*NEW* CHICK COREA MASTER CLASS WITH DAVE FRANK

[dfrankjazz]

Join Dave as he analyzes an amazing recent solo performance of the great Chick Corea! Topics include modal interchange, modal anthems, ten drummers, cycled harmonies, and much more. Includes a new performance by Dave and class notes available for download. Free for thee.

Blessings y'all and keep swingin from NYC!

[ted]

Thank you Dave. Although I am not a jazz pianist I always look forward to your videos. I have one or two thoughts, which may or may not be relevant. Do you think there is a place in jazz for legato, weight transfer technique ? You know, the sort of thing most Chopin players use. Almost all famous jazz pianists, I have noticed, use a rapid, detached, finger striking technique, even in their scale playing. It isn't exactly staccato, but it's a long way from legato. At one stage you were talking about staccato, and I suddenly realised this. I have my guesses about it. I think it is because uniform, continuous notes cannot generate enough rhythm via unpredicted accents. It's too smooth, and vital rhythm needs a degree of roughness, a quality of uncertainty.

The other question which your excellent video triggered is why do jazz pianists not think more often through their left hands ? In all the examples you have discussed, the pianists seem to channel most of their phrasal and rhythmic impetus through their right hands, while the left is confined to strictly periodic cells. Left regular, right irregular.

Rhythm for me is so much more complicated, vital and interesting than harmony, yet all both classical and jazz people discuss is harmony, a fact which places me squarely at odds with three centuries of classical and one century of jazz. I can only assume it is because harmony can more easily be analysed, being discrete combinatorics, whereas rhythm is not discrete but continuous - a higher order of infinity.

This is what is so good about your presentations. Even a rank musical outsider like me perceives so many springboards of musical thought in them.