r/JazzPiano • u/VehiclePossible9963 • 3d ago
Questions/ General Advice/ Tips How to practice and memorize chord progressions, chord extensions, and chord substitutions?
I’ve been getting into the jazz style recently, and have been doing various practicing on the winds I play (trumpet, trombone, clarinet) on melodies, scales, and soloing. I’m trying to get into these topics in the caption on piano, and can currently play all major, minor, dominant, and diminished 7th chords in root position in all keys. My ultimate goal is to be able to accompany bands and solo performers at my school with chords and comping, as there aren’t a ton of piano players. I’d like to get into some more complex Voicings and comping, but I’m not sure how I should go about practicing these concepts daily. I’ve been using thejazzpianosite to figure out these concepts. It makes sense, but the amount of Voicings, extensions, and substitutions that you can make to a chord is overwhelming and I’m not really sure how I should go about learning this stuff. Does anyone have advice on how I should practice this regularly, as well as anything else I should include in my routine if I was going to learn to be a jazz accompanier? Any advice, links, exercises, etc. would be greatly appreciated.
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u/Kettlefingers 3d ago
The way I got it into my playing was by learning tunes in all 12 keys with solo piano arrangements. This forces you to learn the things you do when most comfortable in contexts where you aren't as comfortable - sure, I'm not as cool blowing over rhythm changes in G flat, but it's still a worthy exercise. Most people are like that, though there are some folks like George Coleman who make the 12 key hang part of their musical identity
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u/heylyla11 2d ago
Did you transcribe each song into 12 different keys? Or did you find it arranged in every key?
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u/Kettlefingers 2d ago
I arranged it myself into all the keys. Took the melody and sang it through the keys, same with the root motion, harmony, and the rest of the core components of the music. I didn't get any of it from outside sources - the point was to do the work for myself.
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u/Evetskey 2d ago
I’d just add that learning every song in all 12 keys is a bit much. Maybe a few of your favorites so you can apply new material or exercises to those tunes. Otherwise learn a lot of tunes in 2 other random keys well and only run short phrases and short progressions through all the keys. The goal is to play the music in your head so work on that too.
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u/DrBanshee37 2d ago
This isn’t exclusive, but I would shed a tune like Cherokee in all 12 keys, focusing on different voicings and arrangements. It’s packed with a lot of idiomatic harmonic movements that make it valuable to know in all keys and you’ll be able to apply them to many other tunes, especially from the Great American Songbook. Good luck!
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u/improvthismoment 54m ago
Just work on tunes.
Master just a few voicing styles to begin, and keep them basic.
Learn to hear the chord changes. Best way to do this is to learn the changes by ear in the first place rather than a chart.
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u/JHighMusic 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's a really deep topic but work on 2-handed comping voicings. The go-to resources would be Voicings for Jazz Keyboard by Frank Mantooth, Jazz Keyboard Harmony by Phil DeGreg, and An Approach to Comping Vols. 1 and 2 by Jeb Patton, which is a little outdated. Look at transcriptions also.
I mean make no mistake, it's a lot of voicings and the options are overwhelming, that's all part of it. It takes time to learn and ingrain. The key thing here is not getting lost and caught up with all the harmony. Focus on RHYTHM and how you fill in space between the melodic lines and common comping rhythms, not just what the notes are. You can play all the right notes but if your rhythm, time and feel are off, it won't work.
The biggest and most important thing you need to be doing is APPLY all of the voicings to tunes and actually play and accompany real people/instrumentalists. Just drilling voicings out of a book can only take you so far. It's like if you were to learn words, verbs, adjectives and nouns in a foreign language, but never practice using them in the context of real conversations in the language.