, while the right hand improvises. To help develop their "independence", one exercise that my professor advised me to work on was to let your left hand play the beat, and try to do something else with the other hand at the same time -- not playing however: moving it slowly up and down the keyboard, grab an object and move it elsewhere, and so on.

Play Blues - not Delta guitar-style blues, but jazz blues, with turn arounds. There are hundreds of sets of jazz blues changes available ( ). 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 looooong way and many many tunes are based on the blues in one way or another, even if it doesn't seem like it. You can start simple and add more chords to solo over as you get better.

Listen to lots of jazz. Not just current players, but go back to the beginning and start listening to how jazz piano evolved - Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Red Garland, Bill Evans, Duke Ellington (his actual piano playing), Monk, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea...there are hundreds of names. Be able to identify them by hearing them and why they sound like they sound.

Transcribe the players you like. Nothing will teach you more than figuring out the great masters. I think it is in the Levine book, but there is a quote that says "all the answers are in your CD collection". Meaning, if you figure out the lines/chords of the guys that invented it all, you will learn things at a level that a book cannot provide. Remember, DVD's/videos and method books about jazz are only things that exist in the second half of the 20th century. Everyone before that had to listen and figure stuff out. It is still the most powerful way. Being able to transcribe is the most important and useful skill to acquire.

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