noodlebee

Does anyone here play jazz music on the piano? How did you start? Especially if you have classical background, do you think it was difficult? I am somewhat interested in it and tried looking at fakebooks. But they are very strange. The chord symbols look like the ones for guitar, but I don't play guitar. I also don't know how to improvise jazz style.

What do you recommend? Are there any exercise books for jazz that are targeted toward classical musicians?

ratbastid

Lessons. I took classical piano from ages 6 through 18. Some time in high school I discovered Jazz and started figuring out what those weird chord thingies are. Fortunately my classical teacher had grounded me very thoroughly in music theory, so it was easy enough to pick up chord structures.

I took a few semesters of jazz piano in college, and several months of lessons a few years ago. It's enough that I can play most any tune in the Real Book and improvise passably. I have sat in with my little brother's jazz band (he's in an MFA program for jazz percussion) and didn't stink the place up too bad.

vanblah

The Jazz/Pop symbols in the fakebook can be easily translated to piano. An Am7-5 is the same chord whether it's on guitar or piano. How you voice that chord is entirely up to you. Welcome to Jazz.

Improvisation is something that comes with time and practice. You mentioned that you can't improvise in "Jazz style." Can you improvise at all?

Forget books if you want to learn Jazz. Watch videos (including interviews) and listen to the music of Jazz pianists that you admire. Then figure out what they are doing and do it yourself. Train your ear ... not your eyes.

Then figure out WHY they are doing it. If you can figure out WHY then you'll be able to form your own opinions and maybe even your own style. I don't mean WHY in an existential sense ... I mean why did the musician choose to play that particular chord voicing or passing tone ...

I played in a jazz/gospel/r&b/swing group for many years. I don't play it much anymore, but it certainly influences my current project.

Doug

roachboy

"classically trained" can mean many things...what sort of repertoire do you play?

jazz means many things as well...what sort of jazz interests you?

different modes require different approaches.

if you want to play straight jazz--you know, covers of bop tunes, etc.---then you'll need to learn scales and how to use them as guides for making lines.
george russell's book is excellent as a place to start (and will put you outside the usual run of things at the same time):

http://www.lydianchromaticconcept.com/

if your training is more geared around contemporary classical music, you may find it easier to use a different, less traditional approach. if you can get ahold of anthony braxton recordings and/or his writings (or his compositions) check them out.
this will give an idea:

http://www.wesleyan.edu/music/braxton/

without any further information, i'd suggest 3 basic things:

1. try working with chord structures that do no use thirds. close intervals or spread intervals allow for more space. seconds or tenths. try to think about building lines rather than building riffs. classical training gives you ways to think about building lines--the basic tools of melodic variation--a phrase, its inversion, its retrograde, its retrograde inversion. use them. dont get stuck on doing riffs--they limiting and limited--besides, if you think in terms of architecture, you can still do them.

this because you should get away from the idea of right or wrong notes, i think. there are no right or wrong notes--what you play is held together by its structure.
the structures you can use are a function of the context that pleases you to work in.

2. straight jazz players tend to play one handed--block chords in the left and riffs in the right. this is not necessary. i'd suggest listening to stride players like james p johnson to hear how he uses the tenths as interior melodic elements. listen to thelonious monk for everything, though monk was so good that it can be dispiriting--duke ellington in small group contexts as well (stuff like "money jungle"); andrew hill for a hybrid type of playing that combines block chords and counterpoint; cecil taylor.

3. play with other people.

o yeah--this is important:
people like to make doctrinaire claims based on the type of music they like.
listen to them, but dont take them seriously.
if someone says that you *have to* play scales to play jazz, then think about it--what form are they working out of? outside that form, the imperative means nothing.

most important: the only way to learn to improvise is to improvise. it doesnt matter if at first it sounds random. it'll change as your thinking changes. your thinking will change through doing. play alot. have fun. dont worry so much.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

The same way there's theory for classical there's theory for jazz. You have an entirely new set of rules, which can be bent and even broken eventually. Go get a few books from your local music store on jazz theory. I'd ask the guy working there if he or she has any suggestions. My main suggestion is to go out and get jazz piano CDs. Get Joe Sample, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Hoagy Carmichael , Count Basie, Vince Guaraldi, Stan Kenton, Thelonious Monk, and if you can find it, Bill Erickson (my old teacher).

aberkok

It's almost inevitable that you'll turn to books, so it's not really worth me saying - STAY AWAY FROM BOOKS - but each album of recorded music is worth many books. The most important thing is to ignite a true and versatile passion for discovery through listening. The best list of players I've heard so far was from Roachboy.

As far as others, I've always found Red Garland and Horace Silver to be good players to learn from.

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Willravel

Wow, rb, that's a great post.

roachboy

i dont know how i forgot about this, but anyway...you should check out derek bailey's series of bbc television shows on improvisation. you can find some of them at least on ubu:

http://www.ubu.com/film/bailey.html

this is excellent stuff.

btw, thanks will...

