What do you need to know to use JazzPianoOnline.com?

Prerequisites
Reading Music
You really have to know how to read music. Most of the lessons demonstrate at least some aspect of the music in notation.

Piano Technique
You should also have some experience playing the piano so that you have basic technique to rely on. If you know all 12 major scales and can play them with both hands without mistakes at 80bpm you are good to go.

Listening
This is the fun part. Listen to jazz as much as possible. So much of learning to play jazz is about listening to the music and assimilating the intangible aspects of it into your being.

A favorite assignment that I give to my students is this: listen to a recording that you really love. Focus entirely on the music when you are listening to it. Imagine yourself as the player and immerse yourself in the experience. When the recording is over, go to the piano and try to recreate the spirit of the performance by playing a tune or progression that you are very comfortable with. Don't worry about what your limits are; use the skills that you have. Concentrate on emulating the performance that you just listened to. You will be surprised how this exercise free's you to reimagine your approach and to surpass any limitations you think you may have. This is the power of listening at work.

Beginning Lesson Sequence
Assuming you have the two prerequisites taken care of, the next step is to consider how to sequence the lessons. Everything comes from chords so you will need to know how to build and play chords. Start with the 5 Essential 7th Chords lesson. This will show you how to build and play the 5 Essential 7th chords that comprise >95% of any given tune in jazz.

Learn how these chords are used in tunes by watching The Major ii-V-I Progression and The Minor ii-V-i Progression. These two progressions constitute most of the chord changes to any given standard tune.

From here, you need to know how to voice lead these chords so that they will sound good when you play progressions and tunes. Watch the Comping with Inversions series of lessons next. These three lessons show you how to play chords using inversions- an important skill for any pianist. After that consider watching the Rootless Voicings with Added Tension lessons. These five lessons show you how to drop the root and add rich sounding tensions to your chords to help you create a true jazz sound.

Once you can play chords with inversions or without roots and added tension (preferably the latter), you now have a good introduction to the basics of jazz harmony. From here you can begin your study of improvisation. Watch Improvisation: the Concept to get an overview of the materials of improvisation. Watch the 4 Components of Melodic Construction to learn about the four basic structures that comprise the bebop melodic line. Check out one of "Improvising Over . . ."  lessons that describe how to improvise over the chord changes to important tunes in the jazz repertoire or watch one of the Licks lessons to gain insight into a lick that you can incorporate into your improvising.

Ear training- the skill of being able to recognize and reproduce pitch and rhythm- is an important part of learning to play jazz. You should always make room in your practice schedule for this activity. Start with Diatonic Intervals Ear Training then move on in this sequence: Chromatic Intervals Ear Training, Diatonic Tendency Tones and Chromatic Tendency Tones. Continue with Triad Ear Training and then 7th Chord Ear Training.

For a suggested sequence of beginning lessons click on the "Go to the Lessons" link in the navigation bar at left and sort the lessons by "getting started."

For more advanced players
For those of you with more experience playing jazz who are looking for more advanced lessons check out the series of lessons on Upper Structure Triads (UST). Start with Upper Structure Triads to review what this harmonic device is and how it is derived. Learn how to harmonize melodies with USTs part 1 and part 2. Check out a nicely reharmonized Auld Lang Syne, Silent Night or O Tannenbaum or refresh your ears by trying one of the ear training lessons. Peace is a nice miniature improvisation over the chord changes to this less common standard or add to your arsenal of licks by watching one of the Licks lessons.

Watch what you want, when you want, in any order that you want
Of course the beauty of JazzPianoOnline.com is that you can watch and learn about anything you want, anytime you want in any order that you want. Unlimited access to all of the lessons allows you to learn about things that you didn't even know existed. And that may be the most valuable thing about JazzPianoOnline.com.