Hi. In this lesson I'll show you the great advantages of using hand grips when improvising Jazz. Not only can we easily transpose our improvisation to any 12 keys! We can also gain an enormous freedom and immediately create many different and thrilling colors and flavors making our improvisation organic and alive. Let's start out this lesson by using just this little simple 3 finger hand grip… By moving the grip to for example this position… we play the pentatonic scale, right? And here comes the trick; just by moving the very same simple little grip to different positions we can quite easily grasp the pentatonic scale in all 12 keys… Look, our hand grip is always played by using finger 1, 2 and 3 in a fixed simple structure… And by using the same simple building block the exact same piano fingering it becomes really easy for us to grasp any key that we want… And just by using our simple 3 finger hand grip we can also as we’ll learn later on in this lesson play any of the 7 modes. For now, let's just do for example the Dorian mode by placing our grip here… here… here… and here… and again because we use the same simple hand grip all along it’s very simple to do Dorian in any key… With other hand grips other patterns we can also reach other sounds for example we can add this little 3 finger chromatic grip to our playground… and we can play the blues scale… And yes, now we can easily play the blues in any key… and again because we do hand grips we use the same piano fingering the same small building blocks no matter the key... When we get used to this technique we'll not be constrained by specific tonalities we are not so good at. Any key is just nearby and easy to grasp. Our hand grip motor just keeps running… We can also use for example this triad based hand grip to play all the 7 modes it could for example be the Lydian mode by placing our grip here… here… and here… Again in any key… So it's all about the hand grip structure and its positions and we can reach any scale any sound in any key. Let’s move on. Now I'll show you how we can use our simple hand grips to improvise in a very modern colorful free jazz style. We’re about to make our improvisation organic and alive. Now this is the C minor blues scale, right? But we can also easily reach the C Major blues scale… look, same grips, same piano fingering... And then we can of course also easily do the Major blues scale in all 12 keys but I guess that you already know how to do that by now. So instead, let's try to keep the C tonality and we'll blend the C Major blues with the C minor blues… We can also play totally outside our C blues tonality by moving our grips to completely foreign positions… So right now we do not just play a single scale. Instead we blend different sounds by moving our simple 3 finger hand grips around the keys. In that way we add different colors to our C blues. We make our blues more organic and alive. We tell a musical story. Now, it also happens that by using only this 3 finger grip we can in fact play all the 7 Modes. Ok, now the idea is that we can blend the modes while improvising… So again, our improvisation is not just a single scale, a single sound on the contrary we mix several modes and we constantly shape our sound into different flavors. This very modern and free way of improvising jazz is inspired by Béla Bartók and the term “Polymodal Chromaticism”. I would not say that we play chromatic well, we play every 12 notes indeed but we order them, so that we play one mode at a time zapping between the different sounds. So just the term “Poly Modal” would be more accurate I think. We can also add the 4th and 5th finger and do this pentatonic hand grip… and again make a colorful improvisation by blending the modes… We can also give our modes a very different expression by using for example our triad based grip… Or we can totally change the sound of the modes by using this stepwise hand grip… So by changing the structure, the building blocks, the hand grips, we can express for example all the 7 modes in different ways extract different patterns, motifs and themes. Ok, now we’ll look even further into the concept of hand grips and we’ll find even more advantages. But we’ll also try to locate some disadvantages when not to use hand grips. And we’ll find out what the concept is all about. So by using hand grips we can quite easily play any sound in any key. We can also obtain an enormous freedom in our play we can play Poly Modal. All the different sounds and flavors are just nearby immediate and easy to grasp in any key. Furthermore, by using hand grips we avoid playing our scales randomly up and down. Instead we order and enrich our scales with structures and patterns. And furthermore and this is new by using hand grips we can easily repeat motifs and phrases at different keys. So if we play for example this little phrase… we can easily do the same phrase anywhere else on the keys… and just by varying our phrase slightly and maybe adding some few notes in between we can play an entire solo based on a single phrase… So by repeating motifs and phrases we can obtain a high degree of integrity in our solo. Sometimes we may feel that the piano fingering becomes a little awkward though especially when the thumb hits a black key. For example when going from this position with our 3 finger grip… to this position… Here the trick is to pivot our hand like this… and it becomes easier… After having rehearsed this for a while we realize that it’s not so hard after all and the benefits of using hand grips may indeed exceed this little pivot challenge… And by the way we can reach many other scales than shown in this lesson by using hand grips. If we for example combine this left hand grip… with our triad grip… we can reach all the melodic minor modes… You can learn more about this technique in another lesson I’ll paste a link in the description…… So are there any disadvantages at all? Yes, of course. Everything has downsides. For example it’s important to understand that the concept of hand grips is meant as a tool for free improvisation only. You cannot necessarily play for example a classical piece or other fixed written pieces by using hand grips then other piano fingering may be more appropriate. So by using a simple single hand grip at several positions we can play maybe millions, probably billions of different phrases to form our free improvisation however we can not necessarily use hand grips to play a fixed written song. So the concept of hand grips is a mental tool for free improvisation a non-scale method of thinking or actually a method to avoid thinking a way to make improvisation more easy and simple. By using hand grips it should be like catching a ball or grabbing some plates out of the dishwasher you know, to get a grip of something and just do it automatically without thinking. Because if we think too much while playing our improvisation becomes stiff and exhausting. But when NOT thinking we can play more freely and spontaneously. Improvising Music is about being a little stupid actually ;) don’t think, just play. Of course we have to practice and get used to the idea of hand grips but my experience is that after a while we’ll get there and we can let go disconnect our consciousness and just play! Ok, this was a lot of praise I just gave you about the concept of hand grips. But remember that it’s just a tool you may use it all the time you may blend it with other improvisation tools that you like. Or you may not find the hand grip technique interesting at all. Now, that’s just the thing about Music get inspired but always find your own way and Music will evolve. You know, all NewJazz lessons are free, public and for everybody. I have no sponsors and I sell no merchandise. I'm just little me trying to make Music the EPIC CENTER of everything. So if you want to help me keep going you are of course so much welcome to make a voluntary donation. You can also just give me a nice like. Moral support is the best support I can get really. Thank you so much. Many warm regards from Oliver Prehn.
