| LearnJazzPiano.com archives: essential patterns? | |
| james3 -- 01/11/2007, 09:30:54 -- #32292 | |
| Hey all, What patterns do you guys practice regularly and feel are essential to learn for their usefullness? Thanks, James | |
| Scot -- 01/11/2007, 09:36:56 -- #32292 | |
| Diminished patterns sound cool and all the great players use them. | |
| Jazz+ -- 01/11/2007, 17:42:04 -- #32292 | |
| That is too hard to answer in words. There are many great patterns that I like to occasionaly practice and employ. | |
| Mike -- 01/11/2007, 22:06:26 -- #32292 | |
| right now, I am same as Scot I compose and practice some diminished patterns and thats it. If I was not into the whole diminished thing right now I would not be practicing patterns at all. | |
| 7 -- 01/12/2007, 19:28:01 -- #32292 | |
| A pattern is what a cool riff is based off. There is a large (if not infinite) number of variations on any given pattern/riff. Begin with composing patterns with primarily stepwise motion (swing). Then move up to patterns accentuating moving by 3rds (bebop). And finally move to constructing melodic patterns by 4ths and 5ths using the various modes (modal). Once you have worked through the above in 12 keys, progress to patterns using chromatic passing tones between chord tones. They can go up or down. And it's a lot more fun if you have a real chord progression to jam on top of. Or Band-in-a-Box .. | |
| rubengonzalez -- 01/13/2007, 23:04:05 -- #32292 | |
| my experience has been that the licks people like the most in my playing have been based on things that ive come up with. im not saying im particularily "creative" or "good", but maybe theres some strange law of jazz karma where every time you play a line that you singlehandedly invented it pops out of the piano a little bit more. anyways... try this method: 1. DONT think of a key 2. Play one note 3. Listen, really hear where YOU want the note to go 4. Find the note that you imagined coming next, and continue this process. Don't make it too spread out over the keyboard unless you really want a wacky line (if you do, go for it i love wacky lines). Once you have something you like, try it out over different chords/keys, try to hear which key it "should" be in as well, and maybe make a pattern out of it. I love doing this! do it with harmony too! im not sure how much it'll really help your playing, and you should probably learn some stuff from cats other than yourself too, but i find it to be a very pure and personal musical activity. its a nice break from the mind bogglingly huge and often depressing task of assimilating the entire history of jazz piano. | |
| Whacky -- 01/14/2007, 08:20:47 -- #32292 | |
| Well said! | |
| Jazz+ -- 03/21/2007, 10:31:32 -- #32292 | |
| I think scales and arpeggios are the essential patterns. Why? Scales move in stepwise motion (2nds) like a large portion of melodies do. Arpeggios move in skips (3rds) and tend to melodicly outline what we call chords. | |
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