Jazz Piano Lesson: Jazz Piano Lick 027

Twenty-Seventh 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 the diatonic approach tones for the tonic chord in a major key.

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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 Minor Vamp a la “My Funny Valentine” and “This Masquerade” (i-i/7-i/b7-i/6) in the key of G Minor.

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Jazz Piano Lick 027 (Etude #1)

The pattern is simple: Play each tonic minor triad chord tone (Do, Me, So) on a strong beat and approach it by playing the harmonic minor scale tone just below it on the weak beat just before it…

Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 101 beats per minute…

Functional Ear Training: Each “target note / approach note” pairing can thought about, heard, and felt as a musical word where the approach tone (played on a weak beat) creates harmonic tension while the target note (played on a strong beat) resolves that harmonic tension. As you play, use associative listening to quickly internalize each pairing: Ti-Do, Re-Me, Fa-So… by ear, intellect, eye, and muscle.

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Jazz Piano Lick 027 (Etude #2)

The pattern is simple: Play each tonic minor triad chord tone (Do, Me, So) on a strong beat and approach it by playing the harmonic minor scale tone just above it on the weak beat just before it…

Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 101 beats per minute…

Functional Ear Training: Each “target note / approach note” pairing can thought about, heard, and felt as a musical word where the approach tone (played on a weak beat) creates harmonic tension while the target note (played on a strong beat) resolves that harmonic tension. As you play, use associative listening to quickly internalize each pairing: Re-Do, Le-So, Fa-Me… by ear, intellect, eye, and muscle.

back to… Table of Contents

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Jazz Piano Lick 027 (Your Homework)

Use what you know about form, meter, scales, chords, chord progressions, chord voicings, rhythms, articulations, 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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