Skip to main content

Breaking Out of Broken Chords

Back in the 1990s, I bought Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of The New Real Book. These books are full of anything you could ever want to play in jazz, including all of the standards. I'd also bought Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book, and I was ready to learn jazz.

Alas, a stack of books didn't cut it. I needed a teacher. Someone to show me the ropes. But I didn't know where to look, and besides, I was too shy to ask anyone. I mean, me? Middle-class, shy, cerebral little me, wanting to become a jazzer? Laughable. I didn't even smoke, and I looked silly in sunglasses.

Still, I Could Play Pretty Broken Chords

Every few years, I would dig out the Levine book and try to make progress, and I would dig out the New Real Book volumes and attempt to play songs. Whenever I saw the chord change, I would go to the root of the chord and proceed to arpeggiate, usually with the 1 and the 5. Thanks to my Mark Levine book, I did learn how to play the 3 and the 7 in the right hand with the melody, so that's what I did: lovely (if unimaginative) arpeggios in the left hand, and a somewhat harmonized melody in the right. And I came up with a few very pretty improvisations: there's this one of Over the Rainbow, and this one of All the Things You Are.

Yes, they're nice to listen to, and I love them both. But that's all I knew to do in the left hand: broken chords and arpeggios up and down the lower half of the keyboard, with two- and three-note chords in the upper half. And it wasn't just my habit with lead sheets; I played this way with everything. I played it with any song I tried to write. I played it with every single hymn I ever played from a hymnbook ... the same old broken chords. Here is something I played for my church during COVID.

Same old same old!

Anyway, this style worked fine with ballad-style songs, but I wanted to have some variety. I also wanted to be able to play things that were more upbeat. Instead, I was turning even the fast songs into ballads.

Enter PWJ

I'm currently taking a PWJ course on playing piano with lead sheets and seventh chords (as opposed to adding ninths, thirteenths, etc.). The course so far has been a great introduction (and, for me, a bit of review) to chord progressions, as well as some of the different things you can do in your left and right hands to take the song beyond mere melody notes and accompanying chords.

While it isn't a course on styles, I find that I'm learning what else I can do with the left hand! In this video, I'm playing short, syncopated(?) block chords with "Fly Me To the Moon." I'm not very good at the chords and the timing yet (I don't think there is any rhyme or reason to them), but I am so excited to be playing something other than broken chords!

And guess what! I can play this in whatever key I want! I don't even have to write the Roman numerals in (though it helps)!

Remember That Blog Post on the Rusty Lock and Key?

I am so happy. Even though jazz is no longer my primary area of interest, I am so thrilled to finally be breaking out of the (non-)creative prison that I've been in for so many years. The stubborn rust on the lock is finally beginning to chip off, and the key has begun to turn.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

March Goals Recap/Looking Ahead to April

It's April 1, and time to revisit the goals I set for last month. I practiced a total of 50.45 hours in March, averaging 1.62 hours (or just over an hour and a half) per day. Realistically, I practice about 45 minutes to an hour a day on weekdays, and I usually get at least one longer practice (or multiple shorter practices) in on one or both days of the weekend to bring the average up. CLASSICAL GOALS Chopin, F Minor Nocturne March Goal: Have entire piece by memory and performance-ready. I have about 90% of the piece by memory, but I still have some work to do before it's performance-ready. The only two sections that I don't quite have are "The Agitation" and the "stretto" section with the seventh chords. I'll work on both this week and will have them both memorized before the weekend. April Goal: Finish memorizing, and polish, polish, polish! My focus now is really on phrasing and dynamics. I have the notes down, even in the difficult passages. Fro...

Thursday, July 13

I worked in a short practice today. Had piano this afternoon. The short practice involved the usual scales and arps, and a run-through of my pieces. It wasn't so much a practice as a review. Piano was good. She said that the Bach sounded very musical. I asked what I should do next, practice-wise--continue drilling and memorizing HS, or start HT? She said that I "shouldn't hold off any longer" on playing HT, and to keep drilling HS if I want but to begin working HT on whatever I find to be the most difficult passage of the fugue. That's easy. I don't have the music in front of me, but in the Alfred edition, it's the bottom of page two. I played the Liszt pretty well, if a bit timidly. I'm playing it with emotion and paying attention to all of the dynamics and all of that, but I'm still also trying to make sure I get the notes right in several sections. She had all kinds of nice things to say about the Liszt. The 9-against-4 is sounding much better (...

I Need an Intermediate Piece

Deborah wants me to pick out an intermediate piece to start learning next week. I went to the ARCT Syllabus guide that Robert so graciously sent me and looked up all of the pieces that I considered "intermediate." They were mostly Grade 6 and Grade 7. Not intermediate enough. I looked up my Beethoven Sonatina in G, my most recent intermediate piece. It's a Grade 3--a very early intermediate. So I'm looking for something in the Grade 4-5 category. And I'd kind of like to work on one of those pieces that everyone loves to hear--Fur Elise, Chopin's Em prelude, the Brahms waltz in Ab--all pieces I learned in junior high, but pieces that I'd like to re-learn, and learn to play well , and not like my junior-high self, whose heart wasn't in the music. And they are pieces I love, and that others love hearing as well. Hmm. Fur Elise is Grade 7. The Chopin Prelude is Grade 8. The Brahms Waltz is Grade 8. Too advanced for an intermediate piece? I'll talk it ...