Playing Jazz Piano

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Jazz piano is played significantly different than classical piano. Classical music is typically written out in detail and the focus is on reproducing the music to the original composer’s intentions. Jazz piano on the other hand will often not be written in such a form. It will be written in such a form that the pianist will have to know a lot about music theory, chords, melodic material, and jazz themes.

Voicing is an important term to jazz pianists. Voicing refers to different ways to play the given chord. Jazz theory is all about taking a specific chord in the song and then the pianist makes the decisions about which notes to play from the possible notes in the chords.

There are three sections that the piano can be broken up with. These sections are not steadfast, but they do show a little bit about how pianists exercise jazz theory while playing in a solo. The lower section of the piano can represent an acoustic bass player, the middle section represents the melody, and the high section of the piano represents brass and horns.