Introducing a new article on jazz piano and improvisation! As with most of my articles, I thought this would be relatively short and concise, but I’ve gone down the rabbit hole, and there are a number of topics I’ll be writing about.  This may change over time, but as of now, topics include: Transcription Analysis Designing […]

I thought I’d take a break from the grind of writing about hand independence and transcribe something instead. In my own practice, I revisited this tune by Phineas Newborn Jr. called Sugar Ray.  I encourage students to learn it because the melody has a very specific piano/band arrangement, it covers a good spatial range at the piano, […]

Dec. 5/18 edit: I’ve updated the article and images in “A Scale for Ascending” to include anchor points. It’s also more succinct and organized, without the digressions into alternative fingering exercises. Nov. 27/18 edit: I’ve improved my explanation of anchor points and hand positions while playing the chromatic scale.  Specifically, how they can played as […]