When playing behind a soloist in a modal tune, many musicians struggle to maintain interest and variety in their comping.

This video explains a comping technique that McCoy Tyner used, which will allow you to have better and more interesting interaction with a soloist on a modal tune. It’s especially useful for playing with tenor sax players.

This video won’t teach you to sound like McCoy. It will teach you the landscape on which he developed his musicality, so you can explore that landscape and develop your own voice within that world of sound.

Give it a shot, and let me know if you have any questions.

Other material: hannon exercise 1 through 4. These will help work on the strength of the ring-finger (which is naturally one of the weakest fingers for playing piano). Click on the pages below to view the full-size image (you should be able to print the pages if you’d like).

Hanon page 1:

Hanon page 2:

Hanon Page 3:

Hanon Page 4:

And lastly, i’ve uploaded Cannonball’s version of Autumn Leaves…if you’re very ambitious, I’d recommend trying to learn Cannonball’s solo from this track. It’s incredibly deep. Download it here:

http://web.me.com/gns13/autumnleaves-canonball.mp3

You can use Transcribe (it costs like $50) to slow it down if it goes by too quickly. I think there’s a free trial though so you can download it and just use it for this. http://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/download.html

Have fun!

So sorry I haven’t uploaded any of these for like a MONTH! oy. Please forgive me. I’ve been practicing and studying like crazy, and just haven’t kept on the ball with this like I’ve wanted to. However, I just recorded some new improvs, and will be getting back to uploading them weekly.

This specific one is using something I learned lately from Steve Coleman (www.m-base.com). It involved the idea of negative chords simply being the inverse of the positive chords, based off the fifth scale degree going downwards. I can explain more if you’re interested – just lemme know .

You’ll notice a specific way that the minor chords modulate to one-another – that’s the thing I’m using .

Anyway, I hope you enjoy! Please leave comments and let me know what you think.

Right after I put this one up, @kendrickhuynh said “Sounds like a Chopin and Yanni improv =D Really soft, quick and nice.”

Do you agree?

Until next time, peace!
Weekly

This is my 63rd piano solo…please let me know what you think!

I call this piece “and i”. Technically this is weekly piano improvisation #61, but I decided to sing the melody that came out of this one.

Please let me know what you think! Should I sing more, or just stick to the piano? hahaha

This one is kept mostly in the mid range of the piano, but has kindof a singing melody to it. please let me know what you think!

This is a mellow improvisation that travels through various minor chordscapes.

I’m not sure specifically what the imagery is that I had in mind, but it’s definitely mellow and an expression of solidarity.

I’d love to hear what you think.

But, I’m getting back on the ball with my piano improvisations, starting NOW!

So, I give you, weekly piano improv #58!! (56 and 57 are on my youtube account, but not on this blog. youtube.com/weeklypiano)

I just posted this, and @kendrickhuynh already posted a comment on the youtube page, haha, thanks Kendrick!

Here’s my original: