Wanna Jazz

[drkz4ck]

Hey, everyone.
I've been practicing a lot on the holidays, but things got stale pretty quickly.

I took a few new pieces to tray and learn, and by now I've already memorized all of it. All that's left to do is practice Hands Together and develop technique for the difficult parts, so I can start working on the finer details of these compositions.
Although it's extremely important to work on these things, working exclusively on the technique of classical pieces gets boring too quickly, so I thought I could spice things up a bit.

I've read in a book on piano practicing that, compared to classical compositions, learning jazz is less demanding and therefore can be more rewarding for less effort put into it (Not to mean that it's trivial), so i thought I should give it a try.
But before I get started, I need to know where to begin. I have no clue at all of where to start.

That's why I'm here, I've decided to ask for some advice from the forum. Hope you guys can share some with me.
Thanks, everyone!

[dcstudio]

where to begin...  start by actively listening to jazz.   Bill Evans, Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson, Keith Jarret, T Monk--etc.   You can't play it if you don't listen to it A WHOLE LOT.  Start with what they call "straight-ahead" jazz... later you can branch out into fusion.

Jazz is far easier IF you aren't afraid to put your hands on the piano and just see what happens... this is way harder than it sounds for the classically trained pianist. 

I recommend a book called "The Jazz Language" by Dan Haerle who was my mentor at university.  You must learn to recognize what you hear and to do that you need a vocabulary of terms that allows for that kind of interpretation.

Start by picking a favorite jazz pianist and try to play like they play.   You will in all likelihood never sound exactly like your chosen favorite pianist but when you fall short you will still land somewhere in the jazz idiom.  My first favorite Jazz pianist was Vince Guaraldi better known as the guy who wrote Linus and Lucy.  His music sounded do-able to me, unlike some of the monsters like Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson who both sounded impossible.

It may be less demanding technically, and physically, but it's far more demanding in areas such as creativity and musicality.

The vast majority of piano students around the world are taught classical piano in the traditional way.  If jazz was really easier... we would have far more jazz players in the world and jazz would be the standard way.

This is me playing Jazz so you know I am not talking out my azz.

[mdecks]

If you are looking for the easy way, don't do Jazz.

Jazz will require much more practice and theory than classical.
I know many great classical players that do not know anything about harmony, upper structure triads, tensions, deceptive resolutions, modes, pentatonics, symmetric scales, tritone substitutions, chromatic approaches, all the 2-5-1 in major and minor, subV7, etc, etc

But I don't know any Jazz players that do not know many of these.

[dcstudio]

But I don't know any Jazz players that do not know many of these.

we dig our theory.  

[j_tour]

Impressive that you already have THE book recommendation already given in this thread.  Dan Haerle's is nice in that he doesn't give short shrift to the importance of the harmonic minor and its modes (which, as you transcribe, you'll see is pretty key to understanding a lot of Bud Powell's music and other bebop) unlike the fashion to stick to melodic minor (ascending), sometimes just called "jazz minor."   

I would just warn that there is a lot of misinformation in jazz pedagogy out there -- everyone seems to have some complicated-seeming "system" they're just aching to sell you in the form of some "method book," or whatever.  But it's really just about as simple as Dan Haerle suggests, at least in his book *The Jazz Language* -- know the basic tools for creating melodies.

What I recommend is simply to transcribe, with pencil and staff paper, as many complete solos as you want, without worrying about a goal of playing them verbatim, and taking advantage of any technology you like (the "old" masters used to slow down records, as I did with reel-to-reel copies, so don't listen to people who say you shouldn't do that, if it helps, and it will for fast solos).  You'll start seeing how things fit together.

Jazz-specific techniques?  I can think of a few -- one is already demonstrated above in the video, namely, walking a LH bass.  I don't walk LH much anymore except on Hammond organ, but I think pretty much every jazz pianist could do so for any tune if desired, meaning, improvise a walking bass and improvise over it.  Other things?  In theory, you don't really need to use a lot of sliding in semi-tones if your fingering is solid, but in practice, it's done all the time.  Since you will be playing a lot of blues, even in non-blues tunes, it's pretty natural to use clusters of notes (or least, in Bb, something like a figure which has a G on top and some combination of Db-D below, for starters), so I would take advantage of that aspect of the idiom.

Oh yeah, the one aspect where if you must have a book besides Dan Haerle's for reference and the one every jazz musician makes for himself or herself (even if not written down) by transcribing from records) it could make sense is in Arranging.  I can't remember which ones I've liked, but knowing standard voicings (like drop-2 or just general block chords) from the perspective of an arranger shouldn't hurt.  You can take these off the record, of course, but just suggesting as an optional view from a different side.

