I have a checkered musical past. Between the ages of 7 and 18, I had four different piano teachers. One went back to nursing full-time, another retired, one wasn’t the right fit, and the last finally got me through the end of high school. Because of this, I spent long stretches of time without a teacher, but that didn’t mean my musical education stopped. I benefited greatly from singing in the choirs, orchestras, and bands in school.
Jazz band was a particularly bright spot in my high school experience. Our director, Bob Holden, was himself a wonderful jazz trombonist, and I loved being in rehearsal, playing concerts, and traveling to festivals. A group of us formed a combo and played in the community. Over 30 years later, all of us are still active performers. (One of us even “made it big,” and is one of the go-to session guitarists you’ve probably seen in the background on various TV shows.)
School jazz ensembles come at an important time in kids’ lives where they have to figure out what role music will play in their lives. In the same way that sports and video games provide a social aspect to those interests, jazz band is a great way for interested pianists to find community outside the studio. The question, then, is how to help them get started.
In getting students ready for ensemble work, it’s good to keep the following in mind:
Traditional piano lessons focus on solo performance. Jazz is primarily a collaborative activity.
Being hyper-focused on your technique and tone can work for solo playing, but it spells disaster in a group setting.
Solo pianists may never have played in an ensemble and can find listening to other instruments distracting. Band students have been in an ensemble since day one, so they’re used to having all kinds of sounds around them.
Pianists are trained to carefully follow the score. Jazz charts are often less detailed and almost never include fingerings. The score is still important, but you have to use your ear and match the band’s tone and articulation.
Traditional supplemental and classical repertoire at the intermediate level focuses on the keys of C, G, D, and F. Jazz bands prefer flat keys (which are easier for the horns to play), so Bb and Eb are common.
Solo pianists are told to practice slowly and deliberately. Ensembles rehearse closer to a performance tempo. (Otherwise, the wind players would run out of air.)
And finally, a lot of students haven’t improvised much, or if they have, they may not have done it in a jazz style. And while the vast majority of jazz band charts are completely written-out and don’t require improvisation skills, many band directors do encourage it in auditions and in rehearsals.
So let’s dig in and see if we can address these points…
THOUGHT 1 - GET STUDENTS OUT OF THEIR HEADS
First, a jazz lesson should feel collaborative. Rather than the student playing and receiving feedback, there should be some kind of teacher involvement. This can be as simple as throwing a beanbag back and forth to keep time while the student plays something (I call it my “metronome ball.”) Or it can take the form of duet playing where the teacher provides a blues bass line while the student improvises chords or a melody. Even better, add a backing track - you can find a lot on YouTube by searching “blues drum track” and specifying a tempo (in bpm.) For example, I might play something like this:
While we use this track:
Regardless of how simple or complicated you make it, the goal is to give the student something that they have to listen to and follow. You may be surprised at just how difficult this can be for students who aren’t used to it, no matter how advanced they are.
And here’s a pro-tip: keep the volume on the low side and/or put the speaker across the room. It’s easier when the track is loud and right next to you, but that’s not how it is in the real world. The drums may be ten feet away and the lead trumpet twice as far, and that requires a more intentional kind of listening. I even do this with classical music, playing Clementi or Burgmuller to a metronome across the room, and it helps students feel less fragile on stage since they’re used to being aware of ambient sounds in the room.
THOUGHT 2 - THEORY IS WEIRD
Next, students are usually familiar with these kinds of F chordS:
They are less familiar with these kinds of F chords:
In jazz, chord voicings usually avoid putting the root on the bottom, and 6ths, 9ths, and altered tones are often sprinkled in for color (and those notes may or may not be represented in the chord symbol.) I usually have students learn “shell” voicings consisting of the 3rd and 7th. In an F blues progression, the “must have” notes would be these:
Add some roots, 5ths, 6ths, and/or 9ths in the RH, and you get pretty close to what professional jazz pianists play:
THOUGHT 3 - IMPROVISATION THAT MAKES SENSE
My least favorite improvisation advice is when people tell students to “use the notes of a blues scale just do what sounds good.” I mean, it’s not wrong, but it’s also not helpful. What a lot of students need - especially those who are a bit shy about improv - is a vocabulary. Learning to improvise is a bit like how toddlers learn to talk. You don’t start with letters or paragraphs, you start with single words and short phrases. And those words and phrases aren’t built by thinking, they’re built by hearing.
To help students with that, I start with simple playbacks. Here are some examples of “words” using an F blues alphabet:
We’ll turn a blues backing track on and I’ll ask the student to repeat what I play. I’ll usually tell them what note I’m starting on, and I’ll start easy with just two or three notes:
If that gets too easy, I’ll ramp up the difficulty a bit:
Or we can just stick with simple ideas - that’s fine, too. Later, I’ll have the student switch roles - they play and I echo. I tell them they have to follow one rule: you can play anything you want, but you have to be able to repeat it exactly if I mess it up. (Otherwise, I’ve found it gets too chaotic as they just throw a bunch of random notes on the piano trying to mess me up.)
Once a student can echo shorter ideas, we move on to longer phrases and have more complex musical conversations. It’s actually a really fun activity, and one I tend to use to wrap up a long day of teaching.
ADDENDUM
In addition to the few pages I’ve linked above, there are several resources I recommend. If you need a more comprehensive textbook on playing in jazz band, I like Jeremy Siskind’s book:
[Click Cover for more info]
If you need solo repertoire suitable for auditions, I really like Ross Petot’s collections from KJOS. (Ross is a professional jazz pianist, so his writing feels a bit more authentic.) My favorite collections of his are:
Jazz Alley - Early Intermediate
Elissa Milne’s “Pepperbox Jazz” series is more advanced and more soloistic, but inventive and great fun to play:
Pepperbox Jazz 1 - Elissa Milne
Pepperbox Jazz 2 - Elissa Milne
And my own collections, Gumshoes and Keybop, Vol. 2 also give intermediate pianists several great options:
Finally, I built a practice chart for students with a backing track that captures the sound and feel of a jazz band experience. It’s a funk tune at a medium tempo with opportunities for improvisation and comping practice called “Cruise Control!”
Paid subscribers can get it below, others can purchase a studio license at:
Excellent post - this is going on my Friday Finds! Thank you so much for sharing!
Thanks for all this, Jason! They also need some practice with swing (swung?) rhythm. My Iowa City experience has been the student needs to know how to swing already or they aren’t getting in to jazz band.