§ Blues and Jazz Piano Improv
§ Jazz Piano: The Theoretical Minimum
- Link
- Left Hand, Bass: Walking bassline, Stride, Root notes.
- Left Hand, Chords: Rootless, Shell, Quartal.
- Right Hand, Melody: Scale, Improv, Licks.
- Right Hand, Chords: Rootless, Shell, Quartal.
- Both hands, Chords: Two handed voicings, Spread, Quartal.
§ Things I need to learn
- Bossa nova beat.
- Crafting Walking basslines.
- Quartal Voicings
- Two handed Voicings.
- Creating basslines
§ Diminished Scale
- Alternate whole and half notes.
§ Interesting Basslines / Left hand patterns
- Key search term: "left hand patterns".
- Stride.
- Walking bass line.
- Jerry Lee Lewis left hand pattern.
- Bumble boogie pattern.
§ Creating smooth basslines with slash chords
- Video
- Key idea: use inversions to smoothly move notes.
§ Stride Piano
- Video
- to make a stride chord, take the chord, e.g. Cminor (C Eb G). Then take the 3rd out, and put it on the top. This gives us (C G Eb).
- Now alternate the loweer note 'C', then the other two notes
(G Eb). See that this will be quite large, since the Eb is from the next octave. - Do this with whatever chord progression one has.
- I must try this with the bakemonogatari soundtrack, particularly the song sutekimeppou , and in the hall of the mountain king .
- This style is great to generate a strong bassline.
§ Bird Changes
- This comes from Bebop.
- Suppose we want to play blues, so in bar 1, we want to play CMaj7, then on bar 4, we want to play F7, and then on bar 10, we want to play the 5th (G7).
- So we do a thing where we play the II and the V for half time (ie, in each bar, we play the II and the V of some scale).
- Which scale do we play? We choose a descending sequence of scales: CMaj7 -> Am -> Gm -> F7 -> [F7 ] -> Fm7 -> Bb7 -> Em7 -> A7 -> EbM7 -> Ab7 -> [Dm7 ] -> [G7 ] -> C -> A7 -> Dm7 -> G7.
- Play descending 2-5s, to get from I to IV chord in Blues. Then repeat the same descending 2 5s to get from IV to V.
- Example song: Freight Trane.
- Use stride voicings, or bud powell voicings (2/3 note voicings).
§ Latin Bass
- Video reference
- Pick chords, e.g.
Cm7 -> Fm7 -> G7 -> Fm7 -> ... - Arpeggiate the C chord. First play
1-8, then play 3-5. ( C-C, Eb-G). - Bass rhythm: Clave pattern. 2 bar pattern, repeated throughout the song.
- Son clave 2/3:
1rest 2 3 4rest, 1 2rest' 2&quaver 3rest 4.
§ Walking bass
- Style of playing on the left hand.
- Play notes:
1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 7, 6, 5, 1, 5, 1, 5
§ Rootless voicings (lighter sound)
- Take the
1-3-5-7, delete the 1, and play 7-3-5. - For example, to play
C Em G Bm in a rootless fashion, instead play Bm Em G.
§ Kenny Baron Chord Voicings (large, rich, good for rippling)
- Jazz Piano site
- Only useful for m7 chords, when the 11th is in the melody (the top note).
- Left hand stacks fifths starting from 1.
- Right hand stacks fifths, starts from minor 3rd (3 semitones up).
- Right hand ends on the 11th.
§ Quartal voicings (sound 'edgy')
- Literally memorization, need to know what the 4ths is for each note, just as we remember minor 3rd and perfect 5th.
- All perfect 4th intervals
-
C up a 4th is F -
D up a 4th is -
E up a 4th is A -
F up a 4th is Bb -
G up a 4th is C -
A up a 4th is D -
B up a 4th is E
§ Two handed voicings (nice for light bass, light treble.)
- Left hand:
1st and 7th, Right hand: 3rd and 5th. - Left hand:
1st and 3rd/10th, Right hand: 5th and 7th. - Want melody note to be on the top of the chord.
§ Tritone substitution
- The theory that I can find talks about major, not about minor.
- Idea is that we want a different chord with the same 3th and 7th notes.
- On the major scale, this is given by the chord that is a 6 semitones / 3 whole notes away (in either direction, since we have 12 notes.)
- For example,
G7 is given by G B D F -
Db7 has notes Db F Ab B which shares the same 3th and 7th ( B and F).
§ Walking Bass Line
- Suppose we have one chord per bar, with chords
ii-v in the two bars. - Take the notes from your 7th chord, e.g. C minor ii7
D, F, A♭, C - Play the first three notes of the chord, so play
D, F, A♭. - Then, for the next note, look at the next chord, e.g. C minor v7:
G, B♭, E♭, C. - We want to go to
G next, we have one quarter note left in the bar, so play a leading tone to G. - Since I like bluesey, I can play
F# from the blues scale, to anticipate the G in the next chord. - So for this bar, we play
D F A♭ F#. - Play the corresponding shell voicing or melody with the right hand.
