Thirds improvisation ideas
Lesson time: (1min 19sec)
If you can visualize the 7th scale and use it to generate these thirds, you can come up with a number of right hand ideas
Course preview
This lesson is part of the course Advanced Blues Piano: Shuffle & Extended Harmony
Watch a preview of the full course below.
Lesson transcript:
Exploring Seventh Scale Concepts
So if you can visualize the seventh scale and use it to generate these thirds, you can come up with a number of right-hand ideas.
Ideas to Experiment With:
- Short Ideas: These can be quick riffs or melodic fragments.
- Back to Front: Reversing the order of notes for variety.
You can also use the blue third.
Extending Your Ideas:
- You can extend these ideas to last for two bars by holding onto some of the notes for longer. For instance:
- Two, Three, or
- Back to Front: One, Two, Three.
Now that fits over two bars.
Improvisation:
So, I'm going to use all those ideas in the improvisation that I'll play in a second.
Revisiting Previous Concepts:
I'm also going to go back to the idea of using the seventh scale as we did in part one with the tune Smooth Blues. Remember doing that in F?
Now, we're going to do it in D, but we're going to do it with the left-hand shuffle.
About the instructor
Critically acclaimed jazz pianist and composer Tim Richards is one of Britain’s most experienced jazz educators, teaching piano privately for over 30 years, as well as at Morley College, Goldsmiths College, the University of Surrey, Premises Studios and other venues in the UK and abroad. He has produced numerous titles for Schott Music, including the best-selling two-volume Exploring Jazz Piano, Blues, Boogie & Gospel Collection and the acclaimed Improvising Blues Piano. He is also co-author, with John Crawford, of Exploring Latin Piano and Brazilian Piano Collection.More recently Schott have published Jazz, Latin & Modern Collection (15 pieces for solo piano), comprising Tim Richards originals alongside pieces by Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, and the two volume set Beginning Jazz Piano (now a two-part MusicGurus course).“The real joy of Tim’s music… is that it is both hugely educational but also such great fun to play. Anyone with the slightest interest in learning to play or teach jazz piano should really acquire a set of Tim’s books.” PianoDaoAs a performer Tim has been a presence on the UK jazz scene since the 1980s, also playing the blues with UK and US legends such as Otis Grand, Earl Green, Dana Gillespie, Larry Garner, Joe Louis Walker and Mojo Buford. He has released over a dozen albums as a leader (featuring many of London’s best jazz musicians including Pete King, Gilad Atzmon, Tony Kofi, Jason Yarde, Seb Rochford, Ed Jones, Dick Pearce and many others), and toured all over Europe with line-ups ranging from duo to nine-piece. His latest recording, the album ‘Telegraph Hill’ by the six-piece Hextet, was described in The Observer as "A true joy from beginning to end". More info can be found on his website www.timrichards.ndo.co.uk read more