It’s Easy To Remember: Journey Through The Real Book

A jazz piano lesson to help you learn the great Rodgers and Hart jazz standard “It’s Easy To Remember.”

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Learning tunes from the Real Book 0:00
Recordings by John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, and Frank Sinatra 0:35
Playing jazz ballads of piano 0:55
Finding your “motivation” while playing a jazz ballad 1:25
Learning Rodgers and Hart tunes 1:46
Being inspired by our favorite jazz musicians 2:02
Exploring jazz harmony on ballads 2:09
Experimenting with various pianistic textures 2:14
The joy of playing melodies at slow tempos 2:28
The beautiful feeling we get from playing ballads 2:35
Evoking the musical culture of the 1930s-50s 2:43
Do we enjoy playing melodies? 2:54
An appreciation of Charlie Parker’s “Bird With Strings” recordings 3:17
Luxuriating in slow tempos 3:38
Getting various “colors” from the piano 3:51
Expressing a song’s lyric 4:05
A solo jazz piano performance of Rodgers and Hart’s “It’s Easy To Remember” 4:59
Adding fills between melodic phrases 5:39
Chromatically-ascending inner voice movement 6:46
Using chromatic approach chords and substitutions 6:58
Playing a descending scale with the left hand 7:17
Using a pedal tone during the turnaround 7:28
Beginning the solo with a reference to the tune’s melody 7:37
Developing a motif 8:09
Playing faster notes in the right hand melodic line 8:24
“Floating” over the left hand pulse 8:46
Improvising with arpeggiated polychords 9:04
“Grounding” the improvisation with repeated notes 9:11
Double-time feel 10:00
Improvising with block chords, a la George Shearing and Milt Buckner 10:11
A hint of stride piano in the left hand 10:20
Fun, rhythmic interplay 10:44
Using triplets to ease back into the ballad feel 11:04
Inner-voice motion, a la Keith Jarrett and Clare Fischer 11:29
Embellishing the melody 11:45
Improvising a reflective ending 12:17

Here are some more Free Jazz Piano Lessons for you at the KeyboardImprov website: https://keyboardimprov.com/free-begin...

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Enjoy the journey, and "let the music flow!"
Ron