Friday, August 31, 2012

Lesson #24: Major #11 Lydian Exercise

In this week's lesson we'll be covering the most common scale for improvising over Major #11 chords (aka Cmaj7#11, Fmaj7#11, etc.)

Bill Evans was known to be consistently sightreading classical scores during his practice sessions.  These sightreading sessions had a tremendous influence on his playing as both an improvisor and composer.  I was inspired by Bill to take my own classical excerpt and try to apply it in the Jazz world.  The piece (or rather "motif") that I borrowed as inspiration for this lesson comes from J.S. Bach's Invention #1 in C Major.  Using Bach's simple motif we will learn how to better sing, play and hear melodies while improvising with the Lydian mode over Major #11 chords.

The lesson this week is broken down in to two parts.  Part one's main focus is on analysis of the exercise.  Part two focuses on how to practice the exercise.

Watch the lesson on YouTube:
Part One: Analysis
Part Two:  Sing and Play (currently processing upload)

View and download .pdf of this lesson:
Lesson #24 FREE .pdf in one key
Lesson #24 in ALL 12 Keys
Free SoundCloud play-along
If you purchase the lesson in 12 keys, feel free to share with friends.  However, the download is not that expensive (the price of a couple iTunes songs) so please consider encouraging them to buy it as well.

For more free jazz piano lessons, check out the the "lessons" tab on the top of this page and you'll find a list of all my free jazz piano lessons.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , ,

2 comments:

  1. DaraShaydaSeptember 3, 2012 at 2:17 PM

    I would like to practice sightreading.

    Most physicists and mathematicians specially from Europe has sold us on the fact that classical music is good discipline for theoretical work.

    That is actually NOT TRUE.

    Jazz is a much better discipline for theoretical minds! It promotes creativity and non-standard thinking and much improvisation.

    I like your approach here by mixing the Classical specially Bach with Jazz.

    I also like to see how you focus us on composing that just mindless copying of the notes.

    Your student

    Dara

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMarch 16, 2013 at 10:24 AM

    It's ALL GOOD. Everyone has different levels they are achieving and different goals. Theory is a science of how music is constructed. It is the individual who creates his own perspective and interprets a style.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger... Start Facebook