Improvisation is at the heart of every Jazz pianist. Learning to play Jazz piano requires an understanding of Jazz theory. Jazz harmony can be quite complicated. Concepts such as harmonic rhythm, polychords, secondary chords, chord substitution, suspensions, and borrowed chords are just some areas of study that need focus when it comes to jazz piano for beginners. The same can be said of Jazz scales and modes. Whole tone, diminished, augmented, bebop, pentatonic, blues, and melodic minor are just some of the melodic concepts that are essential building blocks for melodic improvisation that you will learn during jazz piano instruction. Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington, and Fats Waller are just some of the amazing Jazz piano masters that may inspire you while you learn to play jazz piano.
Toronto Jazz Piano Lessons
We offer jazz piano lessons in Toronto and online. Our Toronto jazz piano lessons are highly educational. Jazz piano lessons feature improvised melodies and harmonies, four note chords such as sevenths, ninths, elevenths, thirteenths, altered chords, challenging chord progressions, jazz forms, syncopation, and comping. Improvising on melodies can involve adding additional notes such as chromatic notes and chord notes, as well as changing the rhythms of written melodies or completely improvising on a mode or scale. Improvising on harmonies can include rhythm comping with the use of four note chords and altered chords. Making up different rhythms for comping definitely makes things fun and interesting. Triplets and syncopated rhythms are common in jazz piano. Four note chords commonly used in jazz piano lessons include: seventh, ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth chords. Four note chords are more difficult to play than basic three note chords. The addition of the fourth note can sometimes confuse a beginner. Common jazz chord progressions used in jazz piano lessons are: I VI ii V and ii V I as well as variations on these. Traditional jazz forms are derived from the blues. The twelve bar blues and forms such as A A B A are common in jazz music.
Beginner Jazz Piano Lessons
At Neighbour Note we like to start our beginner jazz piano lessons off with a bang! We do this by getting creative in our teaching. Learning to improvise is at the heart of our jazz piano lessons. For beginners, we like to start with basic improvising skills for both melody and harmony. Pentatonic and melodic minor are great scales to begin with for learning how to improvise melodies. In terms of harmony, starting with seventh chords (Major 7th, Minor 7th, and 7th) is a great place to start. Seventh chords are widely used in jazz music. For this reason it is important for students to learn and memorize seventh chords as soon as possible. For improvising rhythms by comping it is a good idea to keep things simple in the beginning. Start with some basic rhythms before branching out into triplets and syncopation. Not only do we teach jazz piano lessons for kids we also teach jazz piano lessons for adults.
Private Jazz Piano Lessons
Jazz piano lessons can be quite challenging and often they require a great deal of skill to play. For this reason it is imperative that jazz piano students get a good musical foundation in jazz piano technique and music theory. Learning and practising scales and modes is a must for melodic improvisation. All songs are based on some type of scale or mode. The whole tone, diminished, augmented, bebop, pentatonic, blues, and melodic minor are just some of the melodic concepts that are essential building blocks for melodic improvisation. The modal system is also fun to improvise with. There are seven different modes to choose from: Ionian, Dorian, Phyrgian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian. In terms of harmony, we teach jazz piano students how to play and improvise with four note chords. Seventh, ninth, eleventh, and thirteen chords are all used in jazz so they are essential to learn. Our private jazz piano lessons are fun and rewarding. To find jazz piano lessons near me please check our lessons page.
