PERP ENTRY 2

So the thing that I'm focusing on is the topic of jazz. I've always been fascinated with Jazz but I never dared to pick it up.

To start up my journey into Jazz, I picked to work on a piano jazz piece which is Moanin' by Bobby Timmons. There were a lot of techniques for each hand but I decided to delve into the simple stuff. One thing I realised about Jazz movement is that the bass note is often walking up or down its diatonic scale. Though the problem with my left hand is that it stays stationary at the chord it plays so I'm not used to the whole 'walking' bass thing. So I practised how to run down a scale with my left hand while playing something else on my right. I started slow then progressively got faster. After that I added more challenges like playing a different scale or maybe even adding perfect 5ths or octaves to my left hand as I play.

Image result for f blues scale piano
Next thing that I went to pick up was learning the Blues scale. Though for the case of the song I was playing, I learnt the F minor blues scale. The formula of the minor blues scale is 1, b3, 4, b5, 5, b7.

As I played the piece, I Realised that the melody played around the scale so cause of that I started to try and improvise melodies halfway through the piece. Again I realised something was missing and it turns out jazz often had this trill type of thing going on in the melodies on the right hand and I couldn't quite do it properly. So I gave myself an exercise where I practised putting down my pinky finger on a key, followed by my ring, middle, index , and thumb in rapid succession. That way I could get my fingers to coordinate and not screw up the flow.

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