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Some will argue that he invented Jazz. Or Swing. None will argue that he is probably the most important American musical personality ever.

Transcribing Louis Armstrong is an excellent exercise and reveals a couple of things:
- Simple, clean lines, close to the melody
- Lines are often repeated, but the swing feel changes
- The arrangements are ... pre-Duke?

So here's Struttin' With Some Barbecue. Me playing my digital keyboard (trumpet voice) on top of Satchmo :). Can't say that wasn't fun. What else? Even my wife likes this type of music.

Chapter 3

One of the most famous books amongst jazz pianist is Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book
I recommend getting a copy of it.

The first "real" chapter is chapter 3. Chapter 3 talks about shell voicing. As a basis for everything else in the book.

That chapter suggests working on 14 tunes. I worked on them, completed the exercise and recorded each tune. It's an excellent selection of tunes for several reasons:
- They're all standards
- They cover a range of tempos and keys
- They have lots of ii Vs lots of key changes.

And here they are, one by one:

Title	Key	Tempo	Comments
Tune Up	D	180	First one I recorded. I used the rhythm from my keyboard and chose a tempo of 180. This is an easy tune.
Ask Me Now	Db	70	One of Monk's tune. Love it. This is a difficult tune to play, with lots of modulation and chord changes. I took it slow at 70bpm, same as the recording I have of Monk. I learned this by playing on top of him to try and emulate the style.
Come sunday	Bb	65	Duke Ellington. Not my favorite, so I had a bit of a hard time hearing the melody, until I found this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpoBvXJapHM whom I thought sang it really well. I just transcribed the melody from him. Thanks!
Four	Eb	160	I have a few recordings of this, including Joe Henderson & Wynton Kelly. Great records, but somewhat far from the original melody. So I transcribed a jazz band I found on youtube. At 160bpm. Not an easy tune, but pretty fun.
Here's that Rainy Day	G	145	Another one that wasn't a favorite. Until I found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvJ5yPD0l9o. So I went ahead and transcribed it off of that. Learned it well on top of Frankie. Then added Aebersold, bumped up the tempo to 145. I had this tune in my head for the last 2 weeks. Very catchy. I really had to play this to enjoy it.
Lazy Bird	G	178	Not the most played. I have one recording of this. Keith Jarrett who plays it at an amazing speed. But... he plays the head just like it is. So I just transcribed that, took it down to 178bpm and off we go.
Little B's Poem	F-	140	I was not familiar with this great jazz waltx by Bobby Hutcherson. The only tune in the list in 3/4. I really enjoyed this. Tempo of 140.
All the things you are	Ab	130	This was like a free one. Recorded in a couple minutes.
Satin Doll	C	130	Pretty easy tune to learn. Recorded in a few minutes also.
Countdown	Bb	304	Now we're getting serious. This is an insane tempo of 304. I can barely make it through the head for a few seconds, I cannot imagine soloing on this. If you haven't heard the original, pick it up. Coltrane starts with a solo and plays the head in the last few seconds of the tunes. One of 3 of Coltrane's tunes in this list.
Darn That Dream	G	60	What a relief from the previous tune. This is taken slowly at 60bpm or so. I don't particularly like this tune, it's too slow for me. I transcribed the head from this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEcP6OPk4Y
Cherokee	Bb	270	What a beautiful standard. Searching for Cherokee on youtube turned out some ... interesting results. No need for transcribing here, this one's in. The tempo's makes it challenging. Another one I can't imagine soloing on. The track comes from an Aebersold album called "Burnin', Only for the Brave". I thought that was funny.
Moment's Notice	Eb	270	Another of Coltrane's gem. Very fast at 270bpm. I didn't have a recording close enough to the original, but I found a great version by lot2learn. I stole the melody from there. So thanks Roger!
Giant Steps	Eb	310	Now why did Mark have to put this in there? This is often considered the ultimate test in jazz. Again, I cannot imagine soloing on it. Someone on a forum told me recently: " On a gig just calling that tune usually gets you some nasty looks. Try calling it in any other key and see if you live to see another day.". I thought that was very funny. Well the head itself is very difficult, especially at the tempo of 310bpm. But what beautiful, absolutely gorgeous harmonies and modulation. It's a real pleasure to have that melody under your fingers.

So that's it. 14 tunes. I bought this book about 2 years ago. I can finally move on to chapter 4: "Sus and Phrygian Chord". Why would anyone want to play chords that my spell-checker doesn't know about?

