| LearnJazzPiano.com archives: how to learn odd chords | |
| mstore -- 05/03/2004, 02:44:57 -- #4075 | |
| hello. I had a exam last week, I failed because i couldnīt play odd chords like Abm11-5 in 4 different ways. How should i practise chords like this? Anybody have a list on how to play every chord that excists in 4 diffrent ways? In that case I could mark of that list for every chord i learn. Then i should learn to play every open voicing in atleast 4 different ways. I often have the problem that when i learnt the II v I in every key in many different ways I remebered how the chords was when i practised but when i saw an Gbm9 in a tune everything stood still. Why is this. This was 2 or 3 years ago... Thatīs why i failed in my exam because i couldnīt just take the chord from nowhere like that. I would like to know every way to practise chords. how should i think when practising. the chords often seem to remain in my fingers but not in my head. If i have to write them on a score I have to think how i play them. Else I donīt know them. This is a problem that i havenīt gotten an answer for yet. I have been thinking about this for 3 years... Please help me. Im suppose to be a musician in a few years. I havenīt just learnīt the basic stuff properly. I havenīt learned stuff you wouldnīt use in a jazzband. I started with learning the hard stuff. the top of the iceberg. Please help me. I have a teacher that studied at manhattan school of music. Maybe he assumes that i know the basic stuff allready cause i can improvise and i know the jazz language pretty well if i consider that i havenīt been playing that long... thanx martin | |
| smg -- 05/03/2004, 07:58:38 -- #4084 | |
| Good to see you over here,man.....I'm sure that what you're describing is something many players are dealing with..before I offer my views,let's see who else replies..I'm hoping this thread will be an active one this week...... | |
| 7 -- 05/03/2004, 08:35:50 -- #4093 | |
| ` Did they want you to play the chord Abm11b5 in only one hand or two? If it was two-handed, you could've played 1 b3 b7 in the left and filled out the b5 9 11 in the right. That requires a minimum amount of thought and provides a nice sounding voicing. Similarly play the 1 b10(aka b3) in the LH and the b5 b7 9 11 in the right. How about a quartal 1 11(aka 4) b7 in the LH and the b3 b5 9 in the RH? 11th chords with a flatted 7th (dominant or minor) are always a good candidate for this type of voicing. Or a simple 1 b7 in the LH and a crunchy cluster 9 b3 11 b5 in the right. Another possibility is a "9th shell" in the LH consisting of 1 b5 9 and the quartal 11 b7 b3 in the right. * Speaking of failure, in the second grade when I was 6 years old I got a D- in music class (a "D-" is just a hair above total failure). How can anyone fail a six-year old kid in a subject like MUSIC? Obviously this teacher was a total nut case. When Bird got lost in the middle of a tune, got a cymbal thrown at him and was thrown off the stage, his failure caused him to wooshed like crazy and when he came back he blew the world's mind. Failure is just another learning experience. You can let it destroy you or you can let it strengthen your resolve to succeed. You now are aware of an area in your education that needs work. Best get cracking! 7 | |
| 7 -- 05/03/2004, 08:53:18 -- #4095 | |
| ` BTW the world of music is not about how you pass exams in the ivory tower academic world, it's about how well you perform in the REAL WORLD. Bird never went to a "University" or "Music School" or "Conservatory" to become the greatest. AND YOU DON'T EITHER. Some of the biggest snobs and crappiest players I've had the misfortune to know have gotten degrees from "prestigious schools". Their lack of real world skills coupled with their egotistical "know-it-all" attitudes prevents them from having even a modicum of success. There are those who will defend these schools till their dying breath, but remember that a school's business consists of keeping the school financially afloat and "academics beget academics". What I'm saying is that schools are incestuous organizations bent on producing more people who will buy into the whole "school system" and so on and so on and so on. It makes me sick when people spend more money to get an education in music than they will ever actually make in the music business. That's fine if your daddy's rich, but for the rest of us it's just poor economic judgement. 7 | |
| Rick -- 05/03/2004, 09:17:36 -- #4098 | |
| well said 7! | |
| mstore -- 05/03/2004, 12:08:52 -- #4107 | |
| just so that you know... I pay 20$ for a semester, so it isnt that expensive for a music school... I donīt really care so much about that exam... i just hate to fail. on the other side, itīs great that I now know what to practise,,, and that makes me happy. on the ither side it makes ne angry that none of my teachers have forced me to practise things like that... | |
| henryrizzo -- 05/04/2004, 03:34:40 -- #4117 | |
| I agree with 7 on scools...I think you need a teacher until you can walk by yourself. The everyday challenge is to keep learning and getting inspiration for making music | |
| Kai -- 05/04/2004, 12:07:38 -- #4133 | |
| I find Jazz Keyboard Harmony by Phil DeGreg (published by Jamey Aebersold Jazz) great for learning voicings. The book plus cd backing has a separate chapter for voicings, eg Shell, Guide Tones, Four voice shell extensions, 3 note rootless voicings ... to Other possibilities with Modal Fourth Rows. Each chapter has tunes at the end for application of those voicings. Also there are chord voicing drills, practice patterns, comping rhythms and phrasing, right hand melodic phrases, Bass Lines etc in the appendices. It facilitates different learning styles by providing tactile, visual, analytical and aural learning methods throughout the text and, whilst the drills etc can be boring, it sure 'drives the message home'. I'm very glad that I found this book and whilst I'm talking about books for learning music, I have to recommend another one. This other book is "Hearin' the changes (dealing with unknown tunes by ear)" by Jerry Coker, Bob Knapp and Larry Vincent and it is published by Advance Music. This book is helping me to understand bits that I find difficult to grasp in some other music text books. For example, the ii-V-I progression and its variations, Tri-tone substitution, Backdoor progression etc, modulations, beginnings, class bridges and more. Somehow this book is easier to understand - either that or it reaffirmed what I had learned elsewhere and 'concreted the foundation firmly in my brain'. I agree with the views of schools etc and have learned much on my own by reading and listening and practising and surfing this site (I would guess more effectively too) tho' I have had one good teacher. It is really difficult to find a suitable teacher of jazz piano. Good luck. | |
| smg -- 05/05/2004, 12:55:35 -- #4151 | |
| Lots of good replies,and they all point you in the right direction.... Looking over what you wrote,I think the solution lies in you going back to "square one" in whatever aspects you feel you need to...a lot of players start out improvising then figure out what they're doing afterwards..at some point you've got to deal with basics and then hopefully make a connection between what your approach is based on and what you're finding out about things..in your case it sounds like you know chords in the context of playing songs with a limited amount of voicings and haven't yet sat down and shedded chords in of themselves..this leads you directly to developing the kind of familiarity with them that a given key or chord type has no impact on....as far as inversions and voicing possibilities(which it sounds like is behind the exam stuff that threw you),you get into this right away once you start looking at chords in of themselves..I saw in the other section you mentioned the lydian scale on a given note also was a problem..this is all part of knowing theory..it might look immense and overwhelming right now but,once you start studying it,you quickly see that there are just some principles and concepts you have to understand and then all the infinite variations on these are no big deal.....take a look at the "Buttons" file at 360 degrees if you want to see what my process with all this was like....as 7 says,letting the "pass or fail"aspect of academia blow your mind and f--k you up re-music in general is best avoided in favor of "jumping in with both feet" and seeing what level you can conmfortably start filling the the gaps in your overall musicainship at......nothing to prove...no gig-related pressure...just focus on learning.. | |
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