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

noodlebee

I am completely a newbie in jazz. I asked here because it was playing (don't laugh) in Starbucks and it sounded interesting. I also recall a concert recital from last year when a group performed Satie but with improvisation including a piano, bass guitar, and tenor saxophone. There was maybe a clarinet Bb too, but I don't remember. The pianist sometimes stood up and plucked the strings of the piano like a harp! Beyond this, I don't know about jazz musicians or songs. So the recommendations you listed here are very useful, roachboy, willravel and aberkok. Thanks very much.

I can improvise only a little bit. I haven't played piano for a long time and cannot afford lessons (poor university student. Hahaha...) Most of my focus is on composers like Mendelssohn, Brahms, Schumann, Faure and just a little bit of Rachmaninov. My fingers are like rusty gears.

Based on what you have all said, the best way is to start listening, watching videos and reading interviews first, right? And afterwards, I can start doing practical on the keyboard and read about theory. Is this a good way?

Willravel

That's a good place to start, frankly. Speaking as someone who was classically trained and moved into jazz, it's the progressive and expressive artists like Rachmaninov who allow you to access that ability to feel the emotions of jazz.

noodlebee

I see. What other sort of "classical" composers do you think are good for a beginner in jazz? Some of the chords I heard from the background music in Starbucks are uncomfortable to listen to. I tried listening to people like Schoenberg and his student, Berg too but they are confusing and strange.

Willravel

I know it's a bit cliche, but Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is, in my opinion, a great bridge between what people call classical and jazz. I also like Stravinski and other very experimental composers. You might also try to big French composers like Debussy and Ravel (like my screenname).

jorgelito

Play by ear. You can also get the Jamey Abersole recordings to play along with.

roachboy

interesting...so let's see....

i would think that playing is the most fundamental. i would use any devices you can some up with to push you into it. find a practice room.

basically improvising is like composing--it's one way to go about it--so one of the tasks that awaits you is shifting how you think about structure--from elements you repeat (from the score) to elements you organize yourself.

so for example: if you have a short segment of a piece that you like, try isolating it from its context and playing around with it. when i was a kid, i used to have great fun taking apart piano rags. but you can use anything, really. one little game that i liked was adding stuff between sections so that i had a place to start from and a place to get to. it was like a puzzle.

another fun game--but its time consuming--is learning a classical piece backward.

you can use harmonies that you make---try making a series of ninths with your left hand, move them around chromatically and see what you can do with your right to fit a melodic-ish line over it.
ninths are pretty. you can augment or diminsh them and the fact that the pitches are spread out a bit will erase the effect of the dissonance.

use graphic elements---i used to like using kandinsky paintings as a kind of score.
stuff like this:



there's lots of ways to interact with these shapes--literally transposing some of them is one option. i had a poster when i was a kid that was more horizontally organized. i used it alot as a kind of score. it helped to have a visual referencepoint when i was figuring out how to use variation. that was one of the biggest shifts--getting away from using chord changes to organize the sound, trying to do more counterpoint based stuff.

another game (maybe for later, but you never know with these things) was: i got really interested in ornette coleman's music. there's no piano in alot of it...no chords...just multiple lines. i spent a LONG time trying to figure out how to do walking bass and what i thought of as horn lines simultaneously.

i have made quite a few decks of cards with different graphic or verbal cues..shuffle and select a few.
play that.

there are lots of tricks/games/things you can experiment with.
so i would start playing.

listening:
as for schoenberg/webern/berg: at some point you may listen to pieces again and find that you hear them quite differently than you do now. webern's op. 30 for piano was for me at least fundamental. maurizio pollini has a really lovely recording of it on dg, doubled up with an early boulez sonata that is just great (and introduces you to "motivic cells" as an organizational tool) but i suspect that it'll take you a while to work your way into it. i'd rip it and keep it around, play it from time to time. you may find that one time you play it, you no longer think "how strange" and just drift into the piece. that's when you are starting to hear it.

i would check out the webern, though. there's a world in it.


here's a couple more recommendations, based more on what you've posed since the op...

satie--try to find steffan schleiermacher's recording of "vexations." it'll mess with your head.

later debussy (around world war 1) and scriabin (tho scriabin is much busier) were both fascinated with the wonderful world of fourths. those are nifty intervals to play around with.

keith jarret. there's alot of nice stuff, especially from the late 1970s---the american quartet (with dewey redman, charlie haden and paul motian) recordings are all great; there's a very pretty orchestral record called "arbor zena" that is well worth tracking down. people like the koln concerts, but i never did. it's mostly pretty straightforward arpeggio based riffwork. but folk like it, so maybe you will.

bill evans.

lennie tristano.

you might also like some stuff by any of these folk:
warne marsh
art pepper
jimmy guiffre.
who are all horn players but did most lovely stuff.

eventually, check out ornette coleman. his first release, "this is our music", is the gateway drug.
it's like milk is for junkies.
all junkies have consumed milk.
it must be the gateway.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

aberkok

I suggest you force yourself to get used to these "chords." I question your motives. If you find them uncomfortable, why do you want to learn jazz? It is a music rife with "uncomfortable" dissonance. Don't torture yourself.

