Standards
How To Make Your Jazz Song Endings Sound Cooler
In today’s lesson we’re going to learn a technique you can use to make the endings to your jazz arrangements and songs much more interesting. Most jazz songs tend to end with the typical II-V-I chord progression (2-5-1). We’re going to mess with this! 🙂 (Video piano lesson, tips, and music notation below). Now, I…
Read MoreJazz Masters Method Special Video Blog Thank You
Hey everybody! Today’s post is going to be short but sweet. I’m truly humbled right now. I’d like to thank everybody who’s ordered the Jazz Masters Method DVD so far during this launch week. The response has been simply been AMAZING. I am truly blessed! Thank you!! I prepared a quick little video blog as I…
Read MoreBarry Harris Rhythm Changes Transcription Lesson
One of the best ways to really learn how to play jazz is to listen and study the playing of the masters. So, in today’s free jazz lesson we’re going to do an in depth study of a Barry Harris solo. Barry Harris took this solo on the tune “Moose the Mooche”. The chords to…
Read MoreHow To Play Here’s That Rainy Day-Reharmonization Lesson
We all want to learn more about jazz chords don’t we? We love the way (fill in your favorite jazz musician here) plays but for some reason we can’t seem to figure out what they’re doing. Great jazz musicians tend to play so much more than what’s on a plain old chord chart. So, how can…
Read MoreHow To Apply 10 New Piano Chords To The Autumn Leaves
This jazz piano lesson is going to be a monster one! Not only are we going to learn 10 new jazz chords but we’ll also learn how to apply them to the tune Autumn Leaves. These powerful chords I’m going to teach you are known as “rootless 2 handed piano voicings”. These piano chords are…
Read MoreJazz Fake Book – 5 Recommended Books For Learning Jazz
Want a list of the best jazz fake books out there? You need music to play right? Do you have time to transcribe all your favorite jazz recordings and slowly build a library of your own personalized jazz charts? How can you learn music more quickly without investing hours and hours trying to learn songs…
Read MoreJazz Standards You Should Learn
Have you ever wondered what the first jazz tunes you should learn are? If so, I’d like to help you get started. There are so many fantastic jazz tunes in the Great American Songbook that it can feel overwhelming when trying to find a place to start. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of…
Read MoreLearn How To Make Your Jazz Melodies Swing More
I recently was invited by the great jazz saxophone player and educator David Carlos Valdez to write an article for his blog. David’s blog is one of the top jazz blogs in the whole world and I was honored and excited for the opportunity. If you don’t know David Valdez’s playing yet you need to!…
Read MoreHow To Play Satin Doll With Spread Voicings
A couple weeks back we learned about a very famous style of jazz chords called spread voicings. (If you missed the lesson and have no idea what spread voicings are make sure you check out the how to play spread voicings lesson). Anyway, since then I received a couple emails from subscribers to the site asking me…
Read MoreMisty Chords & Cool Reharmonization
If you want to learn Misty chords to the jazz standard Misty then you’ve come to the right place! Ok, so as promised I charted out the chords for the jazz piano video lesson I made on reharmonizing Misty. If you haven’t seen the video check it out here: Misty reharmonization lesson. Thanks to Bill Evans…
Read MoreHow To Play Misty – Jazz Piano Reharmonization
Make Your Jazz Standards More Interesting Have you ever noticed that great jazz piano players seem to play so many more chords than are written in your everyday run of the mill fakebook? Why is this? For starters, most of the time the chord changes written in a fakebook are either very bland, boring, or…
Read MoreShell Voicings Lesson – Super Simple Yet Powerful Jazz Chords
Have you ever wondered what shell voicings are? Do you ever wonder what chords people like Bud Powell, Barry Harris, and Al Haig play in their left hand when they’re soloing in their right hand? Well, most of the time they are using a particular type of chord voicing known as shell voicings. Shell voicings are super…
Read MoreWes Montgomery’s solo on Satin Doll
Here‘s a Wes Montgomery solo I transcribed about a year ago on the jazz standard “Satin Doll”. (scroll down for the solo.) There’s all kinds of great jazz licks in this one. I could write a 10 page essay on everything that I like about this solo but I’ll just mention 4 things here: 4 Wes…
Read MoreHow To Solo Over the Jazz Standard All The Things You Are.
Would you like to be able longer jazz licks? Do you feel like your licks sometimes sound like run on sentences? How do you play those beautiful and long flowing lines that a lot of the great jazz masters play? You know the ones that always sound good no matter how long they go? Your Jazz…
Read MoreBarry Harris Transcribed solo “On Green Dolphin Street”
Here’s a transcription I made about two months ago of Barry Harris’ solo on the jazz standard “Green Dolphin Street”. Barry has some really killin’ II-V-I licks on here and really plays some really nice stuff through the break section. Check out his lines over the major chords and the break section as well. …
Read MoreBarry Harris Jazz Piano Lick Lesson
Here’s a video lesson on how to play a Barry Harris Lick. He played this lick over the standard “Green Dolphin Street” Barry is one of the best bebop piano players in the world. He was a true disciple of Bud Powell and Charlie Parker. There’s several cool things about this lick but make sure…
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