Bradley Sowash, a guest writer for this blog, has released a series of videos on playing and teaching jazz called Jazz Piano for Beginners. As is typical of his presentations, he not only talks about his great jazz pieces for students, but gives practical, immediately useful advice in each session.
You would think that someone with a master’s degree in music would know basic tricks of the jazz playing trade, but alas, I am classically trained and really need to hear some of these basics. So, I sheepishly admit that one of the tips he gave in this video was a little surprising and somewhat difficult for me to implement. In this video, Bradley talks about the swing that occurs in jazz and how to teach it to students. One of the things he suggests is saying “doooo-bah” while swinging, which I have done before with great success. But, then he suggests to emphasize the “bah,” producing this sound “dooooo-BAH” which is very foreign to those of us taught to emphasize the longer note. As a matter of fact, I just finished giving a workshop about “Growing a More Musical Studio” in which I talked about some “musicianship principles” in which I cited that short notes lead to long notes, producing an emphasis on the long note! That is typically how classical music is structured, so emphasizing the short end of the swing is a bit foreign.
But after hearing the difference it made it Bradley’s example, I tried it and sure enough, it sounds more “jazzy.” I don’t know about you, but I learn best when things are explained in words, not just demonstrated in music. So, these videos are going to be a great way for me to improve my jazz style for the next time I play with our praise team at church!
In addition to my eureka moment, I also experienced a “duh” moment when Bradley talks about what notes he asks students to improvise with on their first improvisation. Hint…it’s not the blues scale! Hear it for yourself in this video.
Check out all Bradley’s videos. Here is the 2nd video:
This video is no longer available.
What a great tip. It sounds so much better w/ the stronger “BAH”!
Thanks for letting us know about these videos. I first heard Bradley at TMTA a few years ago and I was so impressed at how he is able to take hard concepts and make them easy to understand!