Twenty-second 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 root position 7th chord arpeggios played as quadruplets over a minor 2 5 1 chord progression.
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 Minor 2-5-1 (iiø7-V7-i) chord progression in the key of C Minor.
Jazz Piano Lick 022 (Etude #1)
A “1-3-5-7” digital pattern for each chord played in straight 1/8th notes over left hand four-note block chords in the middle register, connected using voice-leading…
Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 100 beats per minute…
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Jazz Piano Lick 022 (Etude #2)
Now let’s spice things up by swinging the 1/8th notes and applying some tasty jazzifying syncopation in the left hand…
Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 123 beats per minute…
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 note in each quadruplet as a pickup into what follows.)
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Jazz Piano Lick 022 (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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So, as I try to “read” those lines, it looks like you’re always going “up” the scale?
Less going up the scale and more going up from the root of each chord.
All right. I’ll look it up again.