Lesson Description
At the heart of solo jazz piano playing lies the use of spread and rootless voicings. But to truly transform a simple lead sheet into a captivating piece of music involves digging deeper into the jazz player's bag of tricks and employing an array of arranging and reharmonization techniques to develop and intensify the underlying character of the melody and harmony of the tune. Each lesson in this series features a comparison of a fully realized two-handed arrangement of a tune with it's basic lead sheet that will reveal the techniques and devices used to transform the piece from a melody and chord symbols to a finished arrangement.
Starting out life as a Big Band staple, this hit tune of 1941 soon became a jazz standard through the recordings of John Coltrane and Bill Evans. In this lesson, the rich changes of this 32 bar AABA tune are left largely intact in this solo jazz piano arrangement and treated subtly with a range of standard voicing techniques including spread voicings, rootless voicings with added tension, upper structure triads, double lead, drop 2 voicings, sus chords, substitute dominants and a walking bass line in the bridge. The transformation of the plain lead sheet is demonstrated note-by-note and chord-by-chord resulting in a full two-handed arrangement that you can play directly from your tablet or pc using the onscreen practice sessions or from a printout of the fully annotated downloadable pdf.
Preview
Watch this short video for an overview of the content of this course.
Prerequisites
Upper Structure Triads
Solo Jazz Piano
Rootless Voicings with Added Tension
Study Support
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To continue your study of this topic, face-to-face, live webcam lessons are available.
Testimonials
"Just have to express how pleased I am with what you have done. You obviously put considerable thought and effort into this I do so appreciate it." -Don
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Course Curriculum
What's included?
Bill Rinehart
About the instructor
Bill did undergraduate work at the Berklee College of Music and holds the M.Mus. degree in Jazz Studies from the Boston Conservatory/Berklee College of Music where he studied with Ray Santisi and Charlie Banacos. Bill taught and played extensively around the Boston area for the better part of two decades appearing everywhere from the legendary Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge MA to a long stand at the Hampshire House on Beacon Hill in Boston before relocating to the Raleigh-Durham NC area where he teaches full-time on JazzPianoOnline.com.