Josh Walsh @ Jazz-Library

Reader, I was playing cocktail hour at a wedding a couple of years back. Someone requested Secret Love (which is, for the record, a funny song to play at a wedding) and I segued smoothly into it from the current song. After a few bars, I realized I had segued into it in the “wrong” key. Secret Love is a song I always play in Eb, but I had just landed in Ab instead. Oops. I panicked inside a little bit… but I made it through okay. Most of us learn a tune in one key. Whatever the Real Book...

Reader, When I first started teaching piano 20 years ago, I had a book full of jazz, boogie-woogie and pop licks that I gave the kids I was teaching. But over time I stopped recommending that because I kept seeing students who could play licks but couldn't actually improvise. They were painting by number, and it didn't translate into real soloing. Playing licks is not bad. They help you learn important parts of the language. But I'm convinced they are more effective as an add-on to existing...

Reader, When I first picked up jazz, my teacher showed me the basic turnaround progression. The purpose of a turnaround is to create some movement and gravity back to the 1 chord in the key, as you loop back around for another time through the head. But the art of the turnaround goes deeper than I realized at the time. So today, I want to show you a few different takes on the turnaround, so you can apply them to your tunes right away. Down below, I'm breaking down the formula to my top-6...

Reader, Okay, so now what? We've been so deep in blues soloing, phrasing best practices, and applying them to the blues. But how do we actually get the experience to use these things as creative musicians in our performances? To get another perspective, I invited my friend Theron Brown to join our masterclass this Friday for a discussion about this with one of today's great touring pianists. Theron suggested we demonstrate this over a great Sonny Rollins blues tune, Sonnymoon for Two. Theron...

Friday Mar 27 - Zoom Masterclass with Theron BrownWe'll be talking about the blues, solo phrasing, and creative inspiration. Come hangout, ask a question or even play for Theron and get feedback. RSVP Reader, Last week I showed you how a bebop dominant scale keeps chord tones landing on strong beats automatically. It's built right into the scale. As long as you keep the 8th notes going, the harmony takes care of itself. So this week we practiced using these bebop dominant scales to create...

Reader, We've come a long way learning to solo on the blues the last few months. And as we've learned, there's so much we can do with two blues scales. But as we start moving into more jazz-blues tunes, like Billie's Bounce, Now's the Time, or Blues for Alice, we need jazzier flavors in our solos. That means starting to think, a little bit at least, like the great bebop players. Meet the Dominant Bebop Scale Up to this point, we've focused on blues scales, which belong to the key. We've been...

Reader, A couple months ago, Dave Frank joined us for a masterclass (replay). Our session ran long. Near the end, when most people had already dropped off, he mentioned "short, medium, and long phrases," and how mixing all three gives a solo real variety. I think he was responding to Jeff's playing at the time, but honestly, I felt like he was talking directly to me. I'm guilty of playing too many short phrases back to back. So, I took this to heart and have been working on it. Jazz phrasing...