Jazz Piano School

I've heard extremely technically proficient and knowledable improvisers completely fail at telling a story with their solo. When this happens it stinks! None of us want to be in that position. Here's 9 ways for you to be a GREAT story teller when soloing. Let's get it!

This quick tool will give you a new way to think about improvising in a modal jazz setting that can take your playing to the next level! In this podcast lesson, we look at how to use the "Coltrane Scale" to improvise in a variety of harmonic settings that will give you access to a sound you may have heard, but never thought would come out of your own hands!

Sometimes people ask me, 'what do you put in your warmup routine?' Here is a quick exercise you can do every time you sit down to play the piano that will get your hands warm, and work to build facility and ease into your technique. The more you do it, the easier it gets! Try out "The Rachmaninoff Exercise" and see how you like it!

It's hard to be honest with ourselves. What do we know, and what do we NEED to know? What do we NOT know...we don't know! Confusing...I know...but hopefully these 12 CRUCIAL ingredients to jazz piano success will allow you to have a clear picture of everything you need in order to become a successful jazz pianist. I shouldn't say everything you need, but at least the most important things you need...

I get this question a lot, and that is... "Brenden, how do I integrate extensions into my voicings?" Well most of the time you'll here upper structure triads brought up immediately. In this episode I would like to go a step further and teach you some easy strategies you can use to extract SPECIFIC colors from your voicings by integrating the extensions of your choice! Here we go!

This exercise is a trade secret I learned to make my improvised lines smoother. After working with this exercise, you will make it through the changes of tunes you used to find challenging with style and grace! In this podcast lesson, well be looking at the notorious jazz standard, "Cherokee" and I'll be showing you different ways to approach working on your eighth notes flows through this exercis...

Improvising over 32 measure of minor 7th chords can leave us scratching our heads. What do we play? How do we keep our solo interesting. In this episode I'm going to show you my 7 favorite ways to improvise over modal minor 7th chords so you can implement burnin' colors, textures and atmospheres into your solo! Enjoy!

We ALL get stuck in our own ways of playing something the same way. Even me! Check out these 4 ways to add some spice, texture, and atmosphere to your major 7th chords. You can start to use these 4 building blocks to expand upon as well and create new sounds!

Jazz Piano School has come a LONGGG way since the days I first hacked together a terrible wordpress site. Now, JPS has helped, and is CURRENTLY helping thousands of people learn jazz piano freedom. In this episode I'll explain my goals and ambitions that I've brought JPS to where it is. I'll also talk about the AMAZING expansion, custom website, and teacher tools we plan to implement! Hold on to y...

Playing in 7/4 meter can be a fun way to explore new rhythmic possibilities and comes with its own set of challenges. In this podcast lesson, we will explore ways of practicing 7/4 by using rhythmic claves to make it feel as natural as possible. Come along and feel the beat!

Learning jazz piano isn't a guessing game, even that's how I approached it for 15+ years. It's a system. The majority of students, including myself start by learning tunes. This should be the LAST step we do. Before that we need jazz piano TOOLS. Would you try and read and write without learning the Alphabet? No of course not. Jazz Piano is the exact same way. In this 15 minute podcast I'm going t...

Here we look at how to create more 4 and 5 note voicings in a modal setting. Today's session explores a more flexible approach in D dorian by transposing shapes through the mode. To take it further, we look at a technique of chromatic transposition used by Herbie Hancock.

This it taken directly from our new specialty course "How To Crush The Blues". These 4 comping setups are sure to give you everything you need to know in order to provide lush and rich sounding blues accompaniment to anyone.

Here is a tutorial to create 4 and 5 note pentatonic voicings. These voicings work well over modal tunes like "So What" by Miles Davis, and will give you a modern sound to add to your toolbox of voicings! Enjoy!

We take a deep dive into improvising over tritone substitutions. Find out how to implement a diverse harmonic palette, and discover the secrets used by some of your favorite players! Enjoy!

Usually we all want to learn cool, hip sounding voicings right?! Trust me, I've been there. But unfortunately these one off voicings don't do much for our education. It's like someone giving us a fish instead of TEACHING us HOW to fish. Now, I don't know about you, but I'd much rather learn HOW to fish. This episode will give you the 8 must know jazz piano chords but will also TEACH you how you ca...

Learning how to make your blues scale improv not sound terrible can be difficult. Trust me! I went through the same thing! Here are 3 very easy tips that will your blues scale improvisation instantly sound like you've been doing it for years! Enjoy

Learn how to shift and move extensions in your voicings with this quick method to create a more modern jazz piano sound! With this method you'll be create that complicated inner voice movement that you hear Bill Evans achieve, not to mention many other huge jazz piano giants. Jazz Piano School has taught thousands of students to achieve jazz piano freedom using methods and strategies exactly like...

Here is part 2 of Bill Evans Time Remembered Analysis which finished up the last 8 measures of the melody.

Well I have some very amazing news! A special friend in the California area, who played with Bobby Hutcherson for many years and has contributed so much to jazz through education, has recently helped Jazz Piano School build a brand new specialty course! This new specialty course, taught by Dr. Joe Gilman will be "The Bill Evans Arranging Style" and will be available through Jazz Piano School exclu...

Finally we're at PART 4! Wow what a ride! Here I'll actually be playing with one of the backup tracks created for our Singer Accompaniment Mastery Specialty Course. I had a blast actually using the back up track. Remember there will be over 20 backup tracks within our new specialty course for you to use and play to along with analysis and walk through of everything I'm playing. In this episode I'm...

Welcome to Part 3 of our accompanying vocalist series. We're taking "The Switch" a step further and executing this action WITHIN ONE measure! Whooo. By doing this we're creating even MORE interaction within our hands, engagement with the vocalist, and ability to add our own expression into the tune. It will also go in our "tool bag" as another texture we can pull out to create contrast and add to...

Welcome to PART 2 of our accompanying singers series and in this podcast I'm teaching what I call "The SWITCH"! The Switch is the system I use to get a wide variety of textures, contrast, and balance in my accompaniment while playing for vocalist. It will allow you to get away from walking bass the entire time...(borrrring)...and help you add in expression of YOUR OWN! Which we all truly want to d...

Go to https://jazzpianoschool.com/singers to get details for our "Singer Accompaniment Mastery" specialty course being released in a couple of weeks! Well I'm super PUMPED! We're getting ready to release another specialty course called "Singer Accompaniment Mastery"! There is literally nothing out there like this and I know you're going to love it! So...to do a little promotion and give away some...

Oh boy...sometimes I just get going on some of these podcasts and this happens to be one of them. Seriously though...this one is AWESOME! I think you all are going to love the content in this. Would love to hear how your playing changes after working in some of the tips from this lesson. Happy practicing! Enjoy!