Jazz Piano Lesson: Jazz Piano Lick 030

Thirtieth 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 “3-4-5-7” Chord Outlines played as a quadruplet cell through a standard 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 Eb Major.

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Jazz Piano Lick 030 (Etude #1)

A “3-4-5-7” chord outline for each chord played in straight 1/8th notes. Notice that every 3rd and 5th falls on a down beat, while the passing tone falls on an up beat, as does the 7 of each chord which leads naturally to the 3 of the chord that follows…

Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 108 beats per minute…

Music Theory Notes

Notice how each quadruplet naturally outlines the chord structure for each chord type: Fm7 = b3-4-5-b7, Bb7 = 3-4-5-b7, Eb = 3-4-5-7, Edim7 = b3-b4-b5-bb7.

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Jazz Piano Lick 030 (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 132 beats per minute…

Special Note from Frank: If you find Etude #2 to be quit a challenge, don’t despair and please know this: It took me over one hundred attempts and three sleeps before I dialed in my musical intentions and discovered the choreography that expressed those musical intentions. Along the way, I tapped into everything I ever learned about productive practice habits and piano technique.

Technique Notes

1. Use the exact same fingering (1-2-3-5) for each quadruplet.
2. Mentally and physically connect the last note in each quadruplet with the first note of the next quadruplet.
3. Always have momentum going into each and every note, especially the first note in each quadruplet.
4. There is no need to flick your thumbs. Simply drop and rotate your arm counter-clockwise.

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Jazz Piano Lick 030 (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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