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 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 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 […]
Pianist Terry Seabrook’s Jazz Tip of the Month No. 7 A Beginner’s Guide to Bass Lines It is often required that players of instruments such as keyboards and guitar be able to play a suitable bass line if for example there isn’t a bass player present. And in my foray into the Hammond organ […]
Pianist Terry Seabrook’s Jazz Tip of the Month No. 6 Encoding The Chord Changes With Some Colour Here’s a nice little idea to help the amateur improviser find the scales to use over the “changes” in a chord sequence. (“Changes” is a word meaning the chords, as they “change” from one to the next) […]
The harmonic major scale in jazz “The harmonic major scale, what’s that?” I hear you say. “I’ve heard of the harmonic minor scale but not the harmonic major.” Well it’s an interesting scale and closely related to the harmonic minor: C harmonic minor: Now the harmonic major scale is a major scale except with […]
Terry Seabrook’s Jazz Tip of the Month No. 4 THE MINOR II V I IN JAZZ This is a subject which has always challenged me as a player and a teacher because it doesn’t follow the fairly straight forward way you can approach a II V I in a major key. Simply put, when […]
Jazz Tip of the Month No. 3: Creativity and Improvisation Friday morning: Listening to Desert Island Discs on Radio 4, creativity guru professor Sir Ken Robinson related the story of how the Beatles started writing great songs with only two chords and when they heard that there was a third chord they got on a […]
Terry Seabrook's Jazz Tip No. 2 Improvisation – Playing It Like You Mean It In my previous article I suggested that improvisation is perhaps something quite familiar to all of us in so far as it is something we do in verbal conversation. The difference with improvisation in music, and in jazz in […]
In this column I’ll be contributing a monthly tip or thought for readers of the Sussex Jazz magazine. This is something I actually started doing way back in 2006 when I started the Jazz in Brighton newsletter. The tips section faded out after a while as I wasn’t sure who was benefiting from it. […]