subject: 5 Practices To Help You Learn Piano Songs For Jazz [print this page] If you want to learn piano songs for jazz, don't let anyone discourage you. After all, jazz is considered as one of the most emotional and vivid styles of piano playing.
What's awesome about jazz songs is that they're extremely adaptable and customizable. Any pianist, or musician for that matter, would like to work with tunes that they can creatively spin, and come up with a more personalized rendition.
If you often find yourself wanting to master jazz and learn piano songs with the same style, then try your best to be brilliant at it. Getting to know the common characteristics of jazz and picking up pointers along the way can only harness your jazz playing skills.
But first, do take a look at the top 5 things you need to know for you to learn piano for jazz:
1. Hone in on your listening skills. Seasoned jazz pianists have the knack for picking up harmonies just by listening to them. It isn't any wonder why jazz musicians can easily jam with each other and create magnificent music without any practice at all. Sure, you can start off to learn piano songs by mastering dotted notes, chord progressions, and syncopation. But for you to create truly impressive jazz music, you need to improve your listening skills.
Exposure is very vital, so make sure you take in all the jazz music you can find. Choose the styles, songs, and artists that appeal to you the most, take note of the characteristics they all have, and try to work in several elements to your own existing style.
2. Become aware of universal jazz harmonic structures and rhythms. While you learn piano songs, you'll soon discover that jazz relies a lot on dotted notes and chord progressions. Changing the placement and the tempo can easily create various feels, such as rock, swing, or the blues. Knowing how to combine and pace all these will certainly help you come up with a tune that's much impressive.
3. Memorize your scales and progressions. The ability to read sheet music is genius all on its own. Once you've got your theories, scales, and chord progressions down, everything will just seem easier.
4. Join a jazz piano program to learn piano songs. If you aren't too sure about what you're doing, learn from a pro. Surely, there are a lot of online piano programs to choose from.
5. Experiment. Jazz leaves plenty of room for inventiveness, so be sure to take note of that.
Developing into a great jazz pianist will require you to study your material every chance you get. These 5 quick pointers will not only help you learn piano songs, but they will also instill a sense of discipline that you can practice in various branches of your life as well.