All the keys you are

Continuing with the famous tune 'All the things you are'.

Here, I'm hoping to motivate pianists to play things in multiple keys.
Here's a folder where I stored the tune in several keys. I played just the melody, doubled in the left hand. Playing with the left hand is a good way to memorize the melody while giving the left hand a good workout.

Then I played the tune 2+2 style, meaning 1-3, 1-7 in the left hand, while playing melody + 3 or 7 in the right hand.

http://www.box.net/shared/m3f03ev52d

Nothing really fancy here, but a couple of things are worth noting:
- Don't transpose on paper.
- 'All The things you' are uses a lot of 3rds. It's a good quick way to find out the harmonies.
- After a while, you stop thinking and start using the ear to find both the melody and the harmonies. "All the things you are" is a good tune because it modulates a lot, but uses fairly simple chords and lots of two-fives. The only 2 unusual chords are (in Ab), the C7+ and the Bdim. That's all that needs to be memorized really. The rest can be worked out by ear.

Keep practicing.

Groove Blues in G

I said I was gonna do the Groove blues in G this time.

So here it is:
Groove Blues in G

It wasn't that difficult at all. I'm hoping the 3rd key will be a snap. And the 3rd key will be:
Ab

Take care

Solo Stella

Trying my hands at Solo Piano.



I hope you somewhat enjoy this very short version of Stella by Starlight. I sure had fun playing with various sounds.

Next step is working with the chord tone exercise.

Stella's back

Weird things happen in music. How do I put it?

There's that one tune I never liked. It's one of the most famous American standards of all times, and I don't even know it. I can't sing it from memory. Give me a lead sheet and I can barely make sense out of it.

Everyone who's ever played any song from The Great American Songbook has played it. Everyone has sung it.

By now you know which tune I mean (as if the title wasn't completely obvious). Stella by Starlight.

So what's wrong with me?

I know. I got it. I checked out my music library (recently converted all my CDs to FLAC), and these are the cats playing Stella: Keny Werner, Kenny Drew, Chick Corea McCoy Tyner, etc... (I'm not much into singers)
None of whom bothers to stay even remotely close to the melody. That's how famous the tune is. How's a young fellow like me suppose to know it then?

There's another angle to it. Many pianists believe that learning tunes from leadsheets is a waste of time. You should learn tunes from records. I never bought it. I can play 'Fly me to the moon' in my sleep. Half drunk I'll still know the melody. I don't need to transcribe it.
That's because I already did... without realizing it ...

So there I was determined to learn Stella.
Went to my favorite source for everything: Youtube! Typed Stella by Starlight, picked up the first video that came up. Anita O'Day. Not bad. It'll do. Here it is:


Off I go transcribing the melody. Took about an hour I think. After only one hour, I no longer have any problem remembering the melody. Sorry I can't post the transcription. I could, but I really don't think I'm supposed to...
So it does work to get melodies off records, but get it from singers. Sinatra, King Cole whatever. You don't have to like it, but at least, it stays close to the original.

And now of course I have Stella in my head. I'm going to make something with it, not quite sure what yet. I'm working out some harmonies for it, (very) loosely based on the O'Day version. I'll use some tricks I got from 7NoteMode and see what I can do with it.

I'll also try the chord tone approach. All of that coming up soon.

Keep playing.

Chord tone Improvisation

Here's an interesting exercise I got from the great book

"Metaphors for the Musician".

Choose a tune and improvise on it using chord tones, only chord tones and nothing but chord tones.

So if you see Cm7, you get to choose between C Eb G and Bb
If you see Eb6, you get to play Eb - G - Bb - C
you get the drift.

This is a bit of a brain teaser at first. The metaphor Randy uses is the lighted keys, those keys should light up in your head.

The first tune I chose is All the things you are. I chose it because it's a great standards with tons of 251 and plenty of modulation.
Here are my changes:
F-7 | Bb-7 | Eb7 | AbM7 | DbM7 | G7 | CM7 | CM7
C-7 | F-7 | Bb7 | EbM7 | AbM7 | D7 | GM7 | GM7
A-7 | D7 | GM7 | GM7 | F#-7 | B7 | EM7 | C+7
F-7 | Bb7 | Eb7 | AbM7 | DbM7 | Db-7| Cm7| Bdim7
Bb-7| Eb7 | AbM7| G7 C7 |

If you want to play, play one or 2 choruses. Any instrument goes.

Here's my chorus:
All the things you are