At 08:27 AM 10/31/96 -0800, you wrote:
>John,
>
>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 chord voicing for dmi9, namely
[D F A C E]
This can be practiced with
a) 1 note in the left hand, 4 notes in the right.
b) 2 notes in the left hand, 3 notes in the right.
c) 3 notes in the left hand, 2 notes in the right.
d) 4 notes in the left hand, 1 note in the right.
reed
Reed Kotler
reed@justjazz.com
http://www.justjazz.com