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Piano Street Magazine:
A Jazz Piano Christmas 2025 – But not at the Kennedy Center

For more than three decades, “A Jazz Piano Christmas” at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. has been a quiet highlight of the holiday season for jazz and piano lovers. No fixed formulas, no “seasonal jazz” clichés — just strong pianistic voices working with familiar material. This year, the live concert is on pause. Here’s what changed, and where pianists can still turn for meaningful jazz piano Christmas listening and playing. Read more

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Topic: So much attention to scales, but there's so much more! (Read 1606 times)

mosis

PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 268

So much attention to scales, but there's so much more!

on: June 24, 2005, 11:07:38 PM

There are pages upon pages of movements, methods, and motions for scale practice, but everything else seems to be neglected! Arpeggios have been discussed in no where as near detail as have scales, and just about everything else has been neglected.

I've used the information on scale playing here to really start firing up my scales, but my arpeggios are still lacking due to lack of information (I know about hand displacement and that's about it. Scale playing involves 4 or 5 movements, I'm certain arps require more, but none are discussed!). On top of that, octave scale practice and technique has never been discussed, nor has effective chord playing. Does anyone have any advice on working out these aspects of technique?

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xvimbi

PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 2439

Re: So much attention to scales, but there's so much more!

Reply #1 on: June 25, 2005, 03:15:51 AM

It's not quite as grim as you think. There are lots of threads that cover arpeggios and chords, but mostly indirectly. Search for 'cartwheel", for example, to find out more about arpeggios.

In general, however, the pertinent techniques are well discussed in the literature (Chang, Fink, Bernstein, Sandor, etc.). The best, of course, is working with a teacher, but studying those books will get you pretty far as well. It's amazing how much money people are willing to spend on recordings and sheetmusic, while entirely neglecting a few standard books