Top 10 Jazz Standard To Play On Piano

It is incredible how much learning jazz standards improves our playing. Jazz standards are standards for a reason! These tunes have stood the test of time, and will teach you so much. Standards will force you to learn how to play over new changes, and will add to your overall harmonic and melodic knowledge. Becoming familiar with new forms (AABA/ABAC), and learning new harmonic progressions will make a world of difference to your playing. Many jazz standards are written within the same common forms: 12 bar blues, 32 bar AABA, and 32 bar ABAC. If you understand the construction of these forms and can hear the different sections, your work at learning all these tunes will be significantly easier. Jazzadvice.com The more jazz standards you learn, the easier it is to pick up new tunes. Jazz standards are all written using very similar building blocks (harmonic progressions). The more progressions you become familiar with, the easier it is to learn new songs. Each jazz standard can be broken down into smaller progressions that you can find in hundreds of songs. In every standard that you’ll encounter, with rare exceptions, there will always be a ii-V7 or turnaround at some point in the chord progression. If you’re able to immediately recognize this progression, whether it’s in the tonic key or another key, you’ll be able to figure out the progressions to countless standards and retain them much faster. Jazzadvice.com Blues The first jazz tune a pianist should be a blues. It is the simplest form you are going to come across in the world of jazz. If you’ve come to jazz from a blues background, you’ll most likely already know the I, IV, V version of this progression. Like the traditional blues, the jazz blues is most commonly a 12 bar form, but with embellished harmony. Jaimeholroydguitar.com Learning the blues in all 12 keys will cover all of your ii-V's and minor ii-V's. It is one of the best platforms to try your hand at soloing due to it's simple progression. There are many standard blues tunes, but one of the more popular ones to get started on is Billies Bounce. It has a very common blues "turn around" at the end of the song that you will encounter in hundreds of other songs. This is a good tune to get use to playing over these changes! Rhythm Changes Second to a 12 bar blues, the rhythm changes is one of the most used progressions in jazz. Playing comfortably over a I-VI7-ii-V7 progression in all 12 keys takes a lot of work, but is well worth the effort. Rhythm Changes is the best way to start getting a feel for this progression, and there are many melodies or "heads" that use this progression. The progression on the bridge of V7 chords moving around the cycle of fourths (in the key of C: E7-A7-D7-G7) is extremely useful to know and invites the possibility of reharmonization, such as the substitutions found in The Eternal Triangle. Jazzadvice.com Autumn Leaves This is [...]

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