Group 1
Anyone can improvise! When classical pianists hear the word "Improvisation," they often think of learning fancy jazz scales or studying the rule of the octave. But improvisation doesn't have to be intimidating! In this two-week intensive, pianist Jeremy Siskind will demonstrate how to improvise a twenty-four measure ABA tune without being a jazz or historical improv genius. Topics covered will include standard chord progressions, left-hand patterns, use of arpeggios, adding color using non-chord tones, and exercises for two-handed coordination.
Pianists of all levels are welcome.
More Detailed instructions coming soon!
- Sign-Up : April 12 - April 15
- Course Period: April 17 - May 1
- Class Size: max. 4 Groups 谩 10 Participants
- Optional check-In via Zoom: April 26th 1:30pm - 2:30pm PT
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85277587596?pwd=V1ZBN0ozZ2ZWQ1QraU5JR24yRXBNUT09
Assignment 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiDUR1esb70
For the assignment:
1) Learn the given chord progression in Eb major and C minor | I | IV | V7/V | V | V/IV | IV | V | I |
2) Create 4-6 contrasting left hand accompaniment patterns and practice them in both Eb major and C minor
3) Practice improvising limiting yourself to just the arpeggios (notes of the chords)
4) Ask "what if" questions to spark different improvisation ideas
Assignment 2
For the assignment:
1) Beautify your melody through lower chromatic neighbors, scale passages, and ornaments.
2) Think orchestrally - use more of the piano to create orchestral framing, including unisons, chorales, left-hand melodies, and upper-register passages.
3) Put it all together! Practice creating contrasting ABA improvisations, making sure to add transitions between the sections.
Zoom Meeting Checkin Video:
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Hello Everybody. Perhaps I should not even mention it but I am not sure if I will be able to continue. I may just come back to it later.
I am a bit disappointed that there is no PDF file to download and we just need to make notes from the video. I also have to admit that I did not even know secondary dominants (I checked a few jazz books I have, including two Jeremy's books, and I could not find any reference apart from a short note in "Frequently Asked Questions").
I wish everybody a great learning experience.
Michael
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Michael Furmaniak I think Jeremy is providing the option to improvise in your style of preference, whch could be classically, following on from George Ko's sessions on TB on improvising classically, just as Mozart and Beethoven did, and probably all musicians historically.
Jeremy is very clear in his books, which are well worth purchasing, if you want to pursue studying jazz piano.
Music is a language and we can learn the words , just as children do, without necessarily understanding the grammar and the syntax at the same time.
The teachers on TB have to pitch the material across the whole range of abilities. I see these 2-week intensives as an opportunity to concentrate on particular aspects of muscial genres and composition. I take from the courses what suits me.
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Roy James-Pike You have made very good points.
I do have Jeremy's books and I know that he also brings the connection of learning language and music in his videos.
Children indeed almost always listen first and then speak before learning any grammar rules. Many adults also learn the second language by listening first (they often end up with some entrenched mistakes that they picked up from native speakers who did not speak with perfect grammar).
I learned the second language starting with learning grammar, words and even pronunciation before speaking any of that language. I am now fully bilingual and I think that my grammar is better than many native speakers of this language. I will never write poetry though.
Interestingly, my son did not speak till his was 2 years old but he was "talking" to a computer typing commands and definitely understanding the responses.
We all learn differently and some of us need structure in any activity we pursue. Some of us are just not free, spontaneous spirits.
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Roy James-Pike MuseScore and Google Docs. I'm also trying not to use the written music and use ear and eye to build muscle memory and guide the development. It's super slow going for me as a novice keyboardist, but am keeping at it, hands separately so far.
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Michael Furmaniak I agree. Freedom comes from having structures that enable our freedom to be expressed. I think the 'child's mind' is the way to go when trying to deal with our adult frustrations about the slowness of absorption. Adults know what they want to achieve and are often disappointed by the apparent lack of speed, despite adult learning curves being steeper generally, whereas children do not have those challenges, generally.
