"Play something we can dance to.. " ("like Sinatra")
time and time again at solo piano wedding receptions some woman will come up and say "can you play something we can dance to... something like frank sinatra... really romantic... something slow..."
often they don't really know what they want; they might mean they want it to sound like sinatra belting out "fly me to the moon" or "the way you look tonight" with the basie orchestra, a rather impossible request to pull off when playing alone with digital piano. or maybe they really do want a ballad for slow dancing, maybe something like "these foolish things" or "when i fall in love" which i typically play with a medium slow legato stride left hand.
what is your style of playing and approach in those situations?
often they don't really know what they want; they might mean they want it to sound like sinatra belting out "fly me to the moon" or "the way you look tonight" with the basie orchestra, a rather impossible request to pull off when playing alone with digital piano. or maybe they really do want a ballad for slow dancing, maybe something like "these foolish things" or "when i fall in love" which i typically play with a medium slow legato stride left hand.
what is your style of playing and approach in those situations?
There are 8 comments, leave a comment.
rhythmic playing with lots of block chord melody. people don't tend to like the single line stuff that lots of jazzers play, they want to hear block chords. so i play a pseudo-stride in my left hand and big block chords in the right, stick to the melody or big band style licks (aka monty alexander) and people have a great time dancing to it.
the trap that jazzers fall into is the improv trap. when people want to dance, you are now a big band on the piano. single line bebop stuff is not going to cut it because it's just not rhythmic enough. well, most of the time, for most players. if you can pull of a seriously rhythmic single line solo that people aren't squinting their eyes to, and i mean normal people, not musicians or jazz snobs, then you aren't playing those gigs anyway :)
so yeah- heavy rhythm and no single line solos.
the trap that jazzers fall into is the improv trap. when people want to dance, you are now a big band on the piano. single line bebop stuff is not going to cut it because it's just not rhythmic enough. well, most of the time, for most players. if you can pull of a seriously rhythmic single line solo that people aren't squinting their eyes to, and i mean normal people, not musicians or jazz snobs, then you aren't playing those gigs anyway :)
so yeah- heavy rhythm and no single line solos.
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by Scot Ranney on 06/25/2012, 10:46
that's why i don't play piano for a living anymore. the worst part of playing for an audience is the audience.
erroll garner playing "teach me tonight" is a good example of piano for dancing. he plays steady chords in quarter notes in the left hand while the right hand plays the melody in octaves with a lot of chord tones on the inside.
great post, scot.
can you give a description of what "big band style licks (aka monty alexander)" are like? do you mean short snappy fills like "salt peanuts ": 1 8 1 sort of fill, like basie fills, or like garner's double time chord arpeggio outlines during turnarounds?
i'm talking about stuff like... like big band fills. not pianistic fills, not single note lines. like playing the entire horn section in your right hand.
one time when monty alexander came to jazz alley in seattle, i went down to the big city to see him play. this was years and years ago, really before i had any concept of how to do this stuff. i knew i wanted to, but i didn't know anything. so i asked monty how he had such great time, how he was able to lean around the edges of time and snap back in with such force.
he said to me something like, "i'm the basie big band, right here on the piano."
even in his intro to satin doll where he's kind of playing a boogie thing, you can hear it. he'll play these single note rhythmic licks then put full hand chord punctuation on them.
i'll amend what i said before- you can definitely play single note lines, but you also add the big sound of full chord hits with full chord melody playing. you have to fill in under the melody note. i simply play the melody notes an octave apart in my right hand and fill it in with chord notes.
look at 3:57 in the vid- he's playing exactly some of the "big band" style licks i'm talking about. repeating it over and over. you wouldn't do that at a solo piano dance gig for so long, but as this bit progresses he'll transition into something huge and then you can almost hear the big band in his playing.
be sure to check out what happens before 5:47 when he transitions the band into double time for a moment. one of the best double time transitions in the history of trio piano.
now take a look at night mist blues from the same show.
he mixes in full hand with single line like it's peanut butter and jelly.
at 2:13 you see it at the end of the form- three or four big band hits on the piano instead of with horn sections.
i tell students not to be afraid to play it like it's a piano. man, we have ten fingers. we're not sax players, limited to one note a time. nothing against bud powell and all the boppers, but man, they all wanted to sound like bird so they only played one note at a time.
play it like it's a piano.
check out 4:38 - rolling left hand with right hand going. you can do that in solo playing too, just roll both hands, pause in the right to play some notes, roll some more, etc... sets up for a huge rhythmic hit, the possibilities are endless. in this case they go into swinging double time. watch the whole vid if you haven't seen it- it just gets better and better.
monty solo piano, isn't she lovely:
very rhythmic for the most part. one part is him doing melodic stuff, then always you hear a rhythmic counterpart putting the melodic stuff in it's place. some of it's not danceable of course, he wasn't recording for that purpose, but some of it is very rhythmic and you can see how. me isnt' stuck on single lines, he mixes up single lines and chordal hits.
one of these days i'll record a video of exactly what i'm talking about on a standard dance tune like tangerine or something.
