What Makes a Chord Jazzy?

Series Summary

Music is a vibrant part of the human experience. Since the first note rang out into the air, we have come up with ways to write, record and reproduce music. We have invented Italian names for every musical idea imaginable, and collected these into a body of techniques and terms we call “music theory,” complete with a circle of fifths. Concepts like minor and major, intervals and chords are all great examples of the way we, as a species, like to catalogue and classify. Yet, improvisation is an instance where we play at the speed of thought, sans classification or nomenclature. Very popular among jazz players, improvisation is a great tool to test one’s knowledge of their particular musical instrument—as well as let go of some of the rules and inhibitions…to allow for new and different modes of creative expression.

In these free jazz piano lessons on video, pianist Austin McBride teaches us not only how to improve our freestyle technique, but also how to read and write music—since you are only able to improvise with as much as you know. Lessons include how to play 5th chords, how to do chord progressions in the key of Bb major, how to use sharps, flats and intervals, how to play bass lines, how to change chord voicings, and how to compose for jazz piano.

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Austin McBride with Expert Village and today we will be talking about some Traditional Jazz. I will show you how to play some traditional jazz tunes and give a brief explanation of those. Traditional Jazz music will typically be in jazz scales which will be if we're starting here in a C chord we'll be using rough notes for example a 7 or perhaps 6. These things that will basically create an error in the key and that's basically what gives it the jazz feel and the jazz sound so if we're just playing a basic minor chord to major 1 F sharp to E minor, let's throw a 7 in there and it turns to jazz. So from here, 5, 7, B minor bring it down to a 7, and all of a sudden we're playing a jazz chord progression. And that's how you play traditional jazz music."