This Is How I Practice Jazz.

When it comes to jazz, one thing I struggle with is translating all of the amazing things I hear in my head to the actual piano. I hear the perfect melodies and licks in my head, but have a hard time actually executing them in the moment. Oftentimes this can make me feel frustrated or discouraged.

How can I gain the ability to actually play these awesome melodies in my head? It starts with expanding the range of movements I practice on the piano.

Over this past decade of transcribing, I’ve transcribed over 500 complex piano solos. This has given me ample material to study.

I’ve been analyzing these transcriptions to see what’s going on in the right hand. Is there a method to the madness of improvisation? Yes, there is a method, many methods actually!

I’m going to break down two of these methods.

Scale Shapes
Approaches + Chord Outline

We all are familiar with a scale… a series of notes that go up and down, within an octave, like the C major scale. What if I told you– the way we’ve been trained to play scales is only one “shape” among dozens, or hundreds of other shapes?

The regular way of playing scales is the “linear shape.” I’ve come up with many other scale shapes, but here are three more: the climbing shape, zigzag shape, and staggered shape.

METHOD 1

0. The Linear Shape (Regular Way)

This one is simple, you just play the notes of your scale one after the other, in order, either going up or going down.

1. The Climbing Shape

Start on the 2nd note of your scale and act like you’re climbing a staircase with your fingers, go back a step, skip a step, then go back a step, skip a step… etc.

2. The Zigzag Shape

This scale shape is a variation of the climbing shape. Here it is applied to the C bebop major scale, going down.

3. The Staggered Shape

I love this scale shape. All of these shapes sound so much jazzier when you apply swing rhythm, instead of playing straight.

Let’s say I’m playing Autumn Leaves, where you can improvise over the whole tune with the G major scale. I go up and down the G major scale while switching to different scale shapes, this alone automatically makes my playing sound much jazzier.

This is the power of scale shapes!

METHOD 2

Step 1. Approach a destination note

Scale shapes are wonderful. But my favorite jazz technique is the approach. I think this is one of the secrets to getting that amazing groovy bebop sound.

An approach (AKA enclosure) is a series of notes which approach a destination note, or enclose a note. The “spiral” approach below is my go-to approach when I’m improvising in the right hand. I’m approaching the destination note– C.

Step 2. Play a chord outline

Once I’ve played my approach and landed on my destination note, it’s time to play a chord outline. I’m going to outline a C major triad (C-E-G) but going down. So I’ll hit the C, then go down to G, E, and the C one octave below.

Step 3. Combine them!

This is where things start getting really neat. I’ve approached C, then played a descending C major chord outline. Now I’m going to repeat this process but on the next note in the C major triad (in descending order). That would be G, since I’m descending (C > G > E > C). I approach to G, and play a C major chord outline starting on the G, which turns out to be a C chord but in 2nd inversion. I’m going to repeat this again on the E, then lastly on the C.

Step 4. Add Left Hand

Finally, I add some comping in the left hand. In this case I play a C major 7th chord in the second inversion. For rhythm, let’s go with the most basic comping rhythm: chord on the 1st beat, and the and of the 2nd beat (between the 2nd and 3rd beat). To spice it up a little I'll change the rhythm up in the third measure.

There are 23 more chord outline shapes which I can plug into this method, along with countless different approaches– this means hundreds of different ways of playing this method!

These are two of many different jazz methods I discuss in my Jazz Piano Improvisation Course. If you want a taste without committing to the full course, I’ve just launched an introductory course (and also one for the Arranging & Reharmonization course). They are linked below.

Happy practicing!
Timothy