This 1 Secret Will Take Your Bebop Playing to the Next Level - Ep. 334

[Music] this particular topic is extremely popular and just completely miscellaneous it seems like there's a lot of just mysterious information around it and that is the topic of Accents in your improvisation how do we use them when do we use use them how do we practice them luckily for you Sterling Koo one of the amazing Jazz Pian School Educators we have here on staff is going to be teaching you all about that topic so get ready for that there's some amazing notation and practice exercises associated with this lesson go to jazp school.com podcast 334 to get access to those materials my name is Brendan low Creator and founder of jazz piano school don't forget to go to jazp school.com to check out all the amazing free education we have there and if you're looking to take some next steps and get more out of us you can join our membership there's many courses available and we actually have live teaching programs available as well with that being said let's Dive Right In what's up everybody Sterling here with another podcast today we're talking about accents this is something that bbop musicians from the 1940s and 1950s all had in common anyone who was coming from a swing background and wanted to play more lines that sounded like bbop um they had to get get on board with this stylistic um aspect of their playing uh spearheaded by Charlie Parker and DIY Gillespie playing with accents uh was something that changed the style of improvisation and updated it to sound more modern at the time now we still have elements of bbop in jazz improvisation today um but it's something that's often overlooked or not talked about because we're usually more focused on on you know what scales to play what chords to use um learning forms and learning more tunes um but you can use the tunes that you already know and the theory knowledge that you already may have or even just you're playing by ear um but using what you already know how to do but just changing this one simple element which can uh take your playing to the next level so I'm going to show you a quick way to do that we're going to start with uh Charlie Parker tune um made famous we play this with Diz all the time and it's called scrapple from the Apple so this is based on the core changes to Honeysuckle Rose but it almost sounds like an improvisation the way that they play it so I'm going to start by playing the melody with um with no accents and you can get a sense for the difference once we add the accents back in later so this is the melody just by itself [Music] so pretty interesting Melody it's got a lot of Contour it's got some chromaticism um and it kind of sounds like bbop right uh but to really give it that extra pop we're going to need to add some accents it'd be like if we were having a conversation and someone's just talking in monotone and they don't really have any sort of Dynamics or well no Dynamics at all and there's no punctuation there's no spaces there's no accents pretty boring right so we need to add a little bit of pop a little bit of flare a little bit of pizzazz you know some accents to our talking um with our articulation um to have more interest more excitement and really get you know people to want to listen so here's the same Melody and we're just going to add some accents so pay attention to where we're adding the accents and I'll explain after so here is the melody take two one two one two 3 [Music] 4 so a lot more exciting right hopefully more fun to listen to and it sounds a lot more authentic you know just the way that bird or di would play this melody you know back in the 1940s 1950s um and still the way people play this these Melodies today you know whether it's in a bbop style or more modern style so let's take a closer look at this melody um where do we need to add these accents well the easiest answer is adding them to all of the top notes of each of the phrases so let's take a closer look we're going to slow it down and listen for what when the accent happens at the top of each of these phrases [Music] so this is a really Dynamic way of phrasing because you're not just accenting the offbeats which a lot of people talk about accenting the offbeats and that's very true it's important to Accent the offbeats but when you accent the top note of each one of these phrases it creates a lot of variety it almost sounds like you know you're taking a step but then you change direction and it keeps you on your toes so to speak so let's hear that again in real time a little bit faster one two 1 two 3 [Music] 4 so those are the accents that we're really looking for um in this bbop style so I'm going to play a little bit more for you all and do a little bit of improvising um you can work through this entire Melody scrapple from the apple and then I would recommend trying to create your own Melodies In this style you know with a bbop style um if you're not familiar with bbop language that's okay you can take another tune you can learn this tune but then take um Honeysuckle Rose for [Music] example You Can Play That Tune which has a much more accessible Melody and then create your own solo but try to emulate the those accents you know just like Charlie Parker would so we're going to play a little bit of improv um using a playalong uh let me put this on at Tempo let's see here kind of a nice medium swing let's try let's try 144 beats per minute so I'm going to play some of the melody and then do a little improvisation with accents to show you how you can accent the top notes of each one of these phrases here we go a one two 3 4 [Music] so there's just a little bit of taste of how we can add those accents into our improvising this is something you can work on over any bbop tune or even if you're just playing a blues and want to add some bbop improvisation just to throw in a little bit of flare a little bit of flavor so I hope that helps with your uh jazz piano Journey you know finding that authentic be bbop style so don't forget to practice using those accents and if you want to grab some uh practice materials you can find them in the description below we'll have them all the accents written out so you can take a closer look so with that I'll leave you and happy practicing see you next time all right well I hope you guys enjoyed that episode don't forget to go to jazp school.com to check out all of our free amazing education all the free podcast blogs we do have a membership if you're looking to take a next step forward with us get access to over a thousand different jazz piano videos playbooks mini courses a main course curriculum success path and so much more if you have any questions feel free to email us at support jazp school.com I hope you have a wonderful day and as always happy practicing

Channel: JazzPianoSchool.com - Learning Freedom (Online Jazz Piano Courses)

Views: 882

Keywords:

Id: Ntep5c15EjQ

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024