Jazz Piano Lesson: Jazz Piano Lick 039

Thirty-Ninth 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 “1–1-2-3-2-1” cells played over each chord in a standard major key 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-#1°7) chord progression in the key of F Major.

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Jazz Piano Lick 039 (Etude #1)

The musicality of this lick, played in straight 1/8th notes, comes from a combination of strong harmonic outlining of each chord, a simple and catchy rhythm motive, a feeling of rhythmic coherence, and the satisfying feeling of arrival on the final note Do…

Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 124 beats per minute…

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Jazz Piano Lick 039 (Solfege View of the Melody)

A musically useful way to understand and internalize the melody is to think about, see, hear, and feel it as Solfege syllables that all relate to the tonic Do…

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Jazz Piano Lick 039 (Chord Structure View of the Melody)

Another musically useful way to understand and internalize this lick is to think about, see, hear, and feel how the sequence naturally suits the chord structure of each chord type: Gm7 = 1-2-b3-2-1, C7 = 1-2-3-2-1, FM7 = 1-2-3-2-1, F#°7 = 1-b2-b3-b3-1… where the root and third of each chord are played on down beats and the passing tone that connects them is played on the up beats…

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Jazz Piano Lick 039 (Etude #2)

Now let’s spice things up by swinging the 1/8th notes, adding some syncopation, and capping things off with a crisp ending…

Listen to Frank demonstrate one way to play this at 146 beats per minute…

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Jazz Piano Lick 039 (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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