Hi If you wanna learn to improvise Music this lesson presents some very practical and essential rhythmic exercises. You’ll learn to coordinate your left and right hand creating a thrilling tension between melody and rhythm. And you'll learn how to play in a free manner being flexible liberating yourself from rigid and predictable solo playing. I'll take you on a journey from the very easy beginner exercises to the more comprehensive and advanced exercises. And when mastering this lesson we’ll be able to play something like this... This is a NewJazz lesson by the way and my name is Oliver Prehn. Exercise 1 The left hand bass. Let's use these notes… and we do this repeating finger sequence 1-5-4-3... Let's start the metronome at just 52bpm... and we go like this… every single bass note is on a main beat, right? So now we have made ourselves a 4 meter bass line. This exercise 1 may seem just too easy. But in just a minute we’ll add the right hand as well. But before doing that, try to become 100% precise on the main beats. That's actually not so easy especially not at this very slow tempo. But if we have the feeling of a sub beat rhythm it'll help us a lot. So try to say out loud for example 4 sub beats for every main beat bass note… This actually helps us a lot being more precise on the main beats, right? So we’ve locked our bass main beats on to a subdivided rhythmic grid… And we may end up having the sub beat feeling just inside our head without having to say it out loud… Now we are gonna connect our right hand as well. And we’ll find out that we can actually improvise great Music by using only two fingers. That’ll be fun. So please stay tuned. For a start we'll use only finger 1 and 2. In that way we’ll make our improvisation technique simple and we can instead focus our energy on making the rhythm steady and nice left and right hand together. And we can actually improvise great stuff by using only two fingers. We'll realize that after having done just a few exercises. Exercise 2.1 Let's for example for a start choose our motif tone material to be bb and db. And let's play a motif with a repeating finger sequence 1-2... For every bass note we play 4 sub beats in the right hand. So we play both hands like this… Let's try this out with our metronome… our 4 sub beats… our bass main beats… our right hand sub beats... So we've got a left hand bass doing the main beats and a right hand doing the 4 sub beats for every main beat. If you think this is just too easy, don’t worry, we’ll advance our exercises as we move along... Exercise 2.2 For now we have played our little minor interval motif with the thumb on bb. But we can of course move the motif to other thumb positions as well. Let's for example also place our thumb on g... f... and d... And let’s try to play these 4 thumb positions randomly… By placing our motif at different thumb positions we also exercise the mobility of our right hand. We learn to move our hand around the keys so to speak. And can you hear? Music is about to come to us. Not yet, but soon… Exercise 2.3 Try to mirror our motif from the 1-2 finger sequence to a 2-1 finger sequence… Exercise 2.4 Do this on our 4 thumb positions... Exercise 2.5 Here comes the trick. Stay at one thumb position for a start... and add some breaks… Exercise 2.6 Do this at all our thumb positions… and listen, now we play nice phrases. It's just that simple... Try to add your feelings into this and transform the previous more strict exercises into Music. This is actually fun work... In just a minute we are going to add the 3rd finger as well. And we’ll do exercises that make our right hand much more free and independent in relation to our left hand. We'll liberate ourselves in a both rhythmic and melodic manner. So please stay tuned. Before moving on let's do a quick summary. We have a bass line that marks up our 4 main beats… Inside our head we have a 4 sub beat grid… We exercise a motif with a 1-2 finger sequence on the sub beats… on several thumb positions… we mirror the motif… and finally we add breaks playing more freely… And yes, now I play at a much faster tempo than before. But take it easy gradually increase the tempo but only when you feel ready. Slow Music is just as great as fast Music so there is no need to rush anything. It’s very important that you are in control with your fingers and the rhythm before you increase the tempo... Exercise 3.1 Now we add the 3rd finger and expand our motif tone material with the eb note… And we play a motif with the repeating finger sequence 1-2-3-2… Together with the left hand... Metronome… the 4 sub beat grid… bass… right hand motif… This is just to get our 3rd finger activated we’ll move on very soon... Exercise 3.2 Transpose this 3 finger motif to our 4 thumb positions… Now we are ready to take a quantum leap that really helps us liberate our improvisation in both a melodic and rhythmic sense. Exercise 3.3 Now the trick is to create suspense and tension between melody and rhythm. In the former exercises we have made our motif sequences with an even number of notes that always fitted the even 4 sub beat rhythm grid. So every time we hit a new main beat in the left hand we started all over with our motif sequence in the right hand… This well-fit coexistence between rhythm and motif can be both a little boring and predictable in the long run. So we need to exercise something more flexible and exciting. So what happens if we do a finger sequence with an odd number of notes? For example 3 notes. Well, what about doing a very simple 1-2-3 sequence? Yes, this is easy but not if we have to play it on our 4 sub beat grid together with the left hand. Let’s try to do this note by note… So it’s still the same even 4 sub beat grid; 4 notes in the right hand for every bass note in the left hand but we only repeat