[dcstudio]

Impressive that you already have THE book recommendation already given in this thread.  .

hey there, any fan of Dan's is a friend of mine    his pocket changes book has been with me for 20 years.   The Jazz Language... what can I say... it's THE book.

[j_tour]

hey there, any fan of Dan's is a friend of mine    his pocket changes book has been with me for 20 years.   The Jazz Language... what can I say... it's THE book.

Agreed.  I've owned and sold all of the Mehegan, the Dave Liebman chromatic book, the Mark Levines, but there's not much to really have in a library than the Real Books (Chuck Sher's New Real Books and the original old-school "Real Book" vol 1 & 2 [I don't have the newer, Hal Leonard edition which supposedly corrects the many mistakes in the old one, in addition to paying the authors of the tunes), the Haerle for if you have a stroke and can't remember your scales, and a few books of patterns for if you get super bored and want to play some exercises (I like Oliver Nelson's short book of patterns, and one by Jerry Coker with patterns, many extracted from performances).

Those, and Schoenberg's *Harmonielehre* and one is set, in my view.

To be fair, I do think there is good stuff in Levine's *The Jazz Piano Book*, especially on chord voicings, but there are actually sane approaches to "jazz theory," like Bert Ligon's *Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony*.   

As to whether jazz is easier or harder than playing legit music?  It's probably easier to play some impressive-sounding classical music (say, grade 7, 8 or whatever) without making much of an effort to play it perfectly correctly.  You don't really have a lot to fall back on in jazz, as far as notes, except some scale fragments or heads of tunes, unless you're playing transcriptions of solo works, like stride piano.

[dcstudio]

Jerry Coker--that's the little red one--"how to practice jazz?" or was that Mike Steinel.

Effortless Mastery is also a favorite book.  Kenny Werner.   

For those of us who grew up with Aebersold records---Dan was the man.   Loved his classes at UNT.

[j_tour]

Jerry Coker--that's the little red one--"how to practice jazz?" or was that Mike Steinel.

Effortless Mastery is also a favorite book.  Kenny Werner.   

For those of us who grew up with Aebersold records---Dan was the man.   Loved his classes at UNT.

No, I the Jerry Coker I was thinking about is a spiral-bound book with a bunch of little patterns, some of them supposedly taken from or inspired by certain performances.  You know, things like lines jumping from the third to the b9 and some diminished-scale runs and stuff.

UNT, holy ess.  Well, I guess it's fair to say you can play. 

[dcstudio]

UNT, holy ess.  Well, I guess it's fair to say you can play. 

thanks just to clarify I never made the 1 o'clock or anything---I was not a Lyle Mays and I was there before Norah Jones....   Dan Haerle had to really pound that stuff into my head...  God bless him..  I did NOT get improv at ALL in the beginning or comping either... walking a bass with my LH was a joke.  Great times in Denton though... it's such a cool little town.

[j_tour]

thanks

ur welcome!  I only know Dan Haerle from his basically scale syllabus book, but it's still the best one.

You know, I didn't want to say anything, but since you said we're just joking around, don't you find that teaching jazz players who can "play" classical (I mean, the scales, the arpeggios, whatever) just to play bebop shell is a PITA?  I came from that background of playing stuff over my uncle's shoulders, like stride set pieces, and then classical, and then back to rock and roll, and my first thing in jazz was just "setting the tempo" by walking bass.  ETA my biggest albums for learning from way back was stuff like Hampton Hawes' *The Challenge* and, a big one for me, Gene Harris's Maybeck album ("Blues for Rhonda" -- I used to walk that bassline for hours, just the exact notes Gene RIP did).  Now, I'm not so sure I'd recommend walking bass as a way "in" to jazz piano -- I don't have any students who want to learn jazz, just rock and rollers who want to learn blues licks, and these days, not too many.  But, thinking back more, like when I was doing when I wrote my post, I realized, hey, everybody does it.  Bill (*Undercurrents*) Herbie (the blues off *The Piano* or whatever it's called).  It's only after about, to be honest, concentrated time, ten hours solid that I see Sonny Clark unaccompanied (I can't remember the album)

I'm going to cut it off, my editing, because I have no limit to how much bullshit ...
I can make up. 

I think I did myself a disservice, but I was like sixteen and using the upright at my parents' house.

I don't know, just thinking out loud.