Terry Seabrook’s Jazz tip of the month No 12 Swinging the quavers part 2: When quavers stop “swinging” Generally when playing ballads (slower tempos) it is normal (most of the time) to play the quavers (or eighth notes) evenly or straight. Playing swing quavers when the tempo is below about 72 bpm (beats per […]
Ear Training: The Jazz Kitchen If one was to compare ear-training to say, cooking, ear training would represent the preliminary stages of putting together a meal. It would be before choosing the ingredients, it would be before choosing what utensils to use and it would even be before designing your menu. Ear training is […]
Terry Seabrook’s Jazz Tip No. 11 Horace Silver – Perseverance & Endurance Horace Silver, who died this week, was one of the greatest jazz pioneers. He was an original pianist, a great composer and arranger and a significantly important band leader, introducing many new young players into the jazz limelight. I saw […]
The Blues In my last column, I looked at rhythm changes and this week I’d like to look at the blues, possibly the most important element of jazz music. Jazz music is made up of many types of music fused together in the United States of America. Jazz is American music. This is not […]
Pianist Terry Seabrook’s Jazz Tip of the Month No. 10 Swinging the quavers It’s well known that quavers (or eighth notes as their known in American terminology) should usually be played with a “triplet” rhythm in jazz. This applies when the underlying feel or groove is swing (as opposed to a “straight” feel such […]
Pianist Wayne McConnell looks at rhythm changes. Rhythm Changes Basics Rhythm changes represents a set of chord changes over an AABA form that resemble the chord changes to Gershwin’s ‘I Got Rhythm’. Many people find it difficult to improvise over these chords. There are many ways of playing through a Rhythm Changes with […]
Pianist Terry Seabrook’s Jazz Tip of the Month No. 9 So What Is A Tritone? In my previous jazz tip (No. 8) I mentioned the tritone as an interesting idea in jazz harmony. Tritone is the jazz term for the interval (musical pitch distance) of three whole tones (or whole steps). This is also […]
Pianist Wayne McConnell looks at Jazz and Community, a talk presented at the inaugural Brighton Jazz Education Conference. Jazz and Etienne Wenger’s Community of Practice "The term ‘community of practice’ is of relatively recent coinage, even though the phenomenon it refers to is age-old. The concept has turned out to provide a useful perspective […]
Pianist Terry Seabrook’s Jazz Tip of the Month No. 8 Expanding the II – V – I progression A nice idea for adding more chords is to move up in minor thirds on the minor seventh chord. For example: | Fm7 | Bb7 | Ebmaj7 | can become |Fm7 Abm7 […]
Phineas Newborn Jr. is not a household name like, say, Oscar Peterson or Art Tatum. The simple fact is that he an under-represented genius who was a member of one of the most talented musical families to come out of Memphis. Origins of the Newborn Style Realistically, to shed light on Phineas’s […]