r/JazzPiano

Hello ,

I've bought yesterday a Midi to USB cable and it's amazing I can play piano and get the sound on my computer.

And I've discovered multiplayer-orchestra a website where you can play online with stranger.

So if anyone is interested to play some jazz with me online let me know.

I mainly know (ragtime,blues and boogie)

Here is the website:

https://multiplayer-orchestra.com/

If you don't have the cable just google USB to Midi on Amazon and make sure you piano can handle midi

If enough people are interested we could even create a group on reddit dm.

I took a very good class on improvisation recently and we had a small recital. Most of the time in the class I am the rhythm section as we don't have a bass player or drummer, although the instructor decided to play the drums for the last few classes. I have learned a lot from this class, and also have improved my rhythm a lot because I have had to comp and try to learn the improv exercises along with the class.

I do get stage fright but I have been able to maintain good composure as I have been playing performances for years now, although this was the first time with this class and venue.

We got a bass player for the recital, and we do a lot of trading 4s and 8s. I feel confident in my comping and enjoying improv although I realize that I should practice my improv more ahead of time. I was a little worried about the trading because we only rehearsed once before the show, and he gave me an 8 bar intro with a brand new piece as well. This is a small class, two guitars, two horns plus me. And one of the guitarist didn't show up which also gives me a lot of extra counting to do for the trading, as I have to count it because from behind the piano, I can't really see what they are doing.

During the second piece, I had the first solo and after all the solos we are to trade 8s but I must have miscounted or something because the bass play was still doing his solo before I start again with the trading. And I try to get eye contact from the director as well. So when I started to play, he stopped the band during the recital and told me that I was playing during the bass players solo.

I was very humiliated to be honest. I tried my best and feel I played very well but this stopping the band and telling the whole place that I was playing at the wrong time was so horrible. I don't know how to feel about this, I feel worse as the days go by after and I have decided not to return to this class for the summer session.

If anyone has any good advice on how to handle the psychological torment I would really appreciate it.

Hey all,

I'm trying to do more transcription, but I keep running into this same problem. First couple bars of a solo are cool and fun, something I might want to play - - and then it quickly transitions to kooky crazy ham bananas for 7 minutes straight.

And even if it's not bebop-type crazy it's virtuosic arpeggios and flourishes all over the place.

Any good takes where it stays pretty cool and tame throughout, at least for the keyboard solo? (deep cuts are welcome but I'm ESPECIALLY looking for recordings of super common/"basic" standards like rhythm changes, stella by starlight, autumn leaves, a-train, softly as in a morning sunrise, girl from impanema, common blues forms, my funny valentine, misty…)

EDIT: I thought i responded to everyone but now most my comments are gone and everyone is downvoted??? Idk what happened but thanks for all the recs!

Any other resources or advice, materials, or other words of wisdom for someone who is coming from a loose synthesizer background over into the world of piano and organ? I'm a bit intimidated with all the different voicings and structures, but I will start with no expectations with a structured program.

I've watched a ton of OS's YouTube content and also NuJazz lessons with Oliver Prehn, and will join OS to have some structured practice. I am not great at reading bass clef, but can manage on treble. I do understand a bit of music theory in my head, but none of it has really translated it into my hands yet.

Anyway, thought I'd just put myself out into the ether with this and see what comes. :) Cheers.

Hi all, just a general question to the talented and experienced folks here. I understand that pianist fingering can be very individual ( some of us have small hands, some large, and the musical context is also very important) but I wondered if anyone has ideas/proposals about the following:

I am practising some phrases/patterns which include repeated ascending ninths (something I found at the end of lots of Bill Evans transcriptions and sounds fab as a way to end piano solo pieces) - an example would be (C#) D F# A C# E, (C# D F# A C# E.... higher octave, etc etc) *

[*sounds especially nice over an Em chord, for example]

Essentially, I am trying to solidify the best fingering for my hands. So far I have good fingerings for most shapes, but I get stuck on the following ones, mostly because of how many black notes are involved: Bmaj9 and F#maj9

In all the others I find good places to put my RH thumb underneath to repeat the phrase, sometimes in one place ( using all five fingers) and sometimes in two places (it just flows easier on some arpeggios that way) - but I cannot work out where or how to put my thumb under when I am playing almost exclusively black notes. It feels too much of a stretch to go thumb under from Db to F, for example.

