Twenty-fourth 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 D Minor.
Jazz Piano Lick 024 (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 97 beats per minute…
Music Theory & Ear Training: Notice that all the notes are derived from the D Harmonic Minor Scale.
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Jazz Piano Lick 024 (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 118 beats per minute…
Technique & Interpretation
The only way to make this (or any kind of music) sound and feel musical is to conceive of it and perform it as a complete and unified idea, not as individual unrelated notes. We don’t want to think and play music one-note-at-a-time any more than we want to think and speak English one-syl-la-ble-at-a-time.
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Jazz Piano Lick 024 (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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