How Bill Evans Plays the Jazz Waltz


Reader,

Bill Evans' take on Someday My Prince Will Come from Portrait In Jazz is marvelous.

Today, I want to show you some of the rhythmic building blocks Bill Evans uses to make the jazz waltz really swing.

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Bill Evans

Portrait in Jazz

Many jazz takes on Someday, like from Oscar Peterson and Wynton Kelly actually change the tune to 4/4, but Bill Evans swing it here in 3. And in doing that, he leans heavily on 4 different rhythmic feels.

The Traditional

The traditional classical waltz is played as "oom-pah-pah." Bill uses this explicitly a few times, but mostly as a hint, or throwback, to the tradition.

The Swing

This is still pretty true to the tradition, but shifting the 2 chord "pah's" up half a beat each so they are syncopated. The strong downbeat on beat 1 is still typically played by the bass player or left hand.

The Two-Feel

This one takes my students back at first, playing a waltz with only 2 beats? But, its probably the most important of the four examples.

The rhythm is two dotted half notes, which evenly divide the 3 beats into 2.

The melody is still felt in 3 beats much of the time. In that case, this two-feel rhythm is a counter rhythm against the melody, which is super cool.

We often shift between the swing feel throughout the song. This helps keep the 3-feel in your head when the rhythm shifts.

Here's an example of me playing a combination of all 3 of these:

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Waltz in Four

Bill uses this one a lot. It looks pretty hard when you try to read it in notation. But, in reality, its pretty easy to feel.

We're basically taking the two feel above, and further dividing those 2 beats into four. We change the notation to a tuplet to make it easier to read, but it's really just 4 even beats in the measure. (the drums keep going in 3)

In the Bill Evan's recording above, listen to the descending line in the intro at 0:07 to hear a really clear example.

Download a PDF worksheet of the rhythms: Jazz Waltz Rhythms.pdf

Your Practice Plan

  1. Listen to the Bill Evans example, see if you can recognize all four of these rhythms in the recording
  2. Practice comping each of these rhythms with a metronome
  3. Try to apply each of these feels to your own version of Someday My Prince Will Come

Workshop this Friday

We're continuing to work on Duke Ellington's In a Sentimental Mood. Josh is on vacation this week, so the workshop will be hosted by Martyn.


You are signed up, so we'll see you Friday, July 31, at 1:00 Eastern.

Happy Practicing,

Josh Walsh

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