He plays this so differently from how I would play a line like that, and now I’m really curious about what he’s doing and why.
In order to make sense of this, the first thing I needed to do was transcribe that line so I know what notes he's playing. It's descending over a D7 chord using notes from that D7 dominant scale.
With the notes written out, I sat down to play it for myself. My instinct was to play the arpeggio similar to how I'd play a chord voicing. I started on my 5th finger, came down 4, then 3.. and so on. I pivoted back to my 5th finger as the line continues down the keyboard.
I went back to the video. It goes by impossibly fast... thank goodness for 0.5 speed.
How Chris Dawson Plays this Line
Ultimately, I figured out that Chris is just using his thumb and first finger all the way down the white notes of the keyboard. He uses his 3rd finger only to hit the black key (F# in this case), but the rest of this is all white notes with just 2 fingers! Fascinating.
I tried running a C major scale this way, all white notes, using those same fingers. Over the years, I've drilled my classical fingering for this scale so much that this feels kind of strange. But, it also felt strangely freeing.
The big question in my head at this point was WHY?
Isn't This Just Less Efficient?
It turns out that in classical music, where the notes are prescribed and we can work out the fingerings ahead of time, efficiency is incredibly valuable. But, that's not the situation Chris Dawson is in.
Chris is improvising. His solo is coming to him as he plays progressively. He hasn't prescribed anything. And it turns out, in this situation you value something else much more than efficiency. Flexibility.
From those 2 fingers, Chris's hand can go anywhere he wants. He could continue down the line, he could arpeggio up from any point, he could leap and come down, he can add octaves for accents. But, the 4th and 5th fingers are much more restrictive.
By keeping his line in his strong fingers, he gives himself more freedom to improvise without compromise, even if that fingering is less efficient than it could have been if he figured it out ahead of time.
I Need to Practice This
This experience really opened my eyes to ways that my classical training could be holding back my jazz playing. I've always thought of myself as having pretty good technique, but perhaps the technique I acquired to play Chopin Nocturnes needs to adapt as I become a more fluent jazz musician.
I'm going to spend more time practicing scales and arpeggios with just my first 3 fingers. I'd encourage you to try this out too, and let us know if it makes a different with a post in the community.
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