Scale studies
Left hand
Session timing: 2h
Observations
I must say I’m finally starting to like Harmonic minor. It was really weird at the very beginning, because of the rather unique chord qualities: minor / major 7th, augmented major 7th and fully diminished, not to mention two m7b5’s. It’s a really harsh sound, and while the scale itself is beautiful, the modes that it produces sound at first kinda ugly. But that’s where the power of modal approach comes in. Just because you don’t like minor / major 7th chord as your I (the Roman numeral, lol), doesn’t mean it sucks. It simply means you should try and start on another degree and see if you will like the new progression. I decided to start on III, which makes the 3rd mode of Harmonic minor. I like the sound of augmented major 7 chord, and I like how it falls into the pure minor IV (i. e. II in the 3rd mode). Now we’re talking! Instead of unsure and a bit intoxicated Cm/M7 to Dm7b5, I have beautiful, complex and fragile, unexpected and really otherworldly Cmaj7#5 to Dm7. Wow! So yeah. That’s how you get to love the stuff that makes you feel uncomfortable at first.
Observations
Mixing chord scales with key scale is definitely a wonderful framework for improvisation. I learned it from Rich Brown, as he was combining Aeolian and Phrygian over a minor chord to produce cool chromaticisms. It’s not always guaranteed to get great results, but it definitely helps a lot in terms of expanding your vocabulary. For example, I would’ve never thought of combing minor and harmonic minor mode 4 over a minor chord unless I forced myself to try it (which I did), and it actually sounded AWESOME! So yeah, Hm4 over Dorian ii chord — try it, folks.
Observations
Just made a big review of my piano routine and goals, made it on paper and just wanted to put a quick digest of it here. So, I have three main areas of focus at the moment:
I have a lot of exercises in each area that I partly borrow from some jazz books, partly take from my music school notes, partly invent myself. Luckily, they seem to overlap pretty good, and, in fact, there’s an area where all three come together. So improving in one makes me better at the other two. I discovered it recently when I decided to harmonise a random modal scale and instead of playing block 7th chords use shell voicings and watch out for voice leading to preserve minimum movement. It was extremely satisfying to discover that I could do it almost fluently, without really thinking about fingerings: my fingers sort of already knew where to go, as they got used to these movements during my endless cycle of 4ths runs. So that was great. I also realised that I am getting comfortable enough with scales to use them over chord progressions that I play with the left hand and mix them up to — basically, play jazz solos! Wow. So I decided to add this new section to my practice where I will intentionally combine all my skills that I develop in different areas of focus and improve my overall comping technique.
One thing I kind of excluded for now is technical exercises — for speed and finger independency and stuff — I used to do them a lot last year (Hanon exercises, arpeggios etc.), but it just doesn’t feel beneficial for my current goal right now (which is to get good at jazz comping). So I just leave the out for now. Also, I don’t learn songs or scores that much as I did before (it’s extremely time-consuming and could be very frustrating), but it’s also something that simply doesn’t fit well with my routine. I mean, I do understand why conservatory pianists practice 6 hours a day — you just can’t cover all the stuff you want to cover within 2 hours, let alone 1 hours. But to make up for that, I’m going to start learning songs from the Real Book — shell voicings with left hand, melody with the right. Should be enough for now! Okay that was it for the practice review, gotta go, till later!
Black Hole Piano 