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The Ultimate Gospel And Jazz Piano Collection: The Best Songs and Exercises for Piano Lovers



Learn jazz piano and keyboard the easy way. Led by professional musician, piano teacher and session player, Arthur Bird, this Udemy bestseller caters to beginners who want to learn the fundamentals of jazz piano.




The Ultimate Gospel And Jazz Piano Collection



This introductory course teaches the basics of jazz piano. It also covers jazz scales, approach patterns and guide tones. Ultimately, you will get started as a jazz pianist and gain the knowledge needed to move on to intermediate level classes.


Offered by Piano Groove, this intermediate course delves into chord voicings for major, minor and dominant chords, and how to apply them to create solo piano arrangements. It also covers 6 jazz standards.


The advantage of learning to play gospel music asa kid growing up in church was gaining the ability to hear and play piano (orkeyboard). No matter how many rehearsals we held beforehand, the set-list neverstayed the same during the actual church service. We had no other option asyoung musicians than to listen, figure out, and learn on the spot during theservice. Frustrating as this experience was back then, I developed my abilityto hear and play unwittingly and prepared myself for my journey into the worldof jazz.


I fell in love with jazz after looking for agreater musical challenge, feeling that gospel music as a genre had becomeredundant in form. Learning to play jazz has definitely broadened my musicalhorizon. It continues to excite me as I explore it even further, discoveringthe endless wonder of musical expression.


Another example is Niki Haris. She combines jazzand gospel music together brilliantly in live performances, showcasing hervocal execution, lyrical commitment, and thorough instrumentation. She reachesboth Jazz and Gospel audiences alike.


As a piano teacher, I 'll share with you what I learned from my own piano teachers, including jazz legend Billy Taylor. Click HERE to get started with my video course along with my personal guidance. Please email me at [email protected] if you're interested in Skype lessons.


Hi! I'm Ron Drotos and I'm passionate about teaching all forms of piano improv including jazz, rock, blues, pop, & even classical improvisation. My own journey has taken me to Carnegie Hall, Broadway shows including Smokey Joe's Cafe and Swinging On A Star, and NYC's Blue Note jazz club, and now I'm sharing this experience with piano students worldwide. I'll show you how to play with a new sense of joy and fluency!


After performing at Carnegie Hall, for Broadway shows, and at NYC's Blue Note jazz club, I'm now dedicating myself to teaching piano students all over the world how to improvise with a new sense of joy and fluency. Click HERE to begin my well-sequenced, step-by-step video course, or email me at [email protected] for Skype piano lessons.


Merrell is a composer of illustrious works in gospel jazz and regularly performs with local and nationally known Gospel/Christian artists, some of whom include Kim Burrell, David and Nicole Binion, Morris Chapman, Maurette Brown Clark, Darwin Hobbs, Israel Houghton, Doe Jones, Donnie McClurkin, Martha Munizzi, Dorothy Norwood, LaShunn Pace, Alvin Slaughter, Parkes Stewart, and the late Rev. Timothy Wright. He also has been featured several times on the nationally televised Bobby Jones Gospel Show and has served as orchestrator and music director of several oratorios that incorporated several musical genres including Gospel, Broadway, Latin-Brazilian, Neo-Classical, Caribbean, World Music, among others.


From the University of Pittsburgh, Merrell received his Ph.D. in Jazz Studies with a research focus on jazz piano performance and pedagogy. His primary research focus was on The Life and Music of McCoy Tyner: An Examination of the Sociocultural Influences on McCoy Tyner and His Music. From Youngstown State University, Alton earned a Bachelor of Music in Music Education and Classical Piano Performance, graduating Cum Laude, and a Master of Music in Jazz Piano performance.


1918 marked the big start of American jazz and it still remains one of the most popular piano styles. Pianists such as Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Fats Waller are piano players influential in building the jazz scene around New York, Chicago, and New Orleans.


William Edgar (BA, Harvard University, MDiv, Westminster Theological Seminary, DTh, Université de Genève) is professor of apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. He directs the gospel-jazz band Renewal, which features the legendary singer Ruth Naomi Floyd. He is also currently professeur associé at the Faculté Jean Calvin, Aix-en-Provence (France). He has published more than 20 books and numerous articles in French and in English. His most recent book is A Supreme Love: The Music of Jazz and the Hope of the Gospel (IVP Academic, 2022). He and his wife, Barbara, have two children and three grandchildren.