- If we have two chords per bar, then all we get to play are
root ii- leading v- root v- leading i etc. - To add an arpeggio, add a
853 if you want some flourish.
§ Pedal Usage
- pedal moves opposite to hands.
- Foot should be down whilst hand goes up to play the next chord.
- Hand comes down once again, plays the next chord, and then the foot goes up.
- Pivot the pedal from the heel. For this, we need to sit far enough back away from the piano.
- To practice, go back and forth between two chord positions --- I and V.
§ Best References for theory
§ Types of Seventh Chords
§ Dominant 7th (default) C7:
-
1, 3, 5, ♭7 - Major triad + two semitones below octave note.
- Used on the fifth degree of the scale. One will common see
G7. - It's called dominant since it's used on the fifth scale degree.
- The only place we can build a dominant 7th and stay within key is on the 5th.
-
F7 adds an Eb which makes it bluesey, so this is useful.
§ Major 7th Cmaj7 / C△7:
-
1, 3, 5, 7. - Major triad + one semitone below octave. Seventh degree of the major scale.
§ Minor 7th Cmin7
§ Diminished 7th.
§ Minor 2 5 1 for Jazz
- We are playing in the key of C minor
- we want the
ii v i chords. - Scale chords
- 2: C minor chord iiø7:
D, F, A♭, C. Voiced as D, F, A♭, C. - 5: C minor chord v7:
G, B♭, D, F. Voiced as D F G B ♭. - 1: C minor chord i7:
C, E♭, G, B♭. Voiced as C, E♭, G, B♭. - What scale to play? consider chord + whole step, which gives us the following:
- 2:
D E F G A♭ B♭ C D, ie, C D E F G A♭ B♭ (C aeolian dominant scale / C hindu scale ) - 5:
G A B♭ C D E F G, ie, C D E F G A B♭ (C mixolydian). - 1:
C D E♭ F G A B♭ (C natural minor).
§ 2, 5, 1
2: C D F A♭
C D E F G A♭ B♭ (C hindu scale)
---
5: B♭ D F G
G A B♭ C D E F G (C mixolydian)
--
1: C, E♭, G, B♭
C D E♭ F G A B♭ (C natural minor).
§ Melody: Approch pattern --- half step below
- Approach each note with the note that is a semitone below.
- Dmin7: C# -> D
- Dmin7: E -> F
- Dmin7: G -> A
- Dmin7: B -> C
- G7: F -> G
- G7: A -> B
- G7: C -> D
- G7: E -> F
- Cmaj7: B -> C
- Cmaj7: D -> E
- Cmaj7: F -> G
- Cmaj7: A -> B
§ Melody: Approach pattern / scale associated to a chord: Chordal tone + whole step
- For any given chord, eg. Cmaj7 = C E G B, one is allowed to use notes that are a whole step up from each of the notes.
- This gives us the notes: C D E F# G A B C. This is the C lydian scale.
- For the next one, Cmin7, we get C D Eb F G A Bb C. This is the C dorian scale.
- For Dmin7, we get D E F G A B C D. This is the D dorian scale.
- For G7, we get G A B C D E F G. This is the G mixolydian scale.
- For A7, we get A B C# D E F# G A. This is the A mixolydian scale.
§ Melody: Approach pattern --- chord scale above
- Play C major scale, approach from above before playing note
- Dmin7: E -> D
- Dmin7: F -> E
- Dmin7: G -> F
- Dmin7: A -> G
- G7: B -> A
- G7: C -> B
- G7: D -> C
- G7: F -> E
- Cmaj7: E -> D
- Cmaj7: F -> E
- Cmaj7: G -> F
- Cmaj7: B -> A
§ Melody: Approach pattern --- enclosures
- Approach from both sides, chromatically, before playing the main note.
- Dmin7: C# -> E -> D
§ Melody: Walking Bass line
- We want the notes to be the root note of the chord
- For example, with the standard Dmin7, G7, Cmaj7, A7 progression, we would have:
- Play D, Play G, Play C, Play A
- We can move to the notes by leaping via 3rd / 5th / octave.
- But when we leap, we want to use notes from the chord.
- For example, to go from D -> G, we want to go as:
D F A, and then at the note, transition with a whole step or a half step, so we go via Gsharp G. - So, to go from D to G in four beats, we use
D F A Gsharpfollowed by the G.
- This
melody:improv::chords:voicings - Quick hack:
root + 7th on bass, 3rd+5th+melody note on treble.
§ Chord voicing for bossa nova: Rootless chord voicings (sophisticated)
- Key idea: leave out the root note, only keep 3 5 7 9.
- 3 5 7 9 (position A)
- 7 9 3 5 (position B) [7, 9 are octave lower ]