At 03:41 PM 10/31/96 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi Folks
> I have found the discussion on using and learning chord inversions
>for guitar fascinating. Some good points have been raised.
>
> Books on jazz piano often show page after page of chord voicings to
>learn, and the author will say 'learn these in all keys'. The total
>number of chords to learn can come to a staggering number. You could
>spend the rest of your life practicing this kind of exercise.
>
The whole commercial field of jazz education material is full
or peril.
Many books on music are written by people that can't play their
way out of a paper bag.
When top players write books they usually don't teach much and don't
really know what to say so they make up something which they don't
even do themselves and tell the reader to do it. They might even
look at other books to get some kind of idea what they could write.
There are yet other top players that do teach but for some reason
when they put on their teaching hat they just get totally out of
reality.
What often happens is that people sitting at home dream up all kinds
of nonsense and then just tell people to practice it in all keys.
They can't play it in 12 keys either and if they can you be guaranteed
that they probably can't play "Happy Birthday" without a lead sheet.
Another point that I'm sure I'll get flack for is the question of
whether those artists that can play well really want to tell anybody
else what they are really doing. It's like a business giving away
their trade secrets.
The unwritten law is that "if you can hear it you can have it".
Otherwise if someone tells you to do something and it doesnt lead
anywhere, just stop. It's probably crap. Don't buy into this "it
will help you down the road nonsense".
I'm telling you all this because I bought all the snake oil there is
for becoming a jazz musician for many years until I caught onto to all
this and began just figuring things out for myself.
> My question is this: what does the REAL 'working piano player' typically
>know and use in terms of piano chord voicings?, is it as somebody
>suggested with guitar chords a surprisingly small number of voicings?.
>
Yes, that was me with guitar voicings.
I have a similar post for piano voicings that I will be making.
I have this one sheet that I have developed that contains literally
90% of all practicaly jazz piano voicings on one page! That includes rooted,
rootless, etc.
It's practiceable because I did it. I wrote them for myself. After studying
Bill Evan's alot I tried to figure out a way to approch his style of
chord playing from as complete a way as possible but without enterring
into combinatorial explosion.
Of course the one sheet takes alot of practice because you have to learn
all the voicings in every conceivable hand split.
For example:
take the rooted voicing [D F A C E
reed
Reed Kotler
reed@justjazz.com
http://www.justjazz.com