TL;DR : how do you guys finger long ninth arpeggios that are 90% on black notes, and what do you do about the thumb crossing under? Any preferential places on the keyboard for example?

Thanks in advance!

Could you give me some feedback on the piano comping feel and placement, for my app?

I'm not unhappy with it, but it's not that easy to have something natural, at that tempo (230 bpm).

Thanks!

What scale of chords would you use when the melody includes the 13 on a m7 chord? Likewise, how would you handle the b7 on a m6 chord?

My best solution is to use the bVII major 6th scale on the m7 so you can borrow the 13 from its corresponding diminished, but that’s more of a suspended sound. This is the one situation it seems he didn’t account for.

Like in As Time Goes By (in Eb, say) there’s that Bb-6/Gm7b5 with a passing Ab. Doesn’t seem to work in his block chord style.

I have been grinding for about 3 years on this now, starting from zero (meaning I did not transition from a classical background or take piano lessons as a kid or anything like that). I have found great success by simply choosing a selection of half a dozen standards, and then playing them in all 12 keys using increasingly difficult techniques.

So far I've done:

Root note in left hand + melody in right hand

Root note in left hand + shell chord in right hand

Shell chord in left hand + melody in right hand

Shell chord in left hand + shell chord in right hand

Half note bass line in left hand + melody in right hand

Half note bass line in left hand + shell chord in left hand

I play all 6 standards in all 12 keys for each technique before moving on to the next technique. My general feel and comprehension of the keyboard has increased by leaps and bounds doing this. But it is freaking tough and requires many hours of grinding.

I have just moved on to my next target which is doing a stride style (root note followed by 3+7 or 7+3) in the left hand with melody in the right hand, and it is REALLY slow going, and yet I can feel the improvement with every session which is awesome.

My question is, does it ever get easier adding techniques to your playing? I want to think that this is mostly so difficult because my general keyboard fluency started from zero and that there will be a point where my feel for the piano will allow me to learn successive techniques more rapidly, but this addition of stride is going as slow or slower than any of my previous techniques added which has me second guessing this notion.

Curious to hear from anyone who has worked through this, especially anyone who like me started both learning to play keys in general AND learning to play jazz specifically at the same time.

Going through all my chords and learning them at the moment

Is there any practical reason to distinguish between #11 and b5 chords when playing or do you think of them the same?

I understand the theory behind each but I don't want to be thinking of that when I play

The only example I could really give would be with the #11. Would you ever include the fifth of the chord to highlight that it is a #11 as opposed to a b5?

If not, do you consider both chords as equivalent to one another?

The only other difference between the two I can think of would be their inversions, it's reasonable to put the altered fifth in the bass but not the #11

So I've been striving to level up lately and once and for all get rid of the cringe I feel when I listen back to myself (ok I don't always feel that way, but iykyk).

While note choice, motivic development, and general jazz vocab are always going to be an avenue of improvement to pursue, I've realized that my feeling of cringe has been coming from my time feel. Which is weird because I work on rhythm ALOT. Like I wrote a whole book on rhythm training for pianists and practice syncopation at all levels of subdivision with my students at least 20 times per week. So then what's up with my time feel?

First let me take a step back to when I was younger sharing the band stand with some truly great players and trying to figure out how to keep up. Their solos always built so much driving momentum, I developed a habit of pushing pushing pushing pushing, to get that drive.

But now I realize that's not necessary anymore. With all the work I've done with rhythm my beat is there. It's strong presence will emerge the moment I begin playing, so then I don't need to push it anymore, it's self sustaining in that it pushes itself. So if I do push, the result is an on the front of the beat feel, which can sound a little frantic, on edge, and brittle.

Which brings us to the back of the beat. If you've done your homework and the beat is there, why not try digging into the back of it? As I've been exploring this the past few months it has truly been a revelation. It improves so many things, more space for motivic development, more nuance to your touch and a much deeper swing that's generated from the friction of you pulling on your own beat while it steadily marches forward.

Anyone else around here been doing or done any deep thinking on the back of the beat?