one time when monty alexander came to jazz alley in seattle, i went down to the big city to see him play. this was years and years ago, really before i had any concept of how to do this stuff. i knew i wanted to, but i didn't know anything. so i asked monty how he had such great time, how he was able to lean around the edges of time and snap back in with such force.
he said to me something like, "i'm the basie big band, right here on the piano."
even in his intro to satin doll where he's kind of playing a boogie thing, you can hear it. he'll play these single note rhythmic licks then put full hand chord punctuation on them.
i'll amend what i said before- you can definitely play single note lines, but you also add the big sound of full chord hits with full chord melody playing. you have to fill in under the melody note. i simply play the melody notes an octave apart in my right hand and fill it in with chord notes.
look at 3:57 in the vid- he's playing exactly some of the "big band" style licks i'm talking about. repeating it over and over. you wouldn't do that at a solo piano dance gig for so long, but as this bit progresses he'll transition into something huge and then you can almost hear the big band in his playing.
be sure to check out what happens before 5:47 when he transitions the band into double time for a moment. one of the best double time transitions in the history of trio piano.
now take a look at night mist blues from the same show.
he mixes in full hand with single line like it's peanut butter and jelly.
at 2:13 you see it at the end of the form- three or four big band hits on the piano instead of with horn sections.
i tell students not to be afraid to play it like it's a piano. man, we have ten fingers. we're not sax players, limited to one note a time. nothing against bud powell and all the boppers, but man, they all wanted to sound like bird so they only played one note at a time.
play it like it's a piano.
check out 4:38 - rolling left hand with right hand going. you can do that in solo playing too, just roll both hands, pause in the right to play some notes, roll some more, etc... sets up for a huge rhythmic hit, the possibilities are endless. in this case they go into swinging double time. watch the whole vid if you haven't seen it- it just gets better and better.
monty solo piano, isn't she lovely:
very rhythmic for the most part. one part is him doing melodic stuff, then always you hear a rhythmic counterpart putting the melodic stuff in it's place. some of it's not danceable of course, he wasn't recording for that purpose, but some of it is very rhythmic and you can see how. me isnt' stuck on single lines, he mixes up single lines and chordal hits.
one of these days i'll record a video of exactly what i'm talking about on a standard dance tune like tangerine or something.
If I'm not back in 24 hours, call the president.
Scot is available for skype jazz piano lessons (and google hangouts, phone call, etc...)
Use the contact link at the top of the page.
Scot is available for skype jazz piano lessons (and google hangouts, phone call, etc...)
Use the contact link at the top of the page.
by Scot Ranney on 06/28/2012, 19:28
i think everything you are talking about for the right hand is exemplified erroll garner playing "teach me tonight" is a good example of piano for dancing. he plays steady chords in quarter notes beat in the left hand while the right hand plays in octaves. garner fills in the octaves most usually when the melody is a primary chord tone, but when the melody is a non-chord tone he often will leave the octave empty.
yep, you're right about that! i'm sure monty got that stuff from garner (heck, they all did, eh?) and just put his own personality on it.
garner pretty much wrote the book on everything i've been saying. i should have listened to that vid you put up before :p
the way he's playing teach me tonight, he could have done that solo piano or with his trio and people could have danced with it.
throwing in the chordal notes between octave melodies is pretty easy. for people who are working on it, you basically just start throwing in notes. you'll figure out pretty fast which ones work and which ones don't. there are some rules, but i don't like to limit my playing with rules, except the golden rule:
it's all about how it sounds.
garner pretty much wrote the book on everything i've been saying. i should have listened to that vid you put up before :p
the way he's playing teach me tonight, he could have done that solo piano or with his trio and people could have danced with it.
throwing in the chordal notes between octave melodies is pretty easy. for people who are working on it, you basically just start throwing in notes. you'll figure out pretty fast which ones work and which ones don't. there are some rules, but i don't like to limit my playing with rules, except the golden rule:
it's all about how it sounds.
If I'm not back in 24 hours, call the president.
Scot is available for skype jazz piano lessons (and google hangouts, phone call, etc...)
Use the contact link at the top of the page.
Scot is available for skype jazz piano lessons (and google hangouts, phone call, etc...)
Use the contact link at the top of the page.
by Scot Ranney on 06/29/2012, 15:10
i also notice garner really liked the key of ab, he also always played misty in ab. i am finding it lays really well with his style too as i try to copy him in ab. i think the guidelines might be when the melody line gets tricky, such as leaping intervals or really fast stuff, just use octaves. also, i notice garner almost always fills in his octaves when the root, 3rd, 5th or 7th is in the melody and less often when it's a non primary chord tone.
by the way, hiromi is heavily influenced by garner and often falls into his exact style when playing solo piano. she was on a desert island radio program recently where she picked 5 essential cds she would take with her and the only jazz cds were concert by the sea and night train.
by the way, hiromi is heavily influenced by garner and often falls into his exact style when playing solo piano. she was on a desert island radio program recently where she picked 5 essential cds she would take with her and the only jazz cds were concert by the sea and night train.
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