Teaching Jazz Piano: A New Strategy
For the last three years, I’ve taught privately at the University of Toronto. I always get my students to learn a tune and write out a piano arrangement.
It’s a voicing exercise. The top voice in the RH plays the melody, the bottom voice in the LH plays roots and the rest of the fingers fill in the chord. The challenge is to find and play the nicest voicings. So a student may write the first four bars of It Could Happen To You like this:
I would make some suggestions. Like this:
The point is to build a vocabulary of nice chord voicings.
But I’ve been rethinking the nature of this exercise. Whenever my students play the above exercise, I think it’s missing something – something special.
So lately, I’ve been asking my students to play it like this:
It’s harder than it looks. The challenge is to play music, to make it sound good and to play from the heart. They’re allowed to take melodic and phrasing liberties, but that’s it!
I record their performances and after listening to them, I ask: How can you make it sound better? Then we discuss tone, feel, balance, phrasing, lyrics, meaning, life and more!
Most importantly, we establish that music is greater than hip sounding voicings. Only then do we start adding notes and crafting an arrangement, with music and musicality being the primary focus.
We’re building on a musical foundation, rather than a vocabulary of notes and licks.
What do you think?
“Music is greater than hip sounding voicings.”
Oh great. I’ve been on the wrong track for the last 35 years
Joseph Schillinger said that not all ‘correct’ music is musical: the ultimate arbiter of musicality will always be the human observer. While the musical theory describes a space of sound, the sounds that are musical will only partially overlap that space, and as Einstein pointed out, Nature is under no obligation whatsoever to to follow our mathematics.
What happens, I believe, is that people become accustomed to some sounds and thereafter, for those who became accustomed, or indoctrinated, they believe the sounds to be musical just to be hip. True there is a progression through history and culture of ever deeper exploration into what is and is not musical, and it sometimes takes a generation before we accept that a Dominant 7th is not noise, but I still think these days we accept as ‘musical’ anything that sells, and we sell mostly on image and lifestyle than on our innate human sense of musicality. I think that is sad. I think we have lost a trail somewhere, wandered down a blind alley of sensational spectacle, titilation and shock replacing arrangement and discipline, pomp and ego replacing just LISTENING and experiencing the magical relation of humans to these peculiar sounds, and we are neglecting and forgetting our shamanic purpose as musicians in the process.
Haha… I doubt that Peter!
Hey, all the best for the CD release on the 27th. Where can I get a copy!?
right on, Chris! And later on you can expand that by an excercise Fred Hersch taught me which I call “15 minutes (X4).” Set a timer for 15 minutes and keep playing the tune in 2 part counterpoint, melodically developing both the treble and the bass. After 15 give yourself another very specific thing to do: ie- 2 part harmony in another key or add on a 3rd voice, etc. The last 15 minutes you return to the original key and just have fun. You really have to think about melody, tone and phrasing and being connected to the sound and all the important things, because after about 3 minutes you’ve already exhausted all your stock licks!
walk before u run
melody – alone ( get to know it first)
melody & bass ( with simple embellishment of the melody)
melody 3 & 7 bass – ( 2 notes to each hand) (no more that and a ninth between voices. . except bass to tenor) (good voice leading so the 3 and 7 will alternate )
u should eventually be able to sight read any jazz lead sheet with this method…
then
melody 3 & 7 Bass.. with suspensions and passing tones in inner voices
then on to 5 note versions choosing the 5th note from available upper tensions
b9,#9#11,b13 ect…. or 5th or 9th all depending on the type of chord or its resolution…….. . there are rules for these choices …….. then 5 note with suspensions and passing tones
then 6 notes……ect…….
always good when starting out with 4 and 5 note version to write them down but
you should be working on sight reading the 4 note simple version at the same time….. eventually you are sight reading 6 note versions with interesting voice leading and then you are REALLY IMPROVISING with counter point……..
In my opinion what lacks on the harmonic side of jazz education… too many quick fixes with grip voicing and not enough focus on creation……
for whatever it is worth….enjoying your Blog
james
Great stuff by all of the above. Insightful and enlightening. I really like the idea of building on the feel of essential whole notes. It creates a kind of meditational effect and the player is made aware of just how the notes are decaying as they’re held. I think that can tell someone a lot right there. Perhaps freedom in rhythm and voicing/harmonic reharms can more easily attempted if that wonderful sense of space can be achieved with the hearing of whole notes within a piece. i was watching a video recently of a piano teacher demonstrating how a piece might be learned by a student (classical). He started off with strong quarter note emphasis (very labored) and proceeded on to half notes etc. and ended up finally as starting the whole piece with One impulse at the very start of the piece.
I like James G.’s ideas about counterpoint in the approach to developing a tune. Potentially, any one of the LH 4-note voices can move and yet still take care of it’s role in the arrangement while creating interesting lines that can enhance and intensify a performance.
Thanks for writing your terrific and informative blog. I will continue to visit.
Cheers,
Charlie A.