Jazz Piano Lesson: Jazz Piano Lick 023

Twenty-Third 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 9th chord arpeggios played as quadruplet cells over a major key turnaround 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-#1°7 (ii7-V7-I-#I°7) turnaround chord progression in 4 bar form in the key of F Major.

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Jazz Piano Lick 023 (Etude #1)

A “3-5-7-9” 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 98 beats per minute…

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Jazz Piano Lick 023 (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 135 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 023 (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.

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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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