Piano Tutorials from Notting Hill!

I don't make tutorials to sell online. I create my videos purely as a memory booster and archive to help my piano students with what we talk about in lessons.  'Jazz Hands Piano' is my You Tube channel dedicated to playing - you guessed it - jazz piano! I hope you might find something useful for yourself in amongst these videos 😉

Creating Your Own Drills using excerpts and licks from your favourite transcriptions

Here I talk about taking favourite sections from solos you might be learning and developing them into drills. This helps to internalise them and by cycling through the circle of fifths we can learn them in all the keys, making them available to use in any solo you do on any tune. Here I use two bars from a Bill Evans solo on All The Things You Are.

Mini-Series: Autumn Leaves Part 1 - Introduction

This mini-series deals with all aspects of learning a jazz standard fom scratch. The intro takes you through what can be expected - talking about chord work (alterations, extensions, substitutions and the four dominants - as expounded on by Barry Harris), scales (including bepob scales, blues scales, pentatonic scales, modal scales, altered scales and so on) and will start you on your way towards improvisation using chord tone theory and other techniques.

Mini-Series: Autumn Leaves Part 2a - Chord Extension, Alteration and Substitution

Part 2a of the mini-series deals with chords. Starting out with the basic chords outlined in the Real Books, we look at how to make these sound more 'jazzy' or Bebop-sounding by altering notes in the chords, adding extensions and in some cases substituting one chord with another. This can sometimes be with with a Tritone Substitute - please look below for my 2 part video which talks about this.

Mini-Series: Autumn Leaves Part 3a - Beginning Improvisation

Part 3a of the mini-series deals with starting out with improvisation. I talk about 'chord tone theory' - which is simply the use of notes from the chords we're using as a starting point for creating imrovised lines. I also give you the modal scales used in the piece and an exercise in running these.

 Improvisation over a II-V-I progression.

Autumn Leaves - this video accompanies my licks sheet handed out in lessons.

This is an excerpt from and analysis of a Keith Jarrett transcription of Autumn Leaves that we study in my lessons.

Tritone Theory Part 1 - this tutorial deals with the concept of the tritone and how it is created.

Tritone Theory Part 2 - in this tutorial we take the tritone and use it in one of its applications.

That's about it for now, but more are coming from time to time. Just watch this space! 🙂