Jazz Piano School

Learning how to walk bass lines is a skill all jazz pianists want to accomplish. And who wouldn't? We have a nice bass register on the piano but we never learn how to do anything with it. Anytime we see an bass player walking all over a tune like he owns we just stare in awe. In this episode I'm going to get you started on the right path to walking bass lines that will impress a bass player! Let's do it!

We recently learned our rootless voicings. In this episode I'm going to show you how to turn these rootless voicings into two hand comping textures to use with groups or while playing solo piano. These sounds are the heart of jazz comping. Anyone who uses these will be creating jazz sounds used through out the years. We're finally getting to the good stuff of jazz piano voicings and comping.

Ear training is highly sought after in jazz because much of the music involves using our ear to hear progressions, licks, movements and much more. The better ear you have, the better player you will be. So how exactly do we go about improving our ear and helping it to hear movements and notes better. In this podcast that's exactly what I will tell you.

So structure 2 is simply an inversion of rootless voicings structure 1. We now start on the 7th degree of our minor chord instead of the 3rd. Once you studied structure 1, structure #2 should come just as easily.

Alright, you've waited long enough for some pro jazz voicings! Well here they are. Rootless voicings will be your key to advanced jazz voicings with both one and two hands in the future. These are your transport system to playing amazing sounding jazz chords. Study these hards because they will only help open more doors to come. There are two different structure and in this episode I will be going over structure 1.

So you may be wondering how can you start putting these diatonic chords to use now. Well there are a number of different ways you can do it. The first benefit we now have is we can transpose music easily, and effectively. When I analyze a tune and understand what the progression is, meaning I know if the chords are serving as a II-7 chord of a V7 chord, I can now take that progression and easily move it into another key using those same roman numerals. Learning progressions is the other big benefit we have. If someone calls out a quick progression or you see me type a set of numbers such as ( 2-4-6-2-3-5-1), you can go to the piano and work on that progression. Composition is another biggie that comes from diatonic harmony. You can put numbers together yourself in any order you'd like and see what comes out. This is the foundation for all our future harmony and theory to come!

I don't use modes. Who needs modes? What good are modes anyway? Modes are the building blocks of improv. Modes are the notes that correspond with a chord. Not using modes is like misspelling words.

We have to be able to understand how to put the puzzle pieces together in jazz. How can you expect to do this without understanding where they go? Well, you can't! This is why Diatonic Harmony is so important. Diatonic Harmony is the road map to explain how chords and progressions fit together. Without learning this you will be completely lost as we continue to progress. Diatonic Harmony is the relationship of chords to a scale and certain key. Pretty easy once you get into it! Leave your questions in the comments section and I'll be happy to help.

To make our solo's sound good we need to be able to connect the chord changes smoothly in our right hand. This means hitting chord tones on down beats without having to think about it. The ability to play these chord tones on down beats as the chords are changing will allow our solos to reflect the harmonies perfectly. We want to practice this very slowly at first until we build up our spontaneous flow. This is not something you will be able to go fast with. If you do you will hinder your learning of this skill set.

Jazz information has always gone about jazz piano improvisation as if it is some trip to outer space. Well you have to explore yourself in order to find out how to improvise. I couldn't disagree more. Jazz improvisation in the beginning is definitely a step by step process. In this episode we move on to step number 2, connecting the chord tones with notes from the major scale.