In Toronto I'm surrounded by students of "jazz" who pretty much listen to all white artists. Now, I can't dismiss the achievements of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, etc., but in my not so subjective opinion, jazz is black music. A deeper - and dare I say "proper" - understanding of it can only come from investigating black artists. Don't misread me here. Miles Davis and John Coltrane have been responsible for some of the most wonderfully consonant music (whatever that means), and there's nothing that prevents a black or a white artist from expressing from all sides of the consonance/dissonance spectrum. What I've found, though, is that the vast majority of the ground breaking artists in this tradition are black, and they didn't get where they were going by just playing pretty. My understanding of emotional expression through music is that you express yourself fully - that means the light and the darkness. So if you're truly interested in exploring jazz, be prepared to face a lot of discomfort.

It's like making friends: the most interesting people aren't happy all the time - sometimes you learn the most from someone when they're angry or sad.

I have more to say on this but I want to see if I'm understood.

__________________
!check out my new blog! http://arkanamusic.wordpress.com

Warden Gentiles: "It? Perfectly innocent. But I can see how, if our roles were reversed, I might have you beaten with a pillowcase full of batteries."

jth

I've been playing Jazz guitar for 8 years as my main thing in life. I have piano skills, I do not improvise but I have what I call "arranger's piano" skills where I certainly can figure anything out on piano.

Books are only a source not a teacher. However, a good book for Piano and Jazz is Mark Lavien's Jazz Piano and Jazz Theory books. The Theory book is Cannonic, just about everyone studies this book at some point in time because it is so complete and filled with lots of examples to play.

My Brother is adjunct Facutly at the University if North Texas for jazz piano which is one of the largest and top ranked Jazz programs in the world. I am a student here now as well. I've heard a hell of a lot of good piano players. It takes dedication and a good ear.

If you are interested in Jazz Piano you should check out for starters...

Art Tatum
Nat Cole
Ahmad Jamal
Oscar Peterson
Bud Powell
Bill Evans
Red Garland
Wynton Kelley

These are some of the really vital and important Jazz Pianists in the golden eras of Jazz. However check out horn players etc

Charlie Parker
Miles Davis
Louis Armstrong
Duke Ellington
John Coltrane
Sonny Rollins
Joe Henderson
Freddie Hubbard
Wes Montgomery
Jim Hall
JJ Johnson


The list could go on endlessly. There really are far to many people to check out. But you will find there is a core list of players that are innovators of the music through it's various changes in direction.

__________________
"A real leader faces the music, even if he doesn't like the tune." - unknown quote

Willravel

ornette coleman's "this is out music" has just been added to my wishlist. i look forward to hearing it.

warrrreagl

I know I'm supposed to be exiled, but I can't NOT comment in this thread.

The human brain learns any kind of music through the same process. You progress from familiar to unfamiliar and from simple to complex. In other words, everything new that you learn musically is organized in your brain according to how it relates to what's already in there. The two most important things you can do to learn any type of music is 1) listen, and 2) sing. If you want to learn jazz piano, then listen to a lot of jazz piano and try to sing what you're hearing before you ever put your hands on the keyboard.

The ability to sing music inside your head is called audiation and all humans who can hear sounds have some level of this ability. The more developed your audiation skills, the better your ability to synthesize what you're hearing into your hands.

After you've been singing the jazz piano you were listening to, sit at the keyboard and try to pick out what you're singing on the piano. You will suck mightily at this at first. If you're older than 10 years old, you will be INCREDIBLY tempted to just give up and quit (since music aptitude is usually set by age 9).

There is no short and easy route to learning music - especially something as complex as jazz. It's one of the most frustrating things an adult can try. Convince yourself now that it will be long, difficult, and sometimes painful. But if it's really what you want to do, your motiviation will win out over your frustration.

1) Listen
2) Sing
3) Pick it out on the keyboard
4) Don't give up
5) Forget those method books until you're ready for them

__________________
Living is easy with eyes closed.

flat5

Since you can read piano music already, read through transcriptions. There are books of many jazz piano players.

Two good and progressive courses are the John Mehegan series
http://www.playjazz.com/PI005.html

and Mark Levine's stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-Piano-Boo.../dp/0961470151
you can get the piano book and the theory book together at a reduced price.

Good list of piano players (and horn players) above this post.
and ear training. You must define what you hear.

Good luck.