an odd 3 notes long motif sequence. Can you hear? The motif constantly shifts place compared to the main left hand beats... Let's try this with our metronome… even 4 sub beats... Bass… odd 3 note motif sequence… Can you feel it? The idea is just so simple but nevertheless it's not so easy to do it in practice. Exercises where motif sequence and rhythm don’t fit are the very key to the liberation of our Music improvisation. Right now with this exercise we educate our brain so to speak to play melodic phrases independently of the rhythmic pattern. We learn to be more flexible; creating suspense and tension between melody and rhythm... And let's do Exercise 3.4 Play our motif sequence at the 4 thumb positions... Can you feel it? The freedom of melody and rhythm... Exercise 3.5 Let’s mirror our motif playing finger sequence 3-2-1… Exercise 3.6 We play our motif at several thumb positions… Exercise 3.7 Play more freely do breaks for a start just at one thumb position… Then Exercise 3.8 All thumb positions… try to make some nice phrases. It may not sound perfect in the start but don’t give up keep up the good work experiment, have fun and immerse yourself into this and Music will come to you… Very soon we'll add the 4th finger as well. And we'll make new useful exercises that'll improve our improvisation even more. So please stay tuned. Before moving on let's make a quick summary. We have a 4 main beat bass engine… with a 4 sub beat grid… and we found out that by using only 2 fingers we can already improvise Music… then we added the 3rd finger and made an odd 3 note motif sequence not fitting the even 4 sub beat grid… in this way we exercised how to make tension between melody and rhythm freeing the two elements from each other. And then we made Music out of it… Let's advance our exercises and add the fourth finger as well. Exercise 4.1 Now we expand our motif tone material with the f note… And for a start we do an easy motif with an even 4 note finger sequence 1-2-3-4… just to wake up our fourth finger… bass… and with the metronome… bass… motif… The number of sub beats and motif notes are the same, right? So our motif sequence fits our sub beat grid. So this is easy, so far... Exercise 4.2 Play the motif at our different thumb positions… in this way we make our hand familiar with the different piano keys... Now we are ready to advance and make our motif odd. Exercise 4.3 This time, let's do a motif with an odd 7 note long finger sequence. We can for example play finger 1-2-1-2-4-3-2... and for every bass note we do 4 notes… Please note how our motif constantly shifts place compared to the main beat bass notes… and let's do this with our metronome… maybe you have noticed that almost every time we have learned a new motif in this lesson we start without the metronome; we play the exercise slowly note by note. When we have learned how our two hands are coordinated we are ready to turn on the metronome. When we have gained stability and steadiness we can once more turn it off to make our improvisation more organic and alive… Exercise 4.4 Move the motif to our different thumb positions to gain some tonal mobility… And exercise 4.5 We do a mirrored version of the motif… and again if you can’t do this turn off the metronome for a moment and work through the exercise slowly note by note… Exercise 4.6 We play our motif at several thumb positions… And now comes the fun; Exercise 4.7 Play more freely for a start at just one thumb position… Then Exercise 4.8 at several thumb positions… Right now we try to make Music out of our previous more strict exercises. This is the fun part. When I exercise I usually play strict exercises for about half an hour and then I take about 15 minutes of fun... Very soon we'll add the 5th finger as well, using our full artillery. So please stay tuned... Before moving on let's just make a quick summary. First we exercised only two fingers… and then we added the 3rd finger creating motifs with odd 3 note sequences… and then we added the 4th finger creating motifs with odd 7 note sequences… and all along once in a while we remembered to just play freely having fun trying to transform our more strict exercises into Music... And here comes Exercise 5.1 We expand our motif tone material with the ab note... and here we have a pentatonic hand grip, right? For a start we do this easy motif with an even 8 note long finger sequence 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2… bass… And with the metronome… Exercise 5.2 Play the motif at several thumb positions… So now our 5th finger is activated and in motion and we are ready to move on... Exercise 5.3 Now we want to create an odd motif. We can play for example this odd 7 note long finger sequence 1-2-1-2-5-4-3… we carefully study our right hand motif together with our left hand bass note by note finger by finger until our brain has got the idea... and then we try it out with our metronome… Exercise 5.4 Play the motif at different positions… Exercise 5.5 Yes, we do a mirrored motif… Exercise 5.6 Different thumb positions… Exercise 5.7 We play more freely doing small phrases... Exercise 5.8 We spread out our phrases to several thumb positions… And when we feel ready we can turn off our metronome… and let me try to speed up a bit… So maybe you have been thinking all along; what scale are we playing right now? What is our tonality and flavor of all this? Well, we’ll learn more about that in the next lesson coming up by the end of March. So I really hope you have patience with me... And thank you so much for all your likes, nice comments and voluntary donations you give me to recognize my work. You keep me going thank you so much. You are of course so much welcome to support my work but you certainly don't have to. All my lessons are free and public. Warm regards from Oliver Prehn