Ramsey Emmanuel Lewis, Jr. was born on May 27, 1935, in Chicago. Growing up in the Cabrini-Green housing project, he began playing piano at age 4. He began his classical training at the Chicago Music College Preparatory School, while playing piano and organ in his local church. He carried the abiding influences of both his gospel and classical training into a stylistically eclectic yet rhythmically grounded approach to jazz.


"I lucked out," Lewis told a Chicago Sun-Times interviewer in 2018, "because both my parents loved classical and gospel music. My dad loved jazz as well. So, I was hearing this music around the house since I was born."


I think the simple answer is to find a good jazz piano player to teach you. That may be hard to find depending on your location but, although jazz requires knowledge of the theory that others have commented on, it's also very much an oral tradition that's difficult to pick up without a teacher to put you on the right footing. There are books like The Jazz Piano Book that contain lots of fantastic info on theory but the I doubt they're a replacement for a good teacher.


The New Orleans pianist would claim that he invented jazz. Without a doubt, he helped create the sound of jazz piano. Benny Goodman and his band later had a hit with their recording of this Morton song.


The piano has played a fundamental role in defining jazz as we know it today. Its melodic and harmonic capabilities create endless musical possibilities that continue to evolve over time and are performed in a wide variety of contexts including solo piano, accompanist for a singer or instrument, and ensemble settings. Jazz Piano is designed to teach you timeless techniques that develop your ability to meet the demands of a working pianist in dynamic situations.


  • Starting with the basics, you will learn jazz piano chord voicings with tensions, how to interpret melodies and phrases with an authentic jazz feel, improvisation, jazz bass lines, and developing effective intros and endings to songs. Jazz Piano focuses on blues, swing, standards, and bossa nova, while laying the foundation for you to expand into any of the jazz-influenced styles.In addition to cultivating your technical and improvisational playing of the instrument, you will learn jazz piano history and how the European classical traditions melded with African rhythms to give birth to a new sound of jazz. You will learn jazz piano in a multi-faceted approach with the utilization of audio and video demonstrations to further your comprehension of the material. Featured artists will include some of the most influential jazz piano players of all time: Jelly Roll Morton, Erroll Garner, Thelonius Monk, Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Marian McPartland, Bill Evans, and McCoy Tyner. Each week, you will work with flexible play-along audio tracks, which provide a strong platform to learn jazz piano and practice performances with complete control over tempo, enabling you to progress at your own pace.Jazz Piano is an essential course for any pianist looking to enhance their originality, versatility, and compositional skill within the jazz genre.By the end of this course, you will be able to:Identify historically significant jazz pianists and their music

  • Properly interpret jazz rhythms and phrases

  • Feel confident recognizing and playing a wide variety of chords from unaltered diatonic sevenths through fully altered dominants including the A/B jazz voicings

  • Perform repertoire in the jazz blues, jazz standard, and bossa nova styles in a variety of settings including solo, accompanist, and ensemble

  • Improvise solos using a variety of methods from the pentatonic and blues scale to chord tone and approach notes

  • Create smooth intros and effective endings for repertoire

  • Think like a jazz player and learn songs based on their harmonic analysis and by recognizing common jazz progressions such as the II V I

Read Less OverviewSyllabusRequirementsInstructorsRelated Music Career RoleEnroll NowNo application requiredRequest InfoNeed guidance?


The routes I had to choose between were jazz and classical. I ultimately decided to learn classical piano first. This is a decision that I am happy about to this day; however, I wanted to create this article to give you insight into what you can expect between jazz and classical.


After about a year of lessons, you will typically choose a piano style you want to focus on. The main reason for this is that most piano instructors do not teach both jazz and classical.


Some of the best jazz piano songs can be played in a wide variety of arrangments and difficulties. Jazz piano is extremely complex and can feel entirely foreign to even highly talented classical pianists.


This is because jazz piano has this other side to it that contains mathematics. When improvising, there are a lot of things that you have to learn in jazz piano, outside of being able to do it physically.


Moreover, all lessons are prepared by dozens of experienced pianists. They can both teach you new piano skills, as well as inspire you. As a result, you are going to have comprehensive training in gospel and jazz piano. 2ff7e9595c


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