One last thing, as I've been trying to keep the back of the beat at the front of my mind, it always helps me to have some sort of mind's I visual totem, and for me that has been the dark side of the moon. Don't know why or how this helps but if I imagine the moon in my head as my beat, I'm trying to position my imaginary self behind it to explore it's nether regions...

About me: I have an engineering degree from a top tier institution, but after 15 years of working in tech I am ready to just YOLO and pay big money to invest in music education. I'm doing this for myself and I am well aware that there is possibly no career /ROI from attaining a degree like this. I have 20+ years playing experience, was classically trained, and am intermediate in jazz currently. I am so passionate about piano that I frequently have trouble falling asleep at night thinking about my arrangement for a song I'm listening to.

My strengths: perfect pitch, able to play complex songs by ear, have jazz fundamentals, sight reading, theory

My weaknesses: I have a hard time with motivic development when it comes to right hand improvisation, and my left hand walking bass line isn't amazing.

So before anyone says "it's not worth it, hiring a private teacher is more cost effective", I'm prefacing this with saying money is not a problem and bang for the buck is simply not in consideration here. Currently my rationale is that I don't want to hire a private teacher because I simply do not have time to practice hours a day given my full time job. My focus would be severely fragmented. If I could get into a Jazz Performance MM program (I already have a BS in engineering, not looking to do another bachelor's), I would quit my job and go full time learning music (again, I can afford to quit).

I like to aim high. Based on some AI prompting, it seems like Berklee is one of the few if not only top jazz piano schools that accepts nontraditional backgrounds like mine. Anyone have experience with admission process, admission rates, difficulty, competition, etc? Obviously it's super competitive I know, but would love to hear some specifics. Do I need to be an expert in order to get in? What are the specific skills I must have down to even consider this?

I know most of people's answers would probably be hire a private teacher because it's the only way to improve your weaknesses so you can even get a chance at auditioning. I'm telling you, I don't have time for lessons with my current job (and no I'm not getting another job just so I can hire a private teacher). So if that's all you have to say, then just don't say it. Anyway, that's why I want to be in school full time being immersed in the culture, the network, everything so I could pay full attention to mastering this craft.

I'm also not going to quit my job so I can get private lessons from a teacher full time either, because I don't think that merits quitting my job. I'll do the preparation work, but I just need to know what exactly and do it on my own timing.

Thanks for any positively helpful feedback!

I often play a walking bass line in my left hand with chords/melody/solo in the right. I know how to construct good bass lines. However, when playing something difficult, or if I'm really into my soloing, my bass line often reverts to a boring outlining of triads.

I'm working on fixing this by memorizing some better bass lines so that my left hand will revert to those when it's on it's own.

Anyone else deal with this?

I'm fairly new to jazz piano. I was listening to Bill Evans, and I noticed that he frequently would take melody notes and turn them into entire chords with the melody on top. Is there a term for this? I hear it all of the time, but I just don't know what it's called or how they figure out how exactly to construct those chords.

Beginner here. I'm wondering if my practice is focused properly.

One of my practice routines is to just play the relevant scales over a tune in time. For an easy to understand example, take the bridge of rhythm changes. I'll play 2 bars of D7 up and down, 2 bars of G7 up and down, 2 bars of C7 up and down and 2 bars of F7 up and down. (If I could stick this practice I'm about to describe, I'd try to do this in different keys).

The trouble comes when I start to play these scales from different degrees. After starting from the 3rd, 5th and 7th and running these scales up and down, I'll switch to running them down and up. Starting from 7th, then the 9th, then the 11th, then the 13th.

If all I did was pick one of them (e.g. run the scales down and up starting from the 9th) i could do it no problem. But playing in time continuously, after I finish running the 9ths down and up, I can't think fast enough to get the 11ths in time and I wind up having to wait for the track to loop around again. Or after running the 11ths down and up, I can't think fast enough to get the 13ths in time.

I can slow the track WAY THE HELL DOWN and do it - although it can be difficult to play that slowly. But I'm curious as to whether this is even a useful practice at all. I mean, I can't do it, so I think if I keep at it eventually I will be able to do it. But is that going to ultimately pay off? Am I going to unlock some freedom by being able to do this?