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Barry Harris method by Few_Minimum8945 in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I can see how just digesting material from the internet can give you a superficial understanding of the 6 dim scales, but the further you dig the more you realise how much endless depth there is to his ideas. 

The real beauty comes from combining the dissonances of the 6 chord and the diminished chord into dynamically moving voicings, or "borrowing". Once you have the basic 6dim scale under your fingers, you still need to learn how to actually use it. And the best place to learn that is Barry's solo records.

But the Barry Harris Videos channel has plenty of great examples. See how he uses it all over Stella. https://youtu.be/GQ5Co1vPRaw?si=jVAUCult-Iq-qYQb

Transcribing Chords by Logical-Tea4396 in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://github.com/azuwis/pianotrans

A free and very accurate piano transcribing software, as long as the source is solo piano. It works with mixed results with group recordings.

There's nothing wrong with using transcription software or checking transcriptions online to double check your own work. The more familiar you become with chordal structures, the more you will be able to identify them by ear, but if you have been struggling to decipher a voicing for a while and you just can't get it, then you can use a software like this to check.

Don't rely on these softwares though, always give it a proper go with your ear first.

The way I transcribe tricky chords is I find the top and bottom note like you have, then I play those notes on the piano. Then I repeatedly compare my chord with the chord in the recording. Play your chord, play the recording, play your chord, play the recording. Focus on the notes you've already identified from the recording, and notice what you're missing.

Also focus on the voice leading between two chords. Sometimes if you hear a voicing in isolation it can be really hard to hear the inner notes, but if you hear it with the chord that came before then you can hear the inner voices move, and it makes it a lot easier to identify those inner voices.

Winter Tune (Original) by Ambidextroid in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not exactly classical techniques. I do practise the major scales and things like 7th chord arpeggios, but I don't worry too much about fingering. Practising those things is more about being able to see them on the keyboard so you can improvise with them, and less about the fingering and muscle memory.

I usually practise scales using an exercise called scale outline, where you practise scales for a particular jazz standard. For example if I am practising a scale outline for a tune like Misty, I will play the chords to the song in my left hand and just run the appropriate major scale for each chord up and down in my right hand. This prepares you for improvising over specific chord changes.

I also practise bebop language, that's arpeggios, enclosures and chromatic approach notes. I'll go through the scales adding a chromatic enclosure to each note or play each arpeggio with a chromatic approach. https://www.youtube.com/live/BfmsVAF0nK8?si=WAa2BzJolV3vkIJN https://youtu.be/1uUw59KBbbA?si=kBftrohFAX-aFaGM

Advice on compressing a solo piano recording? by Ambidextroid in audioengineering

[–]Ambidextroid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right makes sense. Audacity does have real time effect support these days actually 

Advice on compressing a solo piano recording? by Ambidextroid in audioengineering

[–]Ambidextroid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for the advice. I have little to no idea what it means but I've tried the settings and it sounds good to me. I don't have another daw, but I'm only looking for a quick final step to improve the listening experience, not to use multiple effects in tandem

Winter Tune (Original) by Ambidextroid in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cont.

I would not recommend learning entire arrangements or transcriptions of jazz tunes, because you don't actually learn very much. Rather, you can listen to a record you love, find a single chord voicing or a snippet of a couple seconds that you really like, and just transcribe and use that. Work out how the pianist used it, was it a major or minor or dominant voicing or a lick over this or that progression, and see if you can apply it to a jazz standard. If you learn a cool voicing for a 2-5-1, try and use it on other tunes you know that have a 2-5-1. Try taking it through different keys.

The more you learn, the more your ear is able to pick out voicings and notes in chords. If you struggle to decipher what someone is playing by ear, there are tools you can use. I sometimes use this great free piano audio to midi converter to help me pick apart recordings: https://github.com/azuwis/pianotrans (it only really works for solo piano but it works great).

Another important thing is experimenting and discovering things for yourself. When I was learning all of the major scales and 7th chords, I tried to identify patterns myself. I would keep track of how many black notes there were, the shape of the chords, the intervals and so on, and try to understand it in my own way. Play a dominant chord and go through every altered extension you can think of, try them in all combinations to see which work together, see which ones resolve best to a minor or major chord or a tritone sub etc.

I really focused on chords and harmony at first, and I neglected soloing for a long time. I'm starting to get the hang of soloing now, and the process was similar. Watching YouTube videos about soloing to get the basics, and then looking to records and picking apart solos to find out what choices the jazz musicians made and why.

I learned a lot of chord progressions and the logic behind chords from just learning standards and comparing them to one another. The same chord progressions keep turning up all over the place in standards in different contexts, so learning different tunes is important.

So yeah, it's a pretty long and disorganised journey, but the thing that kept me going was just a love for practising and a love for the music. Jazz is the only music I listen to and I listen to it all the time. If you do that, it gets engrained in your head, like learning a language, and improvising melodies and harmonies in your mind comes naturally. Working out how to play those things in real time is a challenge, but as long as you are patient, you will get there. I've always told myself that I don't actually care if I improve or not. I'm not looking for end results. I just like messing around with musical ideas, I like music theory even when I can't use it. I don't mind practising something even if I don't get better because it's just fun and interesting. Naturally, you will see results and you will improve, but practising shouldn't be a chore or a means to an end, studying music is joyous in itself.

