Fifth in Frank’s HUGE collection of bread and butter jazz piano licks to add to your bag… by ear, intellect, eye, and muscle…
Table of Contents
Lesson Goals
To deeply internalize the sound, feeling, and function of the three Tonic Major Triad Chord Tones (Do, Mi, So) and their lower neighbor tones.
Don’t underestimate the value of this seemingly simple study. The knowledge and skills presented here are fundamental to how an enormous amount of music works… and elevate your capacity to hear, read, feel, perform, compose, and improvise in every kind of musical genre.
Special Note about the Design of these Studies
An extremely effective way to internalize any new lick and to simultaneously develop your comping and soloing chops is to play it “in context”: within an established form over a set of standard chord changes. In this lesson the context is a Major 1-6-2-5 (I-vi7-ii7-V7) turnaround chord progression in an 8 bar form in the key of Bb Major (a commonly used jazz key).
Jazz Piano Lick 005 (Etude #1)
Primary chord tone and upper neighbor tone played over chord roots. Notice that each primary chord tone (Do, Mi, So) falls on a strong beat, while its neighbor tone (the note in the scale immediately below) falls on a weak beat…
Hear, think, see, and move your body like as if each set of chord tones and neighbor tones “Do-Ti-Do”, “Mi-Ri-Mi”, and “So-Fi-So” is a musical word, each cycle through the four chords is a musical sentence, and each 8-bar form is a musical paragraph.
Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 120 beats per minute…
Functional Ear Training: This isn’t about trying to hear intervals. It’s simply about recognizing the unique sound-feeling of each three-note “chord tone-neighbor tone-chord tone” cell and connecting that experience to your knowledge of music theory, your visuospatial awareness of the keyboard, and the physical gestures you use to express these sound-feelings.
Special Note from Frank regarding the Choreography: This presents an interesting and educational fingering challenge. If you still feel stuck after giving it an honest effort, contact Frank and he will share a physically and mentally straightforward fingering pattern. (Hint: Think similar fingering for similar patterns)
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Jazz Piano Lick 005 (Etude #2)
Played over “root plus definitive tones” left hand arpeggios in 3/4 time. Notice that the roots fall on the strong beat (1) while the definitive tones 3 and 7 fall on the weak beats (2&3)…
Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 128 beats per minute…
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Jazz Piano Lick 005 (Your Homework)
Use what you know about form, meter, scales, chords, chord progressions, chord voicings, and left hand patterns to play these etudes in other keys you expect to play in and see what you discover.
Special Note from Frank: If there’s interest, I’d be happy to write this out in a few other keys.
Study & Practice Reminders
- You’re singing the Solfege or scatting aloud in order to internalize the sound-feelings, right?
- You practice with a metronome or rhythm track in order to instill good time, right?
- You record yourself, listen to the playback immediately, self evaluate, and respond accordingly, right?
The Open Secret…
The key to getting good isn’t “talent”; it’s the discipline to study and practice the right things the right way.
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