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David Thank you David. I shall investigate MuseScore. I have Microsoft Office so I imagine it will work with it. I have just made a comment to Michael that adults suffer from the frustration of knowing what they want to produce coupled with the time it takes to achieve the desired result. Just enjoy the progress. I am 'returning' to the piano after a very long gap. It is coming up to two years since I 'returned'. I am a trained flute player from many years ago so I have the added frustration of having a fluency on one instrument that I don't have at the piano. I have written elsewhere that single-line instruments use all the fingers, and one thumb, of both hands to produce one note. My bug-bear at the piano is trying to split my brain into half - LH and RH. I don't do a lot of separate hands. I'd rather do them joined up really slowly so that I can get the co-ordination.
I am really enjoying this assignment. My first problem was mixing up the keys when playing the V7/V. I was putting the D7 in C minor into E flat major instead of F7. However, that D7 goes naturally into the relative minor of C on its way back to the relative major of E flat, which was quite enjoyable to do, albeit not the given progression.
Thank you again for the rhythmic notation, which I shall incorporate when the chords are more stable. I see all this (like the challenges) over a much longer timescale to suit my own learning patterns.
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To learn the progression, you might find it helpful to try it with two hands first, using the voicing in the classic I IV V I progression (root in the LH) that you've probably already practised in all keys, major and minor. You just have to add the two applied dominants to these chords and rearrange them a bit. Finding the V of V is helped by remembering the circle of fifths, and the V of IV by remembering, as Jeremy said, that it's equivalent to a dominant seventh (i.e. with a flat 7) on the tonic. This way, you don't get bogged down in reading the progressions on the stave, and can focus more on the sound.
Once you've got the chords under your fingers in several keys, you can switch to the LH voicing that Jeremy's used.
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Douglas McCarthy Good answer
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Thank you for the .pdf file Jeremy. I've been playing Piano for a little less than a year, and come from Classic Rock play by ear guitar and bass playing. Before seeing the .pdf file, I was considering recording a backing track on the guitar, and improvising over top with the piano. I think I'll go over the progressions first to see how it goes. I might stay in C/Am and D/Bm first, as Eb/Cm is fairly new to me. Thank you also to the rest of the group for posting introductions.
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Harry Vig Did Jeremy upload any file? I did not see it. I only saw David's great and very helpful work.
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Michael Furmaniak Apologies, and mostly to David. I gave credit to the wrong author (well, at least putting the work into the pdf file).
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Harry Vig It was indeed David who put so much work. Unfortunately Jeremy left us only with some hand writing in the video. David saved the day!
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Hi everyone! I'm just poking my head in to say hi! I'm so glad you all are interested in pursuing this project and I look forward to doing my best to guide you!
Just a note about my teaching - I like to give lots of options and possibilities. That doesn't mean you have to investigate every single one. Choose which rabbit holes you want to go down and know that others will still be waiting for you down the road.
Happy practicing and talk to you soon!
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Being a beginner, I found the four note chords a little finger twisting, and reading in Eb is too new to me. I had a great time with C, Am, D and Bm, and stuck to arpeggios and some out of chord pickup runs.
I found one oddity- and take the C major version as the example. In the fourth measure, my ear liked the sound of a Gmaj7 preferentially to the G7.
The same thing happened with Am, I preferred a Emaj7, i.e. D# over D note in the arpeggio.
Can anybody explain the theory? This is new theory content for me.
Or even simpler, can anybody confirm if they try it that way if they like it?
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Harry Vig I think E flat major and C minor are really useful keys for jazz as sax players are in E flat, so they would be playing in C major and A minor when we are in E flat and C min.
I think the 7th chords sound correct to me. The joy of improvisation is to choose what you want to play if you prefer it.
I am playing through the chords adding a major 7th to all of them apart from where it is to be a flat 7th chord.
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Thanks for including me in this two-week intensive, which I shall start tomorrow [Saturday in the UK].
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My first look at this today. My first observation is that V7/V is chord ii of the home key played as a major chord. It's the same major version in the minor key, albeit the ii chord in a minor key is half-diminished [not sure how to write that when typing].
This is my way of remembering the V7/V chord. I hope it's correct. This saves trying to work out what is the secondary dominant [the dominant of the dominant] and play it in time while thinking about it.
I am starting by using major 7ths throughout in block position, apart from the dominant 7th chords, as I am used to that.
This is followed by using the chord shells [I, III and VII] and then the guide tones [III and VII].
My plan is to be completely familiar with the above then to experiment with the most economic inversion to use on the chords [again using four notes each time, so three inversions].
