Tips on Piano Rhythms & Rests in Eb (E Flat)

Series Summary

Music is a vibrant and necessary part of the human experience—even a salve for the human condition. Since the first sound wave burst forth from the womb of creation, we have come up with ways to write, record and play musical compositions. We’ve invented fancy-sounding Italian names for every musical idea we could imagine, and collected these into a body of knowledge and practice which we call “music theory,” complete with a circle of fifths. Concepts like minor and major, intervals and chords are all fine 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, without classification or nomenclature. Very popular among jazz players, improvisation is a great tool to expose one’s true knowledge (or lack thereof) of a particular musical instrument—as well as let go of some of the traditions of the past to allow for new and different modes of creative expression.

In these free jazz piano lessons on video, pianist Ryan Larson 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 what you know. Keyboard lessons include how to play 5th chords, how to do chord progressions in the key of Eb (E Flat), including rhythms and rests and how to change chord voicings.

Video Transcript

"Today we're going to go over a tune written in E-flat major. And we're going to show you the E-flat major scale. And the beautiful thing about this tune, like many simple piano pieces, it stays entirely in the key of E-flat major and just by learning this one seven-note scale you can go through and figure out all the notes we're going to play today. And then I will show you the appropriate rhythms as we go through so you can go through and find the notes and then play the appropriate rhythms on your own. So this is going to require a lot of work from you. If you wanted to skip through and get the different rhythms, you can skip ahead to each section and just listen to the rhythms. Or you can print out this piece of music. If you click on the link at the top of the screen, this music will come up and you can print it out and you can go through with me today and analyze it. Which is very good, the more you analyze the better you get at it and you really have to do this so you can go and start reading classical music on your own time. And you can go through and figure out the note values and then add in the rhythms and play it along with me as I go through and play. So, it will require some work but it4s very simple and anybody can do it. It4s not a complicated process at all, and we really break it down to the basics so you can go through and start doing this on your own time."