I have a treat for you!

After being away for 5 years, I caught up with James Wrubel (from our jazz courses) and invited him to do some helpful lessons for you.

The first one is 17 minutes and available at: http://www.hearandplay.com/jazzlesson

You don’t want to miss this lesson as he shows you how to spice up chord progressions. This concept can be applied to just about ANYTHING you play.

Visit: http://www.hearandplay.com/jazzlesson

And if you like what you see, please leave a comment. Would love to hear what you think!

Visit: http://www.hearandplay.com/jazzlesson

After getting an e-mail from a concerned student who bought Jazz 101 and was questioning why it focused primarily on the “12 bar blues” instead of “jazz,” I wanted to shed some light on blues’ connection to jazz and how there wouldn’t be jazz as we know it without blues.

This article by the “Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz” puts it perfectly.

“From the perspective of musical structure, jazz as we know it would not exist without the blues. The
twelve-bar blues chorus, with its familiar harmonic structure and narrative form, was the single most
popular template for early jazz improvisation, as compact yet profound in its way as the sonnet proved to
be in the realm of poetry.”

Did you hear that?

Blues is to jazz what the sonnet proved to be to poetry.

(Note from Wikipedia: A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes, in English typically having ten syllables per line… popularized during Shakespeare’s lifetime.)

Go check out the article here

If you’re interested in Jazz 101, check out the information site here.

JG

P.S. – I recommend looking some of these songs up on youtube to really bring to life what the article is referencing.

Here’s a quick 2-minute video lesson from our Jazz Piano 201 program taught by James Wrubel.

It’ll show you a quick and easy way to play altered dominant chords — the #11 (aka – “sharped 11th”) to be exact!

Hear and Play Jazz 201: Chords, Licks, and Soloing

Not knowing how to improvise and being stuck in a box playing the same old chords feels bad. It's boring. It feels redundant. And you're not the only one who notices it — others know that you're playing the same, dull stuff over and over too.

With Hear and Play Jazz 201, no longer do you have to guess. We're finally revealing a step-by-step method to soloing, improvising, and playing jazz licks over any chords. It's a whopping 5 hours and loaded with tons of signature moves, licks, tricks, progressions, and real-life application. This is truly what thousands of would-be jazz musicians have been waiting for! Click here to learn more  | Buy now

I just had to share this.

Here are clips of the world’s best jazz musicians to ever live.

You’ll find youtube clips from:

• Thelonious Monk
• Bill Evans
• McCoy Tyner
• Oscar Peterson
• Herbie Hancock
• Bob James Trio
• Bud Powell
• Keith Jarrett
• Count Basie
• Fats Waller
• Tommy Flanagan
• Kenny Kirkland
• Scott Joplin
• Dave Brubeck
• George Duke

Enjoy!

Hear and Play Jazz Presents:

"The Best of The Best Vol. 1"

Hear and Play Jazz 201: Chords, Licks, and Soloing

Not knowing how to improvise and being stuck in a box playing the same old chords feels bad. It's boring. It feels redundant. And you're not the only one who notices it — others know that you're playing the same, dull stuff over and over too.

With Hear and Play Jazz 201, no longer do you have to guess. We're finally revealing a step-by-step method to soloing, improvising, and playing jazz licks over any chords. It's a whopping 5 hours and loaded with tons of signature moves, licks, tricks, progressions, and real-life application. This is truly what thousands of would-be jazz musicians have been waiting for! Click here to learn more  | Buy now

In this post, I’m going to break down the main movements in James Wrubel’s clip below (from our Hear & Play Jazz 101 course). This should be an interesting post and you’ll get a lot out of it…

It’s important to note that he has a recorded bass line, which gives him the opportunity to play chords in his left hand.

Here’s the basic pattern that he’s playing.

C7 —- F7 —- C7 —- C7 —- F7 —- F7 —- C7 —- C7 —- G7 —- F7 —- C7

Replay the video above and see if you can following along from the beginning. Every time he switches his chord go to the next chord. Every chord, for the most part is switching either every 4 beats or every 8 beats (sometimes you get two C or F chords in a row).

Normally you’d play a C7, F7, and G7 like this:

C E G Bb (C7 pronounced “C Seventh”)

F A C Eb (F7)

G B D F (G7)

(Note: You can play these chords on your right and play the root bass notes (“C,” “F,” or “G”) on your left if you don’t have a bass player).

But since James has a bass player, he’s playing tritones in the left hand.

Tritones are interesting little fellas.

They are diminished fifth intervals. I don’t have enough time to really delve into that part of it but just think of them as 6 half steps apart.

So if you wanted to form a tritone based on C, you would start on C and count 6 half steps up.

C to Db is 1 half step
Db to D is another half step
D to Eb is another half step
Eb to E is another half step
E to F is another half step
F to Gb is the last half step.

That makes 6 (for my folks new to counting in “half steps”).

Here are all the tritones written all in flats for simplicity’s sake:

C + Gb
Db + G
D + Ab
Eb + A
E + Bb
F + B

Now watch what’s going to happen…

Here are the remaining 6 tritones

Gb + C
G + Db
Ab + D
A + Eb
Bb + E
B + F

Basically the second half of the tritone list is just like the first but they’re inverted. Which means instead of C+Gb, now it’s Gb+C.

This makes tritones very versatile. You only need to know 6 and you can flip them to get the other 6.

So let’s recall our 3 magic chords for this 12-bar blues progression:

C E G Bb (C7)

F A C Eb (F7)

G B D F (G7)

Because they are seventh chords, they inherently carry a TRITONE. Yup, that’s true. So if you can figure out what tritones are used in these three chords, then you don’t have to play the full chord. You can abbreviate these chords with their tritone “shortcuts.”

How’s 4 notes down to 2 for ya? Easier to play right? Definitely! But it gets better… I’ll talk about the “better” part later.

So did you find the tritone in each of those chords???

You should have gotten:

E+Bb for the C7

A+Eb for the F7

B+F for the G7

SHORTCUT: Basically the 3rd and lowered 7th tone of the chord (E is the third in C major and Bb is the lowered seventh in C major) will create your tritone.

Now for the “better” part…

What’s cool about tritones is that when you’re moving in fourths (as in the case of a C7 going to an F7), they are extremely easy to play.

Notice this:

Tritone for C7 = E+Bb
Tritone for F7 = A+Eb

Can one of these tritones be “flipped” to their other pair to make this easier to play?

Abzzzzoooooooolutelyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!

You could do this two ways.

1) Change the C7 tritone
2) Or change the F7 tritone

So you could either go from E+Bb (which substitutes for C7 chord) to Eb+A (which substitutes for F7 chord)… which means all you have to do is lower each finger ONE note… that’s it! ONE NOTE!

Or you can change the first chord:

Bb+E to A+Eb

Your call! Switch em’ up here and there.

Now, what would you use for the G7 tritone if you were currently on the “E+Bb” tritone?

Which G7 tritone is closer?

F+B or B+F

“Give me the F+B tritone for $100 Alex!”

So I hope through this post that I not only introduced you to the 12-bar blues pattern but I’ve also shown you the power and convenience of tritones and how you can “flip” them to make it easier for your left hand to flow from chord to chord.

If you’re playing tritones correctly and using the right chord for the right moment, you should never have to slide more than a few notes. Tritones should be right next to each other. After all, there’s only 6 of them and the other flipped 6 use the same notes as the first.

Hear and Play Jazz 101: Jazz Basics and Fundamentals

Hear and Play Jazz 101 will show you how to start playing jazz the right way. From the basic "12-bar blues" pattern to various soloing techniques and strategies, you'll be up and playing in no time!

• The 7 secrets to playing signature solos like a pro… from a pro!
• How to accelerate your jazz learning curve by combining 3 secret elements that the pros don't want you to know!
• How to ensure that no matter what voicings and blues licks you play, they'll turn heads each and every time! Click here to learn more | Buy now

See ya next time!

I’m so excited about Hear and Play Jazz 201 releasing today! Let me tell you, the buzz about this course has got to be the most I’ve seen in a long time.

(I’m guessing that so many people were helped by Jazz 101 that they can only imagine what will be in this new 5-hour Jazz 201 course).

So this is a final reminder that the new course has officially launched!

Hear and Play Jazz 201: Chords, Licks, and Soloing

Not knowing how to improvise and being stuck in a box playing the same old chords feels bad. It's boring. It feels redundant. And you're not the only one who notices it — others know that you're playing the same, dull stuff over and over too.

With Hear and Play Jazz 201, no longer do you have to guess. We're finally revealing a step-by-step method to soloing, improvising, and playing jazz licks over any chords. It's a whopping 5 hours and loaded with tons of signature moves, licks, tricks, progressions, and real-life application. This is truly what thousands of would-be jazz musicians have been waiting for! Click here to learn more  | Buy now