Tonal harmony is the foundation of most Western music, from Bach to jazz standards. At its core, it is a contract between composer and listener: if you follow its rules, the listener will always feel a sense of home—a tonal center called the tonic. This sense of direction comes from how chords function and move within three main... Continue Reading →
Playing piano montunos can transform any song, giving it that infectious Latin groove that makes everyone want to move. Today, we’ll take a jazz standard like “Satin Doll” and turn it into a piano montuno. By the end of this lesson, you’ll know how to create a montuno pattern from any chord progression and apply... Continue Reading →
https://youtu.be/GysDOQGohHY We wrote an easy piano arrangement of Imagine by John Lennon using some of the essential Reharmonization Techniques we usually talk on our mDecks Music Youtube Channel Things like: Modal Interchange (a.k.a. Borrowing from minor) • Secondary Dominants • Considering the Target and others. You can gain access to the sheet music by joining... Continue Reading →
Introduction As a piano player you have surely come across chord symbols in jazz standards lead sheets. These chords are embedded with a huge amount of information and trying to interpret the actual meaning of these chords could sometimes be overwhelming. How to Play Rootless Voicings? Start by playing the regular chord as a 7th... Continue Reading →
If you want to adapt popular music to jazz, the best approach is to think of the harmonic functions (rather than just the chords) and then use techniques of tonal harmony. In the following video we show how to turn a very basic piano version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" into a jazz... Continue Reading →
There are many ways to expand and develop a chord-voicings vocabulary. A standard approach is to stack simple structures (triads, quartals, dyads) on top of other simple ones, thus creating a richer color palette for your voicings. These structures are usually called Upper Structures. In the Upper Structures over complete Jazz Standards Progressions book collection... Continue Reading →
For a piano player, knowing how to voice chords is an essential skill, not only for comping (accompanying or laying the chord progression for others player to improvise over), but also to use those voicings as an improvisational aid. All piano players get many melodic ideas or lines from their voicings. Other instrumentalists also take... Continue Reading →
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