Sometimes the greatest lessons come at unexpected times.  

I'll never forget how I learned the chords I am about to show you.  I was a freshman in college playing piano in one of the music department's big bands.  We were playing a blues, a Count Basie arrangement, and I was happily plunking away in the rhythm section.  

Back then, when I didn't know better, I had a pretty rough concept of "two-handed" voicings: I had some nice-sounding one-handed rootless chords that I learned from my high school jazz piano teacher, so I did what any reasonable young musician would do:  I played the exact same voicing in both hands, one octave apart.

When the band leader stopped the ensemble to work with the horns, I got a tap on my shoulder.  Little did I know, the director of the jazz department, the head honcho himself, was standing right behind me watching me play.  He asked why I was playing my chords in such a dense way.   "Well," I timidly replied, "I'm not so sure."

 He motioned for me to move out of the way, sat down at the piano, and played piano voicings that sounded like they came down straight from the jazz gods.  So clean, so open, it was the sound I had been hearing on all my jazz CDs but never figured out how to play.  He said, "Hear these chords?  Learn these.  I'll wait while you write them down."  I scurried to my backpack, grabbed some manuscript and wrote down the voicings I am about to show you.  

I love this kind of learning, not from a book or a video (no offense Piano Shed!) or a planned piano lesson, but an impromptu moment when someone teaches you something out of the blue.  It's so old school, I wish it happened more in this day in age when we have endless information at our fingertips!  I think this is the kind of learning that really sticks to us and this is why I'll never forgot the day I learned these chords.  

Without further ado, here they are in all their glory.  And a special thanks to the director of the jazz department that gave me these chords that day, wherever you may be.  Well, I have a feeling I know where you are.  You are probably giving some young, impressionable 18-year-old a hard time for his clumsy chords.

Happy Shedding!

More Isn't Necessarily Better...

Some jazz pianists get caught up in the mentality that the more notes in a voicing the better.  We do our best to cram all the 9s, 11s, 13ths as we have fingers for in every chord we play.  If done correctly, those thick  chords with lots of tensions can have a great sound.  However, more isn't necessarily always better. Less dense voicings have a great sound too, plus we don't have to exhaust all of our mental energy playing them We can focus on what really counts 1) Playing the melody 2)  playing with the a good rhythmic feel 3)  and improvising in a meaningful way.  Tons of great pianists, including Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and Bill Evans, utilized two-note voicings.  

Two-Note Shell Voicings

Some of my favorite chords to use in my left hand, especially in a solo piano context are shell voicings that contain only two (yes I said TWO!) notes.  Those notes will be:

1) Root + 7      2) Root + 3     or     3) Root + 6

I decide which of these three combinations to play based on where the voicings will lay on the piano.  I don't want it to be too high (interferes with the melody) or too low (gets too muddy).  I'll also think about voice leading too.  For example, If you play a Root + 7 for a ii7 chord, a Root + 3 will work nicely for a V7 chord.  

And a last plug for how great these voicings are, when you are first learning a tune, you don't want to have to think too hard about complex voicings.  You just want the essentials (Root, third, seventh, melody note).  Once you get get the hang of the shell voicings on a particular tune, they leave lots of room to add other voices if that's your thing.  


All The Things You Are

The best way to learn a new concept (in this case, two-note left hand voices) is to apply it to tunes.  A great one to try for this concept is Jerome Kern's All the Things You Are.  It has a lot of changes (just about one per measure!) and there is not a lot of repetition.  In the following video tutorials and sheet music, I take you through ATTYA using this concept.  

Can you come up with different shell voicings to use over this tune?  What about applying the concept to other songs?  

Happy Shedding!


Video Tutorial Part 1

Video Tutorial Part 2

Sheet Music

Several years back, some old college friends of mine asked if I wanted to play in a roots/reggae cover band.  Of course, I happily agreed.  What's better than playing feel-good music with old friends?   While I was excited to play music for the pure fun of it, I also looked at the new experience as an opportunity to learn something, to expand my horizons as a keyboard player.  I had dabbled in reggae here and there, but never took the time and effort to really study it.  Early on in checking out this new style, I made a discovery that completely changed how I played reggae keyboard.  The discovery was a technique called "The Bubble."  

The key to the bubble is, of course, the rhythm.  The right hand plays predictably on beats two and four (think of the classic reggae-guitar "chick - chick").  The spiciness is in the left hand, which plays all up-beats (or the "ands").  You'll mostly hear the bubble played on organ, but it also sounds great on piano as well as a Rhodes or Wurly patch.     

Once I started using The Bubble in reggae music, I found it extremely useful in other styles as well, including funk, jazz, and Afro-Cuban music.   I noticed master jazz pianists like Herbie Hancock and Danilo Perez playing similar types of rhythms when they were comping.

Check out the video tutorial below, it's a technique much more easily demonstrated than written-out. 

And last, it's only appropriate to end with my favorite Bob Marley lyric:  "One good thing about music, when it hits, you feel no pain." 

Happy Shedding!