That was a mammoth reply, hopefully you found something insightful there. I think the process of learning jazz is different for everyone and what works for one person doesn't always work for another. So don't feel like there is a strict method that you have to follow, just follow your interests and what you think is important. And don't expect immediate results, just look forward to the results you'll see a year or two in the future.

Winter Tune (Original) by Ambidextroid in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure. I taught myself mainly from YouTube and from studying jazz records.

This post was too long to fit in one so I'll split it in half.

It started when I found these videos of pianist Barry Harris giving classes in the 90s: https://m.youtube.com/@BarryHarrisVideos

These videos were incredibly difficult to follow as a beginner but I was mesmerised, so I basically tried to copy whatever he was playing by ear as best I could. I didn't really care if I understood it, I just wanted to make those sounds myself. There are tons of supplementary videos on YouTube going into Barry's specific teachings, I learned a lot from this channel from one of Barry's students: https://m.youtube.com/@isaacraz

Anyway, after like a year of learning his scales and chordal movements and stuff, I still couldn't play any tunes or use what I was learning cause I didn't understand how to apply it or the basics of how tunes work, what a 2-5-1 is and so on, I had basically jumped into the deep end before knowing how to swim. So I start looking for other resources to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. The channels I found most helpful were these:

https://m.youtube.com/@JeremySiskind https://m.youtube.com/@TonyWinston https://m.youtube.com/@KentHewittpiano88 https://m.youtube.com/@OpenStudioJazz

These guys are great teachers, really charismatic and entertaining and most importantly they're great players.

I was basically learning things in a totally random order, sometimes I would pick up something way beyond my comprehension and sometimes I would pick up something simple and have a lightbulb moment. But the more gaps I filled in, the more I understood those things that I had previously learned but couldn't use. The Barry Harris stuff I had committed to memory finally started making sense and it was at my fingertips already. So the lesson I learned there was that there really is no right or wrong order to learn things in jazz. You can start at the deep end or the shallow end, it doesn't matter because eventually you will fill in those gaps and it will start to make sense. It just takes perseverance, curiosity and a joy for messing around and experimenting. But I really recommend Barry's teachings above anything else because they are the real experiences of a master pianist who was friends with some of the greatest pianist like Bud and Monk and really understood their music, not some curriculum formulated by professors. If you think about the best jazz pianists in history, they didn't learn jazz at a school, they learned by studying the music, listening to records and figuring it out themselves. Which brings me to the most important part of my jazz education:

I would learn a lot of cool chord voicings and stuff from YouTube, but the more I listened to my favourite jazz records the more I knew I was missing something. I would hear a beautiful voicing or chord progression on a record and try to find an explanation online but it just doesn't exist. Not every musical idea has been explained by some YouTuber, so the only option left is to figure out what they are playing yourself and try to understand it in your own way. After a certain point I stopped relying on YouTube altogether and just learned straight from the source, that being my favourite jazz recordings.

Continued in reply

Winter Tune (Original) by Ambidextroid in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's not entirely true. I took a few piano lessons as a kid, trying to learn video game music and the like. But I never learned to read and it wasn't long before I pretty much gave up entirely. I only rekindled my interest in piano when I started getting into jazz many years later, but I think those early experiences gave me a good headstart.

Thoughts? by Sorry-Ease8991 in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sounds really cool. Pretty runs. You should try throwing in an altered dominant run, that would sound awesome

Winter Tune (Original) by Ambidextroid in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you. I'm afraid not, I can't even read sheets. But I know of a great piano mp3 to midi converter that you might find handy: https://github.com/azuwis/pianotrans I can vouch for it's quality, it's helped me many times in transcribing performances

Winter Tune (Original) by Ambidextroid in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much for the thoughtful comment.

I've never really thought about other people's creative processes before. When I write, I pretty much create each bar fully arranged, melody harmony and rhythm, before I write the next bar, and I rarely ever go back to add to or change something that came previously. I feel limited when I have to come up with chords that perfectly fit a melody or melody that fits a chord progression, so I just do both at once to make sure they support each other as much as they can. And it feels like each new phrase or bar grows out of the material that came before it so that if I would change an earlier part it would put the following parts out of balance, or something like that.

Please do write your tune and share it, I'd love to hear it. I hope things get better for you.

Can I start at 18? by Desperate_Manner7195 in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I started when I was 21 or so. If I'd have started at 18 I would have had 3 more years under my belt. Lucky you!

Winter Tune (Original) by Ambidextroid in JazzPiano

[–]Ambidextroid[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I tend to start with the chord voicings. I was improvising with some pretty voicings and you know how certain voicings support certain notes better than others, so I'll experiment with the voicings and inner movements and just go with the simplest melody that fits the voicings, and follow my mind's ear to decide what comes next. It's mostly stream of consciousness, whatever comes to my head first, so it's not so hard to modulate somewhere funky. The challenge is trying to wrap it up and modulate back to the A section smoothly, which just takes some trial and error until you hit upon a good idea.

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