Course: Learn Jazz Piano: Begin with the Blues

Having learned about the basic chords of classical music, you will now find out about their analogues in Jazz.

In this video, I introduce the three principal chords and scales of classical music. These will be useful as we explore chords and scales in jazz later on. You can …

There is a lot of material on the internet on the figures we mentioned earlier this week, in the two videos “A Brief History of Jazz” and “Miles Davis/Jazz Pianists”. …

At the end of Week 1 you should be able to: Play the 3 seventh chords C7, F7, G7 in root position in the left hand and use them to …

You can record your own playing using a variety of different programs or apps. For this course, I particularly recommend Soundcloud. Soundcloud is a free service but you will need …

I illustrate playing and improvising on “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” using the American blues scale and predominantly jazz quavers. This will also be your first playing task …

In this video, I will introduce the American blues scale and the way in which jazz quavers are written and played. You can download the American blues scale in C …

In this video, you’ll learn about the chords C7, F7 and G7 and their use in a skeletal blues in C. You will use them to play the blues “Things …

In this week you’ll learn about the three key characteristics of jazz: improvisation, the blues and swing. We then move on to the skeletal blues sequence in and talk about …

This is the start of the course proper. Here I’m playing Mercer Ellington’s blues “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” as a solo piece to provide some motivation for …

This briefly gives an indication of the historical significance of Miles Davis and singles out the two modern jazz pianists, Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, who play a key role …

I would like you to have some basic knowledge of the history of jazz. If you don’t know much about jazz, then a very brief history of earlier jazz up …