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Roy James-Pike A couple of observations on the relative minor: the V7 [G7] chord has a B natural - following the harmonic minor, whereas the jazz version of the minor scale uses the classical descending melodic minor in both directions; and, the V7/iv is not 7th chord of the tonic of the home key [like the major] but the 7th of the associated major key, i.e. an E natural instead of an E flat.
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That's a revelation. I just played arpeggios over the chords. I wasn't trying to create a melody, although I changed the starting note of the areggio and the direction of travel. I want to use this assignment to try out different scale patterns, and modes, with the intention of establishing which I prefer to sit next to each other.
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Roy James-Pike I realize that we've gone on beyond limiting ourselves to chord tones now, but a useful exercise is to create melodic lines based on what in jazz theory, are called guide tones: i.e. the 3rd and 7th of the chord. Naturally with the triads, there will be no 7th, and even when introducing scalar and chromatic material, the guide tones are very useful as targets on the strong beats in each measure.
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Douglas McCarthy it was a really useful comment from Jeremy in the video session to avoid parallel fifths, and using block cords will include parallel fifths. I haven鈥檛 thought about that before. That makes me want to sort out inversions and moving between chords in a way that I鈥檝e already thought through and practised. The guide tones remove the possibility of parallel fifths, of course. I鈥檓 okay in A and B voicing in some keys, but this prompts me to really practise the guide tone voicings across the range of keys. There鈥檚 two week intensive has been really thought-provoking.
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The previous comment was in relation to Assignment 2
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I just saw a message in my Inbox from some-one in Group 3 that referred to a dead-line, presumably this relates to the Zoom call tonight.
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I have just watched Jeremy's Youtube video for Assignment 2. These couple of weeks have been so inspiring. The outcome is that I have put in place something that I had thought would be nececessary, which is to develop my own notation system, based on a 'Lead Sheet', so I have the Chords on the top line, with the prompt for the improvisation underneath, e.g., F Mixolydian. Maybe they should be the other way around or even on one stave like the lead sheet - work in progress.
Jeremy's advice from Assignment from Week 1 was to sort out the rhythms in the LH and use different ones for each section, which is a 2-year intensive, not 2-week, which is all-good.
Thanks so much for this inspiration and the resultant shift in my approach to improvisation.
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Roy James-Pike Love this! You did so much work! I hope you're able to build on what you've learned...without getting too overwhelmed. Remember to just take one step at a time. Know that old cliche about "Rome wasn't built in a day"? I think it applies here!
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Jeremy Siskind Thanks Jeremy. Much appreciated.
This two-week intensive has led to a qualitative shift in my approach to how to absorb the principles of Jazz piano. I have to thank Richard too from the Zoom call, whose surname I don't know, for his inspirational comments on using a score.
Richard said that he built up his understanding through Sibelius because he had no melodic memory. Richard, who sounds like a fellow Northerner from the UK, said that he is 71 years old - a baby compared to me. I had my 73rd birthday two days ago.
Angela Hewitt wrote in the Guardian newspaper recently that she, who is in her sixties, is finding memorisation more difficult. It was not clear whether her comments referred to as her recall of memory, or the memorisation is new pieces, or both.
Age is an obvious factor but it's not the whole story. I have been absorbing so much material since I returned to the piano almost two years ago, which has gone into my memory already.
Also, part of our retirement plan is to work through all of the ISTD Ballroom and Latin dance tests, which requires a lot of memorisation [eleven dances in all].
There is another breakthrough that is linked to this, which is the realisation that the use of guide tones is founded on avoiding the use of fifths and octaves, whereas I thought previously that they just weren't necessary for defining the chord. This prompts me to explore partimento and revisit classical harmony too, along with working through all of the inversions in jazz harmony, starting with a handful of keys [say E flat, A flat, D flat, and G flat], using standard chord progressions, so that I can develop a sense of which inversion is best to use to approach any given target chord.
Then, I shall write it down. I intend to buy Musescore or Sibelius but my handwritten lead sheets may well suffice for the time being.
The third aim is to work consistently on co-ordination of the two hands. You mention 'automation' of the LH, which must underpin being able to then extemporise in the RH. My approach to this will be to explore steadily and consistently the LH patterns associated with different musical genres - each one at a time, say a fortnight of 10 minutes per day on each, and then on a repeated cycle.
Thank you again for including me in this seminal course!
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