Description
With this course, you will receive:
- Seven 28-page workbooks
- A bonus DVD “Using Chords To Improvise” which includes a booklet of “Practice Songs”
- A binder to hold all materials
With this course, you will learn to:
- Lay the foundation for improvisation, including the 12-bar blues.
- Create a motif (also known as a theme) for improvisations, then develop that motif.
- Play razzles on various beats of the measure, which will help with rhythm.
- Play six popular ballads, using an arpeggio pattern in the left hand, and learn to improvise on each one.
- Use chord substitutions, apply triplets to improvisation, and use inversions to put your own signature on each song.
- Master 7th chord improvising and various accent patterns.
- Play arpeggiated bass using 6th chords and the altered 9th chord, as well as learn what to do when 3 or more chords are in the same measure.
- Work through the blues scale (and know which notes to flat to create a “bluesy” sound) and mixed up motifs to see how everything relates.
- See the importance of playing the flat 5th, the flat 3rd, and the flat 7th, and how they work together to create that jazzy sound.
Here’s how the program works:
Each month for seven solid months you will work through a new book. You’ll receive the entire course all at once, but you will take it gradually, month by month — so please don’t skip ahead! This is a course for people who don’t know how to improvise — not for pros who already do. Step by step, it will show you how to actually start making up your own melodies and arrangements. Seven months from now you will be improvising — and understanding what you’re doing. Once you learn the principles of improvisation, you can improvise in any kind of music — gospel, praise, pop, rock, C&W, and R&B!
CLICK TO READ MY STORY
When I was in the 8th grade, there were lots of kids who could play piano better than I. Scott had the same piano teacher I did, and at the annual recital he played Kitten On The Keys — a jazzy uptempo novelty song with lots of frills that really got the audience going. I played right after him, and my song was Minuet in G — hardly an exciting song. It was embarrassing, because Scott was my age, and had only taken piano lessons a year longer than I had.Three years later we were in our Junior year of high school at Placer High in Auburn, California. I had gotten interested in jazz and had sent off $2 for a chord chart in the mail. Working all by myself with that chord chart I learned a dozen or so of the most-used chords. Then I went to a jazz concert at the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento where I saw the great Erroll Garner play a solo concert. I had no idea a piano could sound like that, and I perceived that what he was doing was breaking up chords in some complex ways I didn’t understand at the time — but wanted desperately to find out.
I gradually learned which chords Garner was using, and how he was breaking them up and moving so deftly between them. One day Scott walked by my practice room and heard me. He said, “What in the world do you think you’re doing, Shinn? That sounds terrible!” I immediately bought some of Garner’s records and started playing along with them, running my hands up higher and lower, pretending that I was the one making those incredible sounds. I did that by the hour — not only at home, but also in the practice rooms in the music building at Placer High.
Two years later, in our first year of college, I played in the college dance combo. Scott saw me playing and came over to the bandstand and stared at my hands for a long time. Finally he shrugged and said, “I can’t believe it. I actually used to be better than you, Shinn. Now all I can do is play what’s in front of me, and you can improvise all over the place.”
I tell you my story to demonstrate that it is possible to learn to improvise by yourself, with no one to help you but a chord chart and some recordings. But you don’t have to learn by yourself. You can take advantage of all that I’ve learned and improvise correctly right from the start.
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