Jazz Piano Lesson: Jazz Piano Lick 016

Sixteenth 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

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Lesson Goals

To deeply internalize the sound, feeling, and function of a “scalewise” ascending line that strongly outlines the harmony for a major 2 5 1 chord progression.

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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 2-5-1 chord progression in the key of C Major.

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Jazz Piano Lick 016 (Etude #1)

There are three important features that make this lick really tick:

1. Placing the “1” for each chord on the strongest beats clearly outlines the harmony.
2. Playing in a continuous line establishes a strong sense of direction and expectation in the listener.
3. Since you “run out of” diatonic scale tones, you have to insert chromatic tones to preserve the sense of flow and continuity.

Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 120 beats per minute…

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Technique & Interpretation

Mentally and physically connect the last note of each quadruplet to the first note of the following quadruplet. Your facility in keeping the time and melodic line flowing in this way is a fundamental jazz performance skill. (Hint: One way to cultivate such continuity is to think of the last one, two, or three notes in each quadruplet as a pickup into what follows.)

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Jazz Piano Lick 016 (Your Homework)

Use what you know about form, meter, scales, chords, chord progressions, chord voicings, and left hand patterns to play this etude 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.

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Study & Practice Reminders

1. You’re singing the Solfege or scatting aloud in order to internalize the sound-feelings, right?
2. You practice with a metronome or rhythm track in order to instill good time, right?
3. You record yourself, listen to the playback immediately, self evaluate, and respond accordingly, right?

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