BUD POWELL…AND THEN?

 

When we think about bebop piano, we can’t help but think of Bud Powell… but we all know that there were many, many other incredible piano players on the bebop musical scene.

ACTIVE LISTENING

 

Introduction

There is a huge difference between hearing and listening, set apart the further concept of active listening.

Hearing is a passive behavior, the mere reception of acoustic stimuli followed by a certain level – very variable indeed – of cognitive elaboration.

AN INTERESTING FORUM

 

Dear all, please allow me to point out a very interesting forum created by a friend of mine to offer room for discussion about music, musical gear, musician’s life and hacks, technical issues and many things more.

Supporti Musicali

THE RHYTHMIC DISPLACEMENT

 

To understand what displacement is in practice – that is, the rhythmic shift that occurs when a dissonance appears on a downbeat instead of a target note, and the target note is postponed to the following downbeat or is even played on the upbeat – I propose a beautiful phrase by Arturo Sandoval on There will never be another you (from bar no. 39).

5 4 3 2...GO!

 

The great pianist and teacher Barry Harris, famous for having played with all the greats of bebop and for having been a great friend of Bud Powell, has developed his own teaching method since the seventies (perhaps the most famous of his concepts is that of the “sixth diminished scale”) where he has tried to systematize in a “no nonsense” way the various “tricks” to learn to build a bebop vocabulary.

HOW TO APPROACH THE TARGET NOTE

 

 

Introduction

I have already proposed you the concept of  the "tripartite division of the phrase": a somewhat bombastic and pretentious label which means nothing more than approaching a line by breaking it down into its three key elements: beginning, development and conclusion.

A CENTURY OF JAZZ PIANO

 

 

The great Dick Hyman retraces for us the history of jazz piano from ragtime to